I wonder if you guys face the attitude: "I'm no good. How can you be?" when you talk about your game to people who know you reasonably well. Some of my friends have said I will be no Bill Gates doing indie development. It would be simplistic to stay away from such people that discourage - they are fine people otherwise. Once my mum said only geniuses can do cool stuff and I ought to get a steady job. Arrgh. Muuuum!

How does it go for you? How do you handle negativity and keep self-doubt at bay?

I have a small mantra that is always in my head whenever someone says I need to get a degree/job/life/whatever, it is as simple as:

Get Bent, Loser

Works fine for me, he/she ends up not getting on my nerves again and I feel great for letting people know I don't give a danm about what they think I should be doing with my life :)

You may want to rephrase it depending with who you are talking to, I tend to leave the loser part when its family :)

I have the Akura attitude too hehe. :) What helps is to not talk about this stuff with people who will try to discourage you, and try to find and talk to people who will encourage you. But the best thing you can do is stick to what you want to do no matter what anyone says. Most people don't do anything "cool" in life because they're too afraid of failure, not because to do cool things requires you to be a genius or someone special. What you're hearing is their own fear and possibly jealousy that someone else is trying to do something they were too afraid to do. Bill Gates is not an Einstein, he's just someone who was dedicated and business savvy. Just realize that your success depends purely on what YOU do, not what anyone else does or says.

When i showed my game to my best friend and told him that i would charge 20$ for it, he said i am crazy and that it's not worth a dollar. :-)

The old adage, "don't cast your pearls before swine" rings true here. I find you must be very selective in who you share your hopes and aspirations with. Some people just aren’t and never will appreciate what you are trying to accomplish as an indie developer.

They have no idea about the market, the potential, the pleasure that one experiences when making and finishing a game. They dont understand any of that, so they are just going to write off anything you say or do as a childish immature delusion.

Every now and then it's important to look at yourself critically and make sure you are indeed being realistic. However you don't need people constantly telling you, you aren’t.

That's one of the reasons why this board is such a service, you can come here and share your ideas with like minded individuals and not be criticized. Also, I would be sure that the people you interact with on a daily basis are other successful indie developers. Weather they be people in your area, or on your IM list.

People convinced that they are no good end up not being good. If you feel you can do something, go for it, the worse that could happen is failure - so what? Failing is better than not trying, which is what those people are doing. By not trying you are making the failure a reality.

Time to get some new friends. And a new mum. It's been mentioned several times (I think Steve has said it the most), you are what you associate with. If the closest people in your life are all nay sayers who think you are destined to failure, that's going to have a draining effect on you. Time to clean house and get some positive influences around you.

My wife is not real big on the indie game development idea. Not because she thinks I lack the technical abilities, but because often times I lack the focus to stick with a project to completion. She's seen me start a bunch and finish nothing, and has become a little skeptical. Rather than replace my wife, I've changed my focus and started removing the doubts in her mind. So perhaps your friends and family are seeing something in you that makes them doubt; something that you could address to ease their doubts. Just a thought.

I was kidding about replacing your mum, it's really hard to find a quality replacement.

I must say that I don't really run into this attitude much... Everyone I've told has be very supportive of me. This is not to say that I wouldn't have completed a game without their support, but it was definitely a huge help in the moral category.

I do my best to associate with people who are nearly always moving forward, and most of them, while the may not really believe I can turn games into money, don't say anything negative. When I met my wife, she had always associated with people who needed help, people who were stagnant, despondant, depressing, negative. At the time, she didn't think about what all that negative emotion was doing to her, and she had begun to think that her life couldn't get a whole lot better. Since we've been together, I've pointed out to her (as nicely as I could) how her friends and acquaintances had affected the way she thought about herself, and what she thought was possible. Now that they are all gone, she's constantly amazed at what can be accomplished in a short time, just by looking for answers instead of problems, and not hearing people say it can't be done.

I disagree that you are what you associate with, but who you associate with definitely can affect your mood and your thought process.

I haven't told anyone who will not support me what I'm doing. Prevention is better than cure, so rather than trying to convince them I'll succeed I just don't bother telling them so I get no "bad vibes". Negative feedback doesn't de-motivate me, it just makes me mad. I can't program when I'm mad.

