Giant Bugs and Staying on Top of Things

Into the Breach, Subset Games, 2018

 
This is a mix of obvious video game tactics and their obvious implications for getting things done. I'm writing it mostly to get it out of my head, although I think the thought is helping me get more things done in a way that makes me happier.

If you've been reading here for a while, you're probably aware that while I love tactics / strategy games I'm not good at them. I have some thoughts about why, which I'll get to later, but for now, I've been playing a lot of Into the Breach. I've played enough that I've almost completed all of the achievements on steam, which is frankly not a thing I do.

I've been able to work on the achievements for two reasons, the first is that Into the Breach is bite sized so when I need a moment or two to think about something else I can pick it up and usually do a mission in a couple of minutes. Sometimes I play more seriously, but other times it's just the game for a coffee break. In the end I get quite a bit of practice in and I think over the years I've learned a bit. I've certainly gone from barely being able to finish the first island, to routinely finishing the game ... at least on Easy.

The other reason I've been able to achieve as many achievements as I have is that you can finish them on Easy difficult — in fact the only achievement which requires you to play on Hard is the one for finishing the game on Hard. So I've explored a lot of their very fun mechanics, which incidentally have taught me a lot about how the game is designed and what some good ways to play it are.

The big thing that's I've found that's made me better at Into the Breach is getting on top of things early. You have three robots and so if you have more than three enemy Vek on the map, you are going to be in trouble. If you can keep the number of Vek coming in to the stage controlled, then it's much, much easier to meet the mission objectives, keep everyone alive and work on the achievements.

I recognize this is a staggeringly obvious thing to say out loud.

Still, it's been sitting in my brain because having the "be on top of things" mandate has made me better at Into the Breach and honestly it's one of the only real productivity ideas that works for me in real life too. Every time I leave a plastic bag on the counter to get washed later, I know I'm risking letting the kitchen get on top of me. When I'm at work I'm happiest when I have my organization caught up and I can get through the tasks I have for the day.

I'm also reminded of the idea of rinsing the cottage cheese, which I read about in Jim Collins's Good to Great. The idea being that there's this high level athlete who rinses his cottage cheese every morning so that he gets the right amount of calories. Being a high level athlete it seems like it should matter if his diet varied by a few calories in the cottage cheese whey, but following the discipline every day was important to his success. 

A lot going on, but not so much that I'm not on top of things.

I'm not a high level anything, but it does keep coming back to me how much it helps me when I do do the little things, even when I don't really like doing them.

As I said, I recognize this is a staggeringly obvious thing to say out loud, but sometimes saying it out loud is good for you.