Enjoying the Process

I recently started playing Satisfactory. A game all about automation, efficiency, and reiterative improvement. You land on an alien planet and must begin gathering resources to build machines to automate the production of basic resources and parts. Then you begin to automate the production of parts out of those basic resources. Now you can begin to combine parts via automation into better parts. While doing this you realize you need to expand your operation or make it more efficient because it is really slow. That is the core gameplay loop and the core of shared knowledge I need you as the reader to have to understand the reason behind my writing this. 

This game really drew me in with the concept and gameplay (disclaimer: I am not being paid to advertise it ?). The more I played the more parallels I found to my experience as a developer. The first version that I built in game was messy, sprawling, and inefficient. It worked and it allowed me to start playing with new machines and mechanics. So, I would move on to the next thing because it was new and shiny. After several hours I hit a wall of having to wait a long time for parts to build up, to expand, or to redesign my old builds. I did both of the former options until I could move forward again because I was afraid that the redesign would be painful and the least amount of fun. Several hours of gameplay later and I once again hit that wall. I reluctantly decided to redesign some of my old builds. Dragging my feet, I went back and began to look at them to ascertain how they could be improved. 

While half-heartedly investigating, I realized that I had learned about several mechanics of the game since then. The gears started to turn in my head as I discovered that I had multiple options to reach the solution I wanted. I spent the next hour or so just planning the redesign. Then I created a small-scale design to test. Finally, I tore down the old build and constructed my new one. It started running just as well as I could have hoped! I watched my new creation for a while just enjoying the satisfaction of my improvement. That experience changed my entire view of the game. I was no longer avoiding the rebuilding but instead started focusing solely on that process. My overall progress in the game slowed dramatically but my satisfaction grew immensely. 

My favorite parts of the process are planning and redesigning. Once I realized that in the game, I saw how much the same was true for my development process. That realization helped me begin to enjoy the process rather than view it as a chore or an annoyance. I encourage you to analyze your process to find the things you like and are good at. Use that as the metric for progress and success and you just might find yourself at the end of the day being more satisfied.