Time and Creation
Steve Cole reports: In any given day, I have:
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Creative time: this is the time available for creating new products. Sometimes, it goes into creating something that few people want because sometimes priorities tend to get set by who complains the most or asks the nicest.
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Administrative time: running the company, answering email, making deals, telling artists what to do, getting print quotes, talking to staffers about what they are doing for future projects, talking to Jean about BBS stuff, marketing (don't do enough of that), deleting spam, maintenance, etc.
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Interruptions: things that aren't scheduled but won't wait. Like the time the hot water heater exploded.
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Wasted time: things that didn't need doing but took time anyway. Sometimes my bad judgment, sometimes just bad luck.
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Personal time: errands, business, mother's estate, etc.
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Entertainment time: not much of that, maybe two hours of TV a night and we record an average of four hours.
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Sleep: I just don't sleep much at my age and it's over-rated anyway.
=====
These are all fighting each other for their share of the total amount of time available in any given day. I constantly rob one to pay another. After robbing personal time, entertainment time, and sleep time as much as possible, the all important creative time becomes the bank account that pays all the other bills. This is the thing about the game business. We're all game designers who couldn't get anybody else to print our games and as such we started our own companies.
-
To get products out the door means maximizing creative time, that is to say, avoiding the inevitable problem of other kinds of time eating into creative time, and avoiding creative time being diverted into fun creative tasks that do not get products out the door (say, writing rules for somebody's campaign, which is why I refuse to do so, as this benefits only a few people).
-
One problem is that administration time is still needed even if I miss a day of work. Whatever time this takes (two or three hours per day) has to be done every day, even if I'm not here. So if I miss a day, on the next day, I have to make up the missed "admin time" and that comes out of "creative time". When I missed an entire month, I didn't get to do much creative stuff because every day had a backlog of admin stuff. One solution is to delegate as much of this as possible. Jean now runs the BBS and Petrick does the blog. Sometimes creative stuff forces it's way to the head of the pile; I had to stop everything and do FC ship cards last week because we were about to run out of some of them, so that constituted an interruption.
-
Sometimes, "admin" time expands astronomically, such as buying the new building. We've never done anything like this, but the clock is ticking (our current lease runs out in 89 days and we must have most of the move done in the next 58 days). This is taking at least an hour a day, and sometimes five or six hours, all of which comes out of "creative time".
-
Personal time, entertainment time, and sleep never rob other categories. They just get robbed, and they've been robbed too much for too long. I've got to spend time on the house and on Leanna, both of which have had critical maintenance neglected for years.
-
Wasted time is always annoying. Sometimes I spend an hour on the phone trying to make something happen and it doesn't happen. Recently, Leanna talked me into spending five days going to a trade show to sell almost nothing (a failure I predicted but hoped my prediction was wrong). Sometimes I get wrapped up in arguments (e.g., the GPA policy mess). I wasted a lot of time after mom died staring into space because I was holding everything inside instead of letting it go. After a month of that, I started having really bizarre dreams and went to grief counseling which made the nightmares stop. Different people have different ideas of what is wasted time. Those who don't play RPGs consider time I spend editing RPGs to be wasted, for example.
-
Interruptions are unavoidable, but worse, cannot be scheduled. When I tell someone "I will have created that by 3pm tomorrow" I cannot schedule in extra time that my Aunt drops by, the time the water heater explodes, the time that the warehouse crew has to have me make a decision about something, the time a wholesaler calls to ask a question, time to handle flamewars, the time I'm sick, the time a relative dies, and time lost because the "d" on my keyboard sticks (gotta take more creative time away to fix that, and soon), the time that... well, you see.
-
Creative time: this is the time available for creating new products. Sometimes, it goes into creating something that few people want because sometimes priorities tend to get set by who complains the most or asks the nicest.
-
Administrative time: running the company, answering email, making deals, telling artists what to do, getting print quotes, talking to staffers about what they are doing for future projects, talking to Jean about BBS stuff, marketing (don't do enough of that), deleting spam, maintenance, etc.
-
Interruptions: things that aren't scheduled but won't wait. Like the time the hot water heater exploded.
-
Wasted time: things that didn't need doing but took time anyway. Sometimes my bad judgment, sometimes just bad luck.
-
Personal time: errands, business, mother's estate, etc.
-
Entertainment time: not much of that, maybe two hours of TV a night and we record an average of four hours.
-
Sleep: I just don't sleep much at my age and it's over-rated anyway.
=====
These are all fighting each other for their share of the total amount of time available in any given day. I constantly rob one to pay another. After robbing personal time, entertainment time, and sleep time as much as possible, the all important creative time becomes the bank account that pays all the other bills. This is the thing about the game business. We're all game designers who couldn't get anybody else to print our games and as such we started our own companies.
-
To get products out the door means maximizing creative time, that is to say, avoiding the inevitable problem of other kinds of time eating into creative time, and avoiding creative time being diverted into fun creative tasks that do not get products out the door (say, writing rules for somebody's campaign, which is why I refuse to do so, as this benefits only a few people).
-
One problem is that administration time is still needed even if I miss a day of work. Whatever time this takes (two or three hours per day) has to be done every day, even if I'm not here. So if I miss a day, on the next day, I have to make up the missed "admin time" and that comes out of "creative time". When I missed an entire month, I didn't get to do much creative stuff because every day had a backlog of admin stuff. One solution is to delegate as much of this as possible. Jean now runs the BBS and Petrick does the blog. Sometimes creative stuff forces it's way to the head of the pile; I had to stop everything and do FC ship cards last week because we were about to run out of some of them, so that constituted an interruption.
-
Sometimes, "admin" time expands astronomically, such as buying the new building. We've never done anything like this, but the clock is ticking (our current lease runs out in 89 days and we must have most of the move done in the next 58 days). This is taking at least an hour a day, and sometimes five or six hours, all of which comes out of "creative time".
-
Personal time, entertainment time, and sleep never rob other categories. They just get robbed, and they've been robbed too much for too long. I've got to spend time on the house and on Leanna, both of which have had critical maintenance neglected for years.
-
Wasted time is always annoying. Sometimes I spend an hour on the phone trying to make something happen and it doesn't happen. Recently, Leanna talked me into spending five days going to a trade show to sell almost nothing (a failure I predicted but hoped my prediction was wrong). Sometimes I get wrapped up in arguments (e.g., the GPA policy mess). I wasted a lot of time after mom died staring into space because I was holding everything inside instead of letting it go. After a month of that, I started having really bizarre dreams and went to grief counseling which made the nightmares stop. Different people have different ideas of what is wasted time. Those who don't play RPGs consider time I spend editing RPGs to be wasted, for example.
-
Interruptions are unavoidable, but worse, cannot be scheduled. When I tell someone "I will have created that by 3pm tomorrow" I cannot schedule in extra time that my Aunt drops by, the time the water heater explodes, the time that the warehouse crew has to have me make a decision about something, the time a wholesaler calls to ask a question, time to handle flamewars, the time I'm sick, the time a relative dies, and time lost because the "d" on my keyboard sticks (gotta take more creative time away to fix that, and soon), the time that... well, you see.
posted by Federation Commander at 9:28 AM
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