The one small thing stopping you from achieving all of your dreams
You could say that video games are in my blood.
Since before I was born, my dad has been a self-styled amusement machine mechanic. My childhood home did double duty as a workshop, with arcade cabinets and pinball machines lining the walls of the garage waiting for my dad to work his magic. I would spend countless hours mashing buttons in Metal Slug 3 and trying hit a replay in The Adams Family. This was followed by PC games, my dad occasionally coming home with a white CD-R that had the game's title written in permanent marker. It took me years to figure out that games usually came in cases with covers. A SNES from my mom's customer whose son had left the house, a hand-me-down PSOne from my cousin once he'd upgraded, a Game Boy Colour that took a trip across 4 lanes of rush hour traffic when our trailer detached from our car, still wrapped in it's Christmas paper - video games stayed a constant throughout my childhood. Later in life my love for computers and technology led me to Electrical Engineering and eventually to my current career in software.
So I found myself in my 30s and I noticed that while my Steam library kept growing, my completed list had slowed to a crawl. What had happened to the pass-time that had so indelibly shaped my life? Was it the stresses of a full time job? Had I simply grown out of the hobby? No, it couldn't be those. But I did have a theory as to the true cause.
Friction.
About 5 years ago I switched from Windows to MacOS for work reasons. First with an underpowered MacBook Air to build iOS apps, then to a hackintosh dual-booting on my desktop PC and finally to the M1 MacBook Pro that I'm writing this very post on. This meant that my Windows PC stayed off most of the time and to play games I had to boot it, switch over my mouse and keyboard (thank you multi-point bluetooth), wait for Steam to update, wait for the Steam games to update, then get the nag from Windows that it also wanted to get in on the update action. Friction.
So how do we reduce the friction? Those amongst us who are more couch inclined are already screaming an answer at their screens: consoles you dummy! And I agree, the series I have sunk the most time into in the past 5 years by far has been the two Zelda's on the Switch with Animal Crossing a close second. But I'm a PC gamer at heart, and finding another Korok seed doesn't clear my Steam backlog. Enter the Steam Deck, Valve's Switch-esque handheld PC that brings my entire Steam library into the palms of my hands. Literally. On a recent trip abroad I picked up a second Steam Deck OLED (South Africa is on the "Not supported in your country" list) and it has been a game changer. It turns out I hadn't fallen out of love with gaming, I just needed to reduce the friction.
Like Neo in The Matrix, once I had found the friction in my gaming habits I started seeing it everywhere. I am a very amateur musician and every now and then I like to record a cover of a song I like. But in an effort to stay uncluttered my guitar and pedal are in the store room, so every time I want to record I have to go fetch them. Friction. So how can reduce the friction? Well thanks to What has 8 legs and a love of molten plastic? I reduced the friction of 3D printing which allowed me to print this, a sturdy wall mount for my guitar. Now my guitar is right behind me and thanks to a DI box that I borrowed from a friend, I am never more than 2 minutes away from recording a track.
Human beings will generally default to doing the lowest effort thing, and these days that is often scrolling on our phones or watching whatever Netflix decides to serve us. The only way to break that cycle is to make the things you want to do easier, so look for the friction and once you find it, apply some grease!
Bonus for anyone who got this far, here is the literal first pass I made at a track once I got my setup working again. Please keep your expectations low.