More Mobile: Gaming (Premium)

When I started my writing career in the mid-1990s, my mentor Gary shared with me some tips for being more productive. Among them, I was interested to discover, was a reward system: when he finished some writing milestone---a chapter in a book, perhaps, or a lesson plan for school---he would switch over to a favorite videogame to detune from work. He specifically mentioned playing Wolfenstein 3D in the year or two before I had arrived and explained how he had obsessed over finding all of the secrets in the game, playing levels over and over again.

This was fascinating to me at the time. As a member of the first generation to grow up with videogames---my first computer was the Entertainment Computer System (ECS) for the Mattel Intellivision, so I win most “first computer” contests---I was still quite active playing games, had just switched over to the PC from the Amiga, and was then eating up early DOS titles like Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

Today, I understand this process much better: It’s important to break away from work from time to time to clear one’s mind. In fact, this is key to being efficient at work, assuming you’re doing something with your brain, like writing. Just walking away will almost always suddenly trigger a thought or idea, or a word choice or phrase, that might have otherwise escaped you.

Getting over the guilt of not always working is part of it, for sure. But I’ve been doing this for decades, and the benefits are obvious: my writing production is enormous and efficient, and I’ve honed the process over time. And in recent years, I’ve always had two screens on or near my desk. But both aren’t connected to the computer: one is for work and one is for play. And the play screen has been connected to an Xbox since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. That was the year I finally transitioned from PC gaming to console gaming.

But as I look ahead to the more mobile lifestyle I hope to achieve, I can see that this can’t last: I’m not going to cart an Xbox console and its enormous display around. And so something has to give. We’re not moving---and potentially moving into a persistent state of mobility---immediately, as we’ve pegged the first half of 2022 as the earliest possible time for this change. But I can take some steps in the interim. And maybe arrive at a midway point where I’m still in the same physical place, but with less stuff. And then move on to shedding almost all of it when we finally do move on.

Interestingly, I already took my first step towards a more mobile future in gaming this past year, and it’s possible that some of you witnessed it as it happened. Discussing headphones with Brad on First Ring Daily sometime in the past year---sorry, I can’t recall exactly when---I was explaining how I don’t like having big, can-style headphones covering my ears, and that I instead use the speakers built into my display or, depending on the time, external speakers. Brad told me tha...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC