Rocket Bear Games Blog

A lot of people reading this site are indie developers themselves, and most of us have a non-game related job to support the hobby/obsession.  Even if you don’t have a secret game designer identity by night, chances are that you have a dream – to become a great writer, painter, musician, save panda bears, whatever.  I’m going to talk about the relationship to our jobs – how we should see them and what we should do while we’re at work.

I see my job as a means to an end.  This doesn’t mean that I’m a miserable, downtrodden cubicle rat.  Most of the time I’m happy with what I do; I get to work with people that I respect and there’s plenty of challenge.  That considered, here’s the question that settles it for me.  If your employer stopped paying you, would you keep doing what you do?  If the answer is no, then you’re not doing what you love.

I’m going to argue that even if you have no desire to make it long-term within the corporate structure, you should still be working your ass off.  Is that confusing?  Why would you want to go all out on something that’s just a source of income?

Motivation

“I should do a good job because otherwise my boss will catch me and I’ll be  in trouble.”

This is the ground floor for most people.  If you’re at this level, I have one question.  If you’re stuck at your job for 8 hours a day, why are you making yourself miserable to boot?  That time is lost to you anyway, as far as other pursuits go, so you might as well make the best use of it.  Besides, constantly looking over your shoulder is a pathetic, disempowering state of existence.  You’re not doing yourself any favours by thinking this way.

“I should do a good job because then my boss will catch me and promote me.”

I’m joking when I phrase it like that, but working out of a desire to be rewarded is not too different than working out of fear of punishment.  I’ll be honest and say that this way of thinking is largely alien to me.  Extrinsic motivators don’t last very long in my case, so I could never sustain a decent burn on this alone.  Since we’re talking about people using jobs to support their true passion, I’m assuming that you’re not angling for VP of Whateveritis.

“I should do a good job because it’s the fair thing to do.”

This is a much better principle to operate by.  For one thing, you’re not working because someone might jump out of the bushes and catch you.  This is, by the way, the thought pattern that I’ve used for most of my time at work.  It’s pretty simple – your employer is paying you quite a bit of cash for your experise;  it’s a pretty dickish move to screw them out of the benefit of your work.  How would you like it if you went to a small business, paid for their service and they only did 10% of the job?

I’m a big believer in fairness, which means that if you pay me, I owe it to you to do the absolutely best job that I’m able and more.  In general, it’s not a bad method to operate by – it’s “professional”.  There’s only one problem.  I don’t know about you, but doing something that I “should” be doing is a pain in the butt.  A lot of times it feels like you’re fighting yourself, which is not a winning long-term proposition.  Besides, there’s a much better motivation out there:

“I do a good job because I want to be proud of my work.”

This is the modus operandi that I’ve been using recently.  It’s a principle that I brushed against often before, but I’ve only crystallised it a month ago.  I come to work, turn on my computer, sit down and ask myself, “What must I do to make myself proud of this day’s work?”

That’s it – the magic sentence.  As I’ve mentioned before, the story that you tell yourself about your life is important.  Your job might be just an expedient way to earn money, but it’s a large part of the narrative.

The story that I want to tell is not the story of a guy suffering through Mon-Fri and then finally quitting to make games.  That’s a miserable, boring story which I don’t want to be a part of.  Wouldn’t you want to be the hero in a more inspiring tale?  How about this – guy works incredibly hard, helps lots of people, does amazing things and then leaves because his job has become too small for him?

Productivity

That settles the question of motivation.  Now let’s mention the matter of efficiency.  Don’t kid yourself that you’ll be some sort of super-productive uber-entrepreneur after you quit, if you can’t do a piddly 8 hours of honest work at your job.  Striking it out on your own is going to take mad hustle.  If you can’t cut it within the protective bubble of a corporation, you’ll be toast out there in the real world.

You should see your job as an opportunity to learn a lot of personally useful skills.  Time organization is something that you’ll need in abundance.  You can learn management and leadership skills – useful when you’ll be hiring other people to work for you.

Finally, and this is the most important point, your workplace probably has somebody awesome whom you can learn from.  I happen to be lucky because my job has several people like that.  Buy them lunch and pick their brain.

Conclusion

I hope that you can see now why viewing your job as a time sink is not a constructive thought pattern.  Even if it’s not your plan to climb the corporate ladder and become the CEO, there’s still a lot of value, besides getting paid, that you can derive from putting some hustle into your work.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 11:01 am and is filed under Personal Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.