I have been observing a pattern in my life over the past few months. I am obsessed about something in the evenings and the free time. It was books for a month, Far Cry 3 for another, and has recently turned into Chess.
I am trying to understand the underlying factor which is responsible for this behaviour. After reading through some pages about impact of games on human brain, watching the TED talks like Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world and assuring myself that I am not really going crazy, I think I have a plausible answer.
Like all young people I need to have that sense of achievement.
Being a introvert, the above explanation makes a lot of sense. I am not uploading pics in Facebook, I am not tweeting even an average of 1 tweet/day – other things that could keep me filled with the achievement and appreciation factor I am looking for.
Obsession Hacking
The word hacking is being used in a lot of places where it means “modification” or “change” or “tweak”. I am trying to use it for channeling my obsession into something that could be productive – as in work – as well as supply me the required achievement factor. One activity which I know could do that is – Coding.
Taking a look at what I have done in 2014:
I think I would do what John Resig recommends – Write Code Everyday, starting from today December 1, 2014. Lets see how far the obsession hacking goes.
Update: December 20,2014
Well. This doesn’t seem to be as simple as it seems. Gaming, reading books, chess – all have been entertaining and relaxing. Because that is consumption of content. But coding is production of content, hence has proved to be a much difficult and straining task. I haven’t been able to get to coding at all. The experiment so far has been a big failure.