Sometimes I get the feeling "I'm no good, I'll never succeed", but then I just look at some of the stuff I've done before. I know deep down I can do it, and it just gives me that little more drive.

I tend to be so positive and happy about my business that negative people usually can't stand being around me for me than a few minutes at a time. But when I'm most aware, what I often do is reflect the negativity back to the person like a mirror and help shine a bit of light onto it. So if someone says, "I'm no good. How can you be?" then I might reply, "Where did you learn to believe that you're no good? I used to believe that about myself too at one time, but I found out the hard way that I was wrong. :)" Often if the person is open to it, I'm able to help him/her uncover and challenge a limiting belief, although this often takes an hour or two. Most of the time we trace things back to a childhood memory, where the person learned that taking risks would only end in pain. But as adults people can challenge these beliefs and let them go.

So when someone casts a lot of negativity at me, I never take it personally. I just see it as a call for help, which I usually try to answer when I'm aware enough to recognize it.

Here's one of my favorite little stories: A man goes up to the Buddha and starts insulting him and cursing at him. But the Buddha shows no reaction at all. Finally in frustration the man asks the Buddha how he's able to take all that abuse and not let it get to him. The Buddha smiled and replied, "If someone offers you a gift, and you refuse to accept it, to whom does the gift belong?" So be a Buddha. :)

Of course, one of the best ways to kick the negativity out of your life is to scuplt your environment such that it's overflowing with positive conditioning. A few years ago I went through a sort of purging whereby I intentionally dumped all the negative people out of my life (which was actually most of the people I knew at the time). Then I gradually filled that void with some really positive people. And that made a HUGE difference.

The kinds of friends I keep now are people that are constantly discussing their goals, ways to improve their health, how to make their marriage even better, ... all the positive stuff. There's no whining or complaining. For instance, 80-90% of the conversations I have with my wife are about our goals or about ways to improve our businesses, our finances, our health, our relationship, our family, etc. It's all focused on where we want to go. One friend is bringing together a group of people who are going to make an all-out attempt to become millionaires within the next year. Other people I know are discussing things like what to do next in terms of physical goals after completing a few dozen marathons. Just imagine how this must condition my own thoughts to associate with such people every day. It's pretty exciting, to say the least.

And then there's the internal conditioning.... Every single day I read my goals (which are always in writing), and every week I revise and adjust them as needed. And I'm constantly reading inspiring books and listening to great audio programs, at least 1-2 per week. So the small amount of negativity that gets cast at me just can't penetrate the shield I've created. The positive messages are always the stronger voice. This is what I wrote about in the Do It Now article on this site ... about when I was going through college in 3 semesters with every telling me I would fail. I spent time every single day conditioning myself to know with absolute certainty that I would succeed, so the voices of negativity just couldn't get through.

So if someone else is able to say a few words to you to get you to start doubting yourself or feeling like you need to defend yourself, that's a sign that your own certainty isn't strong enough yet. When you're totally certain, you feel no need to defend or debate, since you recognize the negativity as a failing in the other person, not in yourself. There will always be some degree of negativity cast at you, but your life is too precious and valuable to let it get to you. So shield yourself by consciously and intentionally building such a positive environment around yourself (with internal and external conditioning) that the negative voices become nothing more than background static in the face of your indomitable will and unshakable certainty. Otherwise, if you still harbor doubts about your chances while working towards your goals, you're likely to subsconsiously sabotage your effects. Fear and doubt have a way of surfacing that way.

I'm blessed with having supportive people around me who taught me exactly how to react to criticism. Also, over the years I learnt how to use the frustration of bad crits into ambition (from "I'm not good" to "I'm gonna show him I can get better") where a big part of it is actually know when they are right.

Sorround yourself with people who make you ambitious. Those who are not afraid to tell you when you are wrong, but dont forget to tell you how you can do better and how they can help you doing so.

Thanks all for the responses so far.

As I said in the original post, I just cant dump the friends/relatives who are otherwise fine people because of their view on this particular aspect. Let me rephrase the question clearly: How do you handle people who actually love you and would accept what you do but wont necessarily encourage you?

