Circus
The circus I'm referring to here isn't the one with clowns and small cars and elephants dancing on large balls. This circus does visit you from time to time, but doesn't directly ask you for your money. Instead, it courts your allegiance, your vote in an event once every four years we call an election.
Why do I call it a circus? Our most powerful, ultimate executive political office, reduced to a traveling freak show? I dunno, worded like that, the more cynical of readers will likely agree lol.
The pundits are all actors, performing their roles for the audience of millions. Flashy, colorful headlines hook our attention. Explosive, perhaps facetious dialogue reels us in. Commercial break cuts in too early to conclude satisfactorily. Time to let everyone know what you thought of the show on social media.
An ounce of this time, energy, and money - applied more productively - would yield results rivaling humanity's greatest leaps in advancement.
It's harder to do in this day and age. Everyone's connected. Social media presence is a must for marketing one's project/products. If you're not online, you're way behind. It's arguably harder as game devs, since we necessarily have to be on a computer to: study, practice, implement, find bugs, fix bugs, coordinate, take feedback, market, etc. But stray a few seconds away from a loading bar, say as your model renders, and boom - you're locked in with some 0-follower troll pulling your leg about how this or that is wrong and that's what makes you so absolutely stupid, you dunderhead, you fool. Time wasted, opportunity gone.
What's to be done?
Firstly, one must recognize that the internet is not the problem. The internet is a tool with many, many creative outlets, along with many, many more destructive ones. You can let popular results auto-fill your favorite search engine, but at the end of the day, it's YOU who clicks Go or hits Enter. Escaping your work by opening a new tab to obsessively check up on that word war you've been waging with the 18 year old about foreign policy is on YOU.
So it's up to us. Bummer. That being said, it only requires US.
A motivational video or musical score will get your blood pumping for at least 32 seconds. Afterwards, your attention is a ticking time bomb waiting for an opportunity to divert at a right angle. You have to implement the discipline - consciously - to overcome the urge.
If that loading bar doesn't go fast enough for your liking, resist the temptation to triple check social media. Instead, stand up and stretch out for a few seconds. Have a piece of applicable reading material as backup. Check in on another team member.
I'm really, really guilty of falling for this circus every four (I guess two) years it arrives. But our plans - our team's plans - don't rely on which bumbling idiot inhabits the White House. OUR house is busy crushing at life. Ain't no one can take that away.