A few weeks ago I watched a video on Kurzgesagt about cultivating new habits. I really like the way that Kurzgesagt break down concepts (and also their animations!), and this video really made me motivated to try and pick up some better habits.

I thought that I could try to make programming simple pico8 games as a new habit following their ideas. Since my birthday was quite close, I decided to buy the book that they created in tandem with the video. Also, I have seen so many of their videos, I thought it was about time to give them something back.

The book arrived last week, and it is really pretty and well done. The first few pages of the book is a review of the concepts in their video. Then they have a “tutorial” section where you try to cultivate a simple habit for 9 days. It starts really simple, and every 3 days the habit gets a bit more complex.

After this “tutorial” period, you are invited to create 1-4 habits following the same pattern as before, and record them for several days. If you track 4 habits, the book has space for about half an year of tracking.

So how do I plan to use this book?

At first, I thought that I wanted to turn Pico-8 programming into a habit. I still want to do that, but after reading the book, I decided to start with something much simpler for the introduction: For the first three days, I will start with just sitting down on my computer and writing down my ideas for a single pomodoro.

They really emphasize the idea of start small. I could make it even smaller, and just clean my computer of all distractions for the first stage, and write 2 pomodoros for the second and third stage. I might even make one of those a pico8 programming pomodoro.

Of course, when you decide to “write” stuff, the question then becomes “what to write about.” I have a few loose notes in my ideas folder (under a handy “toblog”) tab, so I could start by clearing those up and actually blogging them. I also have some dead links to fill in, and games that I played in the past. Also re-reading backlog.

A more sustainable solution would be to include the seeding of ideas in my writing process. Maybe as I advance this, I should include some time to write down and organize ideas, and then pick one of those ides to concentrate and write.

Well, one step at a time, I guess. For now, I will write one pomodoro a day (although maybe not everything will become a blog post)