I am not completely comfortable with the fact that one must surround oneself with as many positive triggers as possible to drown out the negative thoughts. Does it work for all and more importantly is it sustainable in the long term? Isnt a healthy dose of negative thoughts necessary to have a balance? For example, one can see all the carnage on TV get negative, switch off TV or watch only favorite mood boosting programs. But isnt that becoming dumb? How about trying to understand whats going on?

Or is this the necessary price for commercial success?

One friend is bringing together a group of people who are going to make an all-out attempt to become millionaires within the next year


I want to go to those meetings!

Don't dump your friends and relatives, but do ignore them. It doesn't sound like a healthy dose of negative thoughts to me...

I mean, it sounds like everyone is saying that they're failures, you're a failure, and you will fail. I've never much encountered this myself. Most people I know seem to believe I can succeed. I believe I can succeed. And in the past, I have succeeded. My friends are successful too. Just about everyone I know believes they can make it at their chosen profession. Many are self-employed. And everyone seems to be doing really well. So who's better in touch with reality?

And although, according to the dubious claims of IQ tests, I am a genius (and many other people here are too, no doubt) - that really has nothing to do with it. Talent shmalent. Hard work is the key to success.

Originally posted by jaggu
As I said in the original post, I just cant dump the friends/relatives who are otherwise fine people because of their view on this particular aspect. Let me rephrase the question clearly: How do you handle people who actually love you and would accept what you do but wont necessarily encourage you?


I don't define these actions as loving....

To silently discourage someone from pursuing their dreams is not an act of love. It's an act of fear. When you tell people your dreams and they can't be encouraging towards you, if you drill down far enough into their beliefs, you always end up finding fear, never love. Often this fear takes the form of insecurity. People who are very secure about themselves and who love who they are will invariably be encouraging when you talk about your goals and dreams with them one on one.

To love someone means that you want the best for them. I can't imagine loving someone and not encouraging the heck out of them. I love my wife very much, and I encourage her constantly... not a day goes by that I don't. If I stopped doing this, I'd know I was failing to be in a state of love and succumbing to fear. The only reason I wouldn't encourage my wife to pursue her dreams would be if I was feeling inadequate or insecure about my own self-worth.

It's commonly accepted, however, that people who discourage you (or fail to encourage you) might be doing so because they love you and don't want you to get hurt. But that's total baloney. Real love doesn't look like that. A person who truly loves you and wants the best for you might ask you a lot of questions to help you clarify your goals and objectives, and they might point out some problems you need to tackle, but their energy would only serve to increase your enthusiasm, never quash it.


I am not completely comfortable with the fact that one must surround oneself with as many positive triggers as possible to drown out the negative thoughts. Does it work for all and more importantly is it sustainable in the long term? Isnt a healthy dose of negative thoughts necessary to have a balance? For example, one can see all the carnage on TV get negative, switch off TV or watch only favorite mood boosting programs. But isnt that becoming dumb? How about trying to understand whats going on?

Or is this the necessary price for commercial success?

A healthy dose of negativity is an oxymoron. Imagine the physical analog. What is a dose of negative food? It's called poison. Similarly, negative thoughts are toxic in any amount.

Positive conditioning doesn't blind you to reason and logic. It means focusing on goals and solutions instead of problems and obstacles. You don't ignore problems or become an idealist that can't see reality accurately. By conditioning yourself I'm not suggesting you watch comedies all day long and insulate yourself from reality. I'm suggesting you direct 100% of your energy towards the achievement of what you want, and don't consume any poison along the way (mental, emotional or physical), since that will only slow you down.

Achieving balance in life is about balancing the different areas of your life, always in a positive way. You balance your physical health, your career, your finances, your family, etc. Toxic thoughts are not part of that equation. One does not achieve physical balance by drinking alcohol and smoking and doing drugs while eating fruits and vegetables. Similarly, one does not achieve mental and emotional balance with a dose of negativity.

One thing I do periodically is contigency planning. I think about what could go wrong and prepare for how to handle it. But I don't become negative or cynical to do this. It's simply a matter of perceiving reality accurately. These obstacles are merely additional challenges.

