I’m fascinated with the idea of video game speed running.
When the machines rise up against humanity, it will be the world’s speed running community who find and exploit the robots’ weaknesses.
Until then, we can watch their videos on YouTube. Here’s Super Mario Bros, and here’s Altered Beast.
I was captivated* by this world record run through the OG Gameboy game Pokemon Red in 1 hour and 51 minutes. As a kid, I couldn’t have imagined the amount of slack a focused person could squeeze out of the game.
Skip this paragraph if you don’t care about a Pokemon-specific summary: Among a zillion efficiencies, this guy picks the moves with shorter animations; named his character “A” reduce text boxes’ speed; calculates the difference between “lots of damage” and “too much damage;” and knows how “almost too much damage” actually shaves fractions of seconds out of each battle. Even at the end, he was lingering over something that happened way early in the game which cost 8 seconds.
Most things in our lives can’t and shouldn’t be a speed run. Obviously, we lose opportunities to learn, engage, enjoy and experience life when we focus only on time.
However, our days do have trapped capacity and hidden pockets of time. Where can you harmlessly put seconds and minutes back into your schedule?
How long does it take you to write and ship full-fledged PAG? Can you do it in 45 minutes, in a crisis? Could you do it in less?
Photographers, what does it take to get your photos online after an event? I worked with one photo team that spend a day (or more) choosing photos, cropping, and writing cutlines. Squeeze out the slack and you might be able to get them online in 15 minutes.
Journalists and reporters live on deadlines, are you mobile enough to keep up? Are your phone and e-mail connections reliable? Can you send informed responses with authority without having to route statements through multiple people?
These are just small, common sense examples of trapped capacity. I’m not looking to set world records, but I do want to be more deliberate with my time.
Speed runs illustrate how much more deliberate we could really be, and how much time we could re-invest in the work and relationships we value.
*Big irony in writing a blog post about time management while using the example of watching a 2-hour YouTube video. For what it’s worth, I watched this over the course of several days, on double speed, while doing chores.
(Photo by Sgt. Joseph R. Agacinski, DVIDS … really.)
