Zelda Book Challenge
Productivity-Hacking my dark desire to just completely lose myself in "Tears of the Kingdom"
Today there’s a long-awaited new installment of the Zelda franchise called “Tears of the Kingdom” coming out for the Nintendo Switch. People are pretty hyped about it, even more casual gamers like myself, and the Internet is full of memes right now about people contracting mysterious illnesses today and not showing up for work.
My brothers and I played a lot of Nintendo games growing up and I have since also developed this really terrible habit when I engage with these huge open-world games:
I essentially have a 1-2 week total sprint-binge play through where I drop literally everything except for work and occasional meals with my gf in order to finish everything I can in the game.
It’s this sort of thing where I just have to get it out of my system completely before I can move on to anything else at all. It’s legit pretty destructive.
I know, I know, cue the tiny violin for the adult that is afraid of being addicted to video games, how tragic.
That said, I kind of have the self-awareness that if this habit were left unchecked my life might totally fall off-the-rails; the Internet is filled with tropes of gamer addicts that never get anything done and honestly my behavior patterns are sort of there. Moderation here also doesn’t seem to work.
Thus, I typically solve it with discipline at the root-access level: I simply try not to buy too many games. If I know I can’t resist putting my hand on the stove, I simply unplug the stove most of the time. Again, I haven’t figured out how to moderate the behavior, so this is the best strategy I have for now.
In the most recent iteration of my Zelda open-world immersion, I fully played through “Breath of the Wild” in an all-out binge for 2 weeks while recovering from the Paris Marathon and then was quite proud of myself when I had the good sense not only to stop playing, but to just fully pack away and hide my Nintendo Switch.
But… in this instance there’s no way I’m simply going to NOT PLAY “Tears of the Kingdom” - it’s still a beautiful piece of art and storytelling and reconnects me to childhood and I do value the immersion in the developer’s vision in this way.
So my big unlock, in a move that I hope would make productivity hackers like James Clear proud, is that I am going to leverage this overwhelming desire to play the new Zelda to try to generate some really productive outcomes first.
I call it: The Zelda Book Challenge
Essentially, I am going to force myself to read at least 10 books before I can play “Tears of the Kingdom.”
Separately, I have a very frequent habit of buying way more books than I can ever find time to finish. Though this isn’t the worst habit to have and I do read at an okay pace, the rate of book acquisition definitely far outpaces the rate of book completion - and it sort of makes me feel like a bit of a poser.
Thus, the desire here is to sort of gate the big anti-productive prize (a multi-week gaming binge) behind a pretty meaningful productive output (10 books is a good amount).
James Clear, the author of the hit book Atomic Habits (which I have already read previously 😅), might call this behavior “Habit Stacking” - and I’m hoping this little challenge can re-wire my relationship with the over-indulgent gaming behavior.
My goal here is to twist this thing I see as a vulnerability of sorts and turn it into a motivating energy that I can use to tackle other productive pursuits.
If this all works, then hopefully the habit stacking is a move I can use in other future instances when I want to actually increase productivity in sprints like this.
Certainly also having a dedicated blog post declaring my intentions to complete this “book challenge” will also be an extra motivating layer to keep me honest with this challenge 😜
I’ll let you guys know how it goes, see you all in Hyrule!
Carve-Outs
Stealing the concept of a carve-out from the guys at the Acquired podcast, which has quickly become not just one of my favorite business podcasts, but one of my favorite podcasts in general.
The carve-out here is to check out their 2-part episode on the history of Nintendo, an incredible story for gamers and non-gamers alike:
Part 1 - Nintendo's Origins
Part 2 - Nintendo: The Console Wars
Definitely an incredible business history that tells the tale not just of the video game industry, but also the economic rise of Japan and its relationship with the US in the late 20th century. Highly recommend!
-Colin Goltra, May 2023