The real power of conditioning is that it makes your subconscious beliefs congruent with your conscious goals. So when you move forward towards a goal, you play full out and don't secretly sabotage yourself (through laziness, lack of discipline, procrastination, etc). If you allow negative thoughts to fester in your mind, then when you work towards your goals, there's always a part of you that expects you to fail. And often you won't even set the really big goals because you feel they're beyond you. But what more could you accomplish if you felt absolutely certain you would succeed, not passively, but through the power of your determined actions?

Technical people often have a hard time grasping the unbelievable power our emotions have over us. We like to think of ourselves as logical and rational, and emotions are seen as something beneath the level of the mind. But like it or not, we are far more driven by our emotions than by logic. What drives your food choices, for instance?

If we feel just a little bit negative, or lazy, or unmotivated, it means we won't play full out in going for our goals. We'll hesitate instead, and opportunities will pass us by. Accepting this mediocrity doesn't make us balanced -- it just makes us less alive.

It's easy to prove the power of emotions just by asking yourself the right questions. If you could make yourself feel differently in some area, would it change your results? What kind of physical body would you have right now if you absolutely loved to exercise every single day and you loved eating only the healthiest foods imaginable? How much better would your business be if you loved every aspect of it, and it gave you so much joy and fulfillment that you just couldn't wait to get to work each day? Would your results be any different?

The sad truth is that most people are so accustomed to negativity that they believe it's just normal, when it's really a sickness that keeps you from being your best. The negativity is such a constant presence that it's not even recognized for what it is.

Is positive conditioning sustainable? Absolutely! But it must be a conscious commitment. I know people who spend an hour every morning doing mental conditioning. And the results are just amazing. When you feel absolutely unstoppable as you go through each day, you'll take the actions necessary to reach your goals that you otherwise wouldn't take if you were feeling even slightly disempowered.

Interestingly, I've managed to convert some of my nay-sayers over the months. I've found that speaking with genuine enthusiam, focusing out on pointing out success (no matter how small), and making it clear that things are happening can help bring the person over to the light so to speak. I used to say things such as "hopefully", "maybe", "should work", "I can always recover", and that was my own uncertainty showing through and transmitting itself to the people I spoke with. If I couldn't even show confidence in what I am doing, why should anyone else? Things have recently picked up very nicely for my business and I really feel that the company is going places, and it's doing so now. This has created a huge difference in the way I speak to people about my business and projects, and their reactions have changed accordingly. As a result, I've developed new contacts and found new opportunities that I otherwise would not have had offered to me.

There will of course always be people that are hopelessly negative and I agree with distancing yourself from those people. Not every naysayer is a lost cause though, and may even be a mirror of your own fears and doubts.

I use that doubt to fuel my fire! It's when people believe in me I get spooked, hehe then I have to live up to expectations! My gym teacher in grade 8 said everything I’ve ever done and will do will be mediocre and that’s haunted me for the rest of my life. If ever I feel myself slacking, I just remember him saying that and I’m back at it 100% gnashing my teeth:D

Seriously, How do they know what you’re really capable of? You’re not doing this for them, it’s all for you remember? You’re chasing your dream not theirs. It hurts coming from someone you love but remember who you’re doing it for in the first place, you!

I think the only thing I disagree with in this whole thread is the "their discouraging doesn't appear to be very loving" thing. For instance, my brother who I am very close to is sometimes not 100% encouraging when it comes to the games I'm working on, but I respect his opinion and don't let it get to me - what does he know? I'm the one who's coding these games, he's just observing them. People can still love you and not be encouraging when it comes to your goals simply because, from their perspective, your goals are too optimistic. Those same people may have goals that you think are too optimistic in another area. Just my $0.02.

It's commonly accepted, however, that people who discourage you (or fail to encourage you) might be doing so because they love you and don't want you to get hurt.

Maybe people that love you may discourage/fail to encourage because they accept you as they are and for lack of information or insight may assume that you would fail and not want you to?

But that's total baloney. Real love doesn't look like that. A person who truly loves you and wants the best for you might ask you a lot of questions to help you clarify your goals and objectives, and they might point out some problems you need to tackle, but their energy would only serve to increase your enthusiasm, never quash it.

