Learning Unreal!

I FEEL LIKE A GENIUS!

As I noted in my original post, I didn’t really have terribly much time this particular DK30. So, I planned on doing something I’ve preached since DK30’s inception: just follow along with some tutorials! Have incredibly low ambitions for making anything interactive at all!

As I expected, I was INSANELY busy this month & INSANELY tired too. However, because I’d already set relatively low expectations, I had the ability to tune my already very doable plan. What did I do? I replaced my pre-bedtime “grind social media/Twitch” with watching Unreal tutorials on YouTube! I wound up being incredibly happy w/ this for a few reasons:

1. I’ve found it’s super easy to get stuck in social media time wasting in the evening. As part of some of my older DK30s, I’ve found I really enjoyed replacing those pre-bedtime activities with easy, but more enriching activities, like reading a book or watching tutorials. I’m really happy that watching Unreal tutorials slots nicely into this area as an evening option.
2. You know that anti-momentum feeling of “UGH I wanna make X but MAN it’s gonna be SO HARD to get started”? Well, the more time I spent grinding tutorials, the less of that I feel. I now feel capable of spinning up some actual coding action over my upcoming Christmas break :).
3. This wound up being a valuable reminder to me that I don’t need to “dig deep” for more energy to do another BIG PUSH if I wanna learn something new. Instead, I can start simply by setting aside a TINY amount of time and then doing the EASIEST thing possible within that time frame. Lo-and-behold, I’m feeling the momentum building.

Honestly, I had LOW hopes for myself this DK30. Whenever I truly have a huge amount of other work during a time period, I’ve historically fallen off my personal goals. This time, I didn’t just make headway. I’m now excited to apply this “bare minimum” effort approach for future tasks too :)