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A few weeks ago I patted myself on the back for overcoming my fear of making things. I didn’t know it then, but I’ve been lying to myself :) The truth is this: I have overcome my fear of making things with other people. But I’m terrified of making things on my own. Not only that, but I need to make things on my own to feel happy and fulfilled.

I have no excuses. But I am discovering, bit by bit, the nature of this fear. I’ll share with you a couple lessons I’ve learned so far.

It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this:

1. Ideas are not only worthless — they are harmful. The more time I spend fleshing out an idea in my head or on paper, the less likely it is that the idea will ever get implemented. Push for daily iteration, and take as little time to think through an idea as possible. Explore ideas by prototyping and playtesting (code that shit up!), not by running thought experiments or writing documents.
2. Dreading the code is far more draining and time consuming than coding itself. I’m no software engineer. For me, programming is more frustrating than it is rewarding. I give myself every reason I can think of to avoid it. But if I spent as much time coding as I do thinking about not coding, I would be sitting on a mountain of finished games. It takes less time to code up an idea than you think (unless you’ve been thinking for far too long and your idea has grown far too big). Stop worrying about the future, live in the present, and focus on building tangible things.

Muster up the strength and push through! Whoopah!