Not all people can participate in your activities like that when they may not have the expertise in the area and/or culture of entrepreneurship - at best they may ask questions that you would have thought about well. It is purely by emotion that they respond. They want you to succeed but fear that you will fail.

programmer_ted said:
People can still love you and not be encouraging when it comes to your goals simply because, from their perspective, your goals are too optimistic. Those same people may have goals that you think are too optimistic in another area. Just my $0.02.

I am with you. Thanks for the $0.02 :)

The main theme I glean from various posts is to ignore the discouragment/lack of encouragement and focus on acheiving what one set out to do.

Yar! At least from my perspective :p

A healthy dose of negativity is an oxymoron. Imagine the physical analog. What is a dose of negative food? It's called poison. Similarly, negative thoughts are toxic in any amount

Actually recent research is starting to show that low levels of almost all toxic substances, from radiation to cyanide actually has positive health effects. If you look at a toxicity graph for almost all 'poisons' you'll see that they start with a dip in toxicity before starting their steady climb.

From what I've read they're not certain why, but the most likely reason, they reason, is that the body's repair systems are kicked into action by the low levels and actually do more good that the poison is doing harm, giving an overall benificial effect.

Unfortunately the typical dosage of negativity most people experience in their lives is way beyond the immunity-building range and far into the toxic range.

Some people can't understand the concept of making games as nothing other than "work". They can't see the process through your eyes ... they equate making games with their own "work", which they probably either don't like too much, or they're only doing it for a potential payoff.

When I told my uncle about the game stuff I was doing and how much effort I had put into it, his comment was "wow, don't spend ALL your time working ..."

To him, making a game *must* be something that is difficult and therefore unenjoyable. He didn't want to see me spending all my time doing unenjoyable work for something that might not pay off.

When friends or family give me vibes like that I just reassure them: "I really enjoy it, my buiness is my hobby ... a hobby that has paid me back for doing it. You can't do that with watching TV or model railroading!"

Then they understand: some people like Movies, some people do quilting, but Hanford makes video games.
~Hanford

There are indeed plenty of folks that are that suffer from limited thinking.

You'll be bound to have family members and friends that just won't get it. They won't want to get it, and you probably won't convert them by talking to them.

Folks will accept what you have to say when THEY are ready to hear it.

However, in the mean time, show how you can do what they say can't be done. Sometimes you can draw power from the mere fact someone tells you it can't be done.

99% of the world thinks "it" can't be done. So just by opening your mind, you move into the top 1%.

If you can trully accept that they "just Don't get it" then there really isn't much they can say to detour you. You know that they just don't don't have enough insight to see the big picture yet. Maybe you can show them through example.

I have freinds that I try to encurage to do small things that would change thier lifes so the power would be in thier hands not thier employers. But everytime I try to impose my desire for them to succeed and they aren't ready, it usually fizzles.

Anyhow, just go forth like God him/herself told you the secret of life. Others may think you are crazy, but you know the truth.

Maybe you won't be sharing the joys of indie game making with them, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a game of Disc Golf, a chat about Halo, or how Pugs looks like gargoyles without wings.

However, when you need to talk about improving your business, or other things, then make friends in that area that are doing better than you or at least are open minded and are searching too.

This reminds me of a friend I had in high school. He once presented to me a sheet of notebook paper with an elaborate flowchart on it, entitled the "Chair Theory." It showed how people become "Chairs" - semi-worthless cogs of society, such as another friend of ours(we joked about this and his many other carefully chosen habits in front of him. Fortunately, he isn't the kind of person to get upset about it.)

No matter which path you took through the chart, you either ended up as a certain class of chair(e.g. by going to college or not) or, IIRC, commiting suicide. That was more about his own angst and depression than anything else, though.

The thing that he was missing, of course, was the path where you deliberately rebel against Chairness and find a way to freedom that isn't suicide. I would have pointed this out to him, but in it's own way it's a perfect theory, as long as you're inside of it. The fact that the option did not exist actually made it speak out to me more. It's only people who do not follow the system and break the theory that can escape it.

yep, sometimes just the act of modeling out something is the limiting factor.

I'd say we all should think "outside the box" but even that it limiting.

The problem with most people is they NEED rules to live by, I suppose we all do.

All of us Eat and Sleep. They seem like pretty hardcoded rules to most of us.

Some folks however would argue that in either boundless reality that you don't really NEED to do those things, but at some point our mind seems to always containerize things. Maybe you only THINK you are eating and sleeping. Perhaps it's just the only way our minds can cope with the stimulus it's given.

TIME being one that I find interesting. Does time really exist or are we so trapped in our ability to perceive that it's just to unfathomable for us to break ourselves of the habit of experiencing time in a linear way. It's pretty easy to hop forward, slow or speed up. More difficult is to jump back or to the side, or is it?

Damn, I'm rambling again..... anyhow....back to the topic.

In Rich Dad/Poor Dad there are great examples of folks that are good hard working folks that are playing by the rules. This book addresses the very core of the original post.

Just the phrase " Good hard working folks" is a limited thought. If we dig ditches all day, are we ever going to be rich. I supposed it depends on perception. There is a lot of ways to define wealth and cash may not the best way to define it. That said, many folks feel that to be good people, you need to do what everyone else is doing and do it better. Put some elbow grease into it ( yuck) or put your nose to the grind stone.

I think the reason this the case is that societywize, we need people to do many tasks that aren't fun. Society needs to have the phone line fixed at 2am in the morning in the pouring winter rain. and that means that if society is to get it's way, it needs to train folks to be "good hard workers".

School's intent is to break you of your dreams and force you into the widget that society needs to function. That might be fine for some folks, but it's pretty hard to get anywhere cool being a widget.

I don't know about you, but in school where they make you take an aptitude test, where they tell you what kinda jobs you should be looking into, Game Developer was NOT on the list.

It saddens me to see folks trapped in the cogs of " the machine."

It's much like the Matrix. You can't really understand it until you unplug. Then the gruesome reality kicks in, you can't really turn back as you know the truth.

Folks that are plugged into the matrix might see your quest as a"dream" a "fairytale" and might see the whole thing as a waste of time and sometimes they believe you but just can't really see it for what it really is.

So to be swayed back into the matrix just seems absurd to me. They can convince me that I'm wrong. That doesn't mean I don't care for them and have many folks I care for still in the matrix. I understand many will never escape.

If they say " I'm no good how can you be?" , they are still in there. Take it for what it is, help them if you can.

A phrase I used to tape to my monitor for amusement was " Only dead fish go with the flow", Something to consider.

If we dig ditches all day, are we ever going to be rich.
Are you speaking metaphorically? What does digging ditches have to do with the topic at hand? Are there any people in this discussion who are truly trying to choose between a career as an indie developer and a career working for CalTrans?

The reality is that no indie games developer has ever succeeded to the level of someone like Bill Gates. And a fairly small percentage of indie games developers succeed at all. Not everyone has what it takes to do this, and not all of those who do are in a situation where they can afford to pursue it long enough to succeed.

To the original question, no I don't get a lot of negativity about my hobby from friends or family. However, I have not (and would not) put any of them in serious financial risk by pursuing it either. It is transparently clear that I can not make enough money as a full time indie developer to support my family without asking them to make some fairly drastic sacrifices. And that is not something that I would ever ask them to do.

I do get some good-natured ribbing about "are you still working on that game?" but I take that in stride. I can't recall anyone ever telling me that I don't have the talent to create a game as an indie developer, but some people have questioned how I can possibly find the time to do so. But I usually just have another pot of coffee and get back to work. :D

Yep Milo, metaphorically. In "we" in that sentence, I meant society not Indie Game Developers specificly. That Chair theory RTF was talking about kinda got me drifting off in a weird direction perhaps.

Thats what happens when I post when I'm one foot in sleepyland.

However I have worked on Caltrans when I was in school,not really much fun. School nor Caltrans :)

When I was talking about digging ditches, or any other "straight forward" hardworking position, I was speaking to the underlying mentality of folks that have a hard time understanding how someone can be successful doing things that are outside the their comfort zone. It's true for most of us at some level.

Success at times is a lot more about getting the big picture than skill. And if they can't see it, then that person might say" How can you succeed where I can not"

Not really a bad question to ask if a person really wants to seek the answer.

Originally posted by Dexterity
... about when I was going through college in 3 semesters

What univerity did you attend that allowed you to take that many hours per semester? How old were you when you achieved this feat?

Originally posted by TJM
What univerity did you attend that allowed you to take that many hours per semester? How old were you when you achieved this feat?

Cal State University Northridge (CSUN). I was the same age as most college students when I attended, and I graduated in 1993, one month before the 1994 Northidge earthquake decimated the campus. I had to get written approval from the dept chair to take the extra units each semester. The first semester I asked for 31 units, but she would only approve me for 25 units (and even then she told me I was crazy). So I took the 25 at CSUN plus 6 more units off campus; then I transferred those 6 units back to CSUN for GE credit. The next semester I showed the dept chair what I did and brought in my straight-A report card for all 31 units. She approved me for 39 units for the next semester without a fight, so it was easy after that.

During the normal registration period for classes, I could only sign up for about 18 units, so many of my classes had to be added during the first week of class with the approval of the professor. This was hard, since I wasn't able to get all the classes I wanted, but I was flexible in that I had many alternatives for the GE classes. I remember one semester I ended up having 13 hours of classes in a row on one day (9a-10p). Those days were pretty tiring.

If you care to read about what techniques I used to manage my time, I wrote about it in an article here:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/do-it-now.htm

I really think that if anyone else did the same things I did, they could do this too. Looking back, it really wasn't all that hard. Most people seem to think it would be extremely hard, but those people never tried it. Once I built up a certain level of momentum in going through each day, it wasn't hard to maintain it.

I would believe myself capable of doing the same thing, except that doing it would require more than just good scheduling - I'd need to be a Great Student. This is a concept I came up with in high school, because I knew lots of people who were Great Students in high school. This was a tough academic high school(the best public school in academic terms in San Francisco certainly, and probably in the whole Bay Area too), lots of homework and such. They were not necessarily hard workers or efficent at managing their time - they were late, procrastinated, forgot assignments, crammed, etc. The main difference was, they never hit any walls in their studies, and I did, quite frequently. As a result I could never be quite as efficient as they were, though by the time I finished there I had learned a lot about cutting corners from them and my own experience ;)

You mention in that article that you would memorize facts you needed to know "then and there" when you were most crammed for time. That is quite characteristic of Great Students I knew. They did not study; they remembered what the teacher had said. Usually they forgot it after the test, though, so they would just cram a little the night before.

For ages, this problem gnawed on me; how could they manage to do it when I couldn't? They weren't really smarter, though they were better at memorizing things. But that didn't quite account for everything, since some of the material did require understanding it as well as repeating the knowledge. So I came up with the "Great Student" concept, which neatly explained it; they were particularly talented at getting short-term results out of their academic efforts, which equalled to high scores and grades, and since I wasn't, I had to take a lot more time and learn things really well if I wanted to have any chance, but in the meantime all there was to do was suffer through it and make the best effort. Since the classes, had, probably over a long period of time, become geared towards Great Students, I was at a disadvantage there.

While it seemed unfair at the time, I think I might've actually gotten more out of school than they did in that respect.

And now I'm having a much easier time in college, as a result. I was letting things slip a little earlier in the quartner, but since then I've refocused and repositioned myself and I think that if I keep it up I'll be set for all four years. I'm not a student now; I'm a developer who also takes classes.

Putting it that way makes me work quite a bit more ^.^

Dexterity:

I've read your time management article and your post here, but I was still wondering two things: Did you have AP or Transfer credit going into Cal State, because a degree there takes 120-130 hours to complete and 3 semesters could only give you 110 at best? Also, when did you do projects or papers for classes if you took 40 hours of classes, worked, participated in a club, and slept? I'm just curious because I'm a junior at MSU.

RTF:

I'm not sure if I agree with your Great Student concept. I've had people say that I'm basically what you qualify as a Great Student, but it's never really worked quite the way you say it does. I do spend less time at courses in which I have a better background than those around me do, but I still find the idea that I spend less time on school than those with lower GPAs wrong. I usually spend more time than those people with lower GPAs, just a lot of times people don't see the extending time I spend on projects and papers and even studying. Also, I have found some people spend a lot of time "studying" when about half of that time is spent being distracted with other activities (one girl I knew even colored while she was "studying" and always complained that she never had enough time to do anything because she spent all her time studying). What I'm trying to say is that I find a direct correlation b/t grades and time spent studying. Essentially, I know few people who actually study a lot and have poor grades and virtually no one who doesn't study much and has good grades.

-- Brandon

Perhaps. I only came up with the idea to make myself feel better about having to spend more time on my work, after all. And in the end I really didn't spend all that much time on it either, just enough to get by with about a 3.5 GPA. I had the potential for better, but this seemed like a lot of work for little benefit on my part.

But then, now that I think about it, there were classes where the tables were turned and I could do way above the average with almost zero effort: Physics, Econ, and US History. The ones where I had particular trouble, on the other hand, were all my math classes, and the other two science classes(Biology and Chemistry). Maybe my perception of Great Studentness just depends on what subject we're talking about :rolleyes:

It does make a lot more sense that Dexterity could get through in three semesters in a CSU, though, cause when I think of that courseload I'm thinking of in terms of what my tough high school gave me, and what I get at UCSC now. I have been to classes at SF State(which is a CSU), and they looked hella easy in comparison. I have also been to classes at UC Berkeley, and they were tough, sometimes very tough.

I took several AP classes in high school (English, math, history, etc).

I usually had 304 projects/papers/exams every week. Most students waste a lot of time thinking of their projects instead of actually doing them. For instance, if you have to pick a topic, just take 5 minutes after class to make your choice and commit to it. Doesn't matter if it's a lousy choice; you'll still get it done faster that way. I was often done with an assignment before classmates had even picked a topic. If I had to argue a point as either pro or con in a paper or speech, I'd flip a coin to decide. Didn't matter if I personally agreed with the choice.

Usually I'd do projects and papers on weekends, or I'd do research at the library between classes. Occasionally I would triage projects as well. For instance, for a human-computer interaction class I took, there was a very tedious project that amounted to only 10% of our total grade. I had done well enough in the class that I was going to get an A whether I did that project or not, so I told the professor that I decided not to do it. I had already learned what I wanted to learn from the class, and I saw the project as largely pointless in terms of learning anything new. I still got an A in the class, and I saved myself about 15 hours by not doing the project. In fact, I even convinced a fellow student not to do it also, since he was going to get the same grade no matter what, and he also saw the project as pointless.

Another technique I used a lot was timeboxing. Perhaps I would calculate that I had 10 hours available to complete a certain paper. Then I'd break it done into the amount of time I had to do the outline, write each page, etc. I'd simply do the best job I had with the time I had available. If I had unlimited time I might have invested 20 hours and gotten an A. But in 10 hours I might get an A-, and I'd save 10 hours that could be better used elsewhere.

A lot of times I used multi-tasking, so there was no loss of time at all. I ran about 3 miles every morning back then, so I would do mini-outlines for papers in my head while running -- nothing complicated... just 5-10 good ideas that I would memorize during the run and then write down when I got back. That saved me a lot of time, since I did my brainstorming work while exercising. If I was doing something physical, I'd find a way to couple it with something mental.

There are lots of little ways to save time that most people don't even think about. I would do all my grocery shopping at 7am on a weekday morning. The store was always empty, and I could get in and out in 1/2 the time it would otherwise take me. When I went Xmas shopping, I'd take just one trip to the mall and get everyone's gifts at one time, having decided in advance what I would get everyone. If I was eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I'd usually be reading at the same time. Very few people develop these little habits, but they really add up to save tons of time.

I usually had 304 projects/papers/exams every week.
Uhh, please tell me that's a typo Steve and you meant to write 3-4 :)

Hahahaha. Yes, that was typo! I meant 3-4.

3-4 per week? That's all? I have 3-4 papers/exams/projects every week, and I'm only taking two classes! 3.5 of those are for a single class too (stupid professor...prefers to assign tons of homework for his TA's to grade rather than actually teach).

I wasn't counting regular homework assignments -- there were a lot more of those, sometimes every day for certain classes. I was only referring to major term papers, big projects, or midterm/final exams.