How to Do New Things

6/11/2024 - Kyle McVeigh

I've been working in my free time on making a video game using Godot. Godot is a open source video game engine that has been getting grease press recently, and for seemingly good reason. I've never made a video game before and have always been a bit intimidated to try. I'm thrilled to report it's going great, progress has been faster than I originally anticipated and I'm having fun doing it. Unrelated, I was working with my employer on designing interviews, and we were discussing examples of open-ended questions where the candidate can open up and tell us a little bit about how they work and think. On the short list, we landed on 'Tell me about something new you learned recently' or 'How would you tackle learning something new'. These two separate experiences made me reflective on how I learn, why I've had success now learning Godot, and how I can use this as a model moving forward. My goal here is to try to codify my thoughts on how I best do new things.

Get help

The thing that really helped me in the Godot project was teaming up with a friend. There are many ways teaming up with people can help me with a new process, and I want to highlight those:

Partnership - This is the path I was able to take with the Godot project. My friend and I decided to embark on the journey of making a video game together. I was to own most of the coding domain and help him up-level those technical skills, and he was to own most of the art domain and would help me progressively do more art for the game. This has been a huge addition in the process. Having a partner has helped me stay motivated and helps push through those frustrating moments when learning something new. It also makes the entire process much more fun, which is contributing to my success.

Accountability - I've been telling people I've been working on a video game in my free time and I've heard nothing but encouragement. My friends want to see me do cool things that make me happy, so they've been following up with me about the game and that has only encouraged me to do more work on it more. It is scary to put yourself out there, but I need to trust myself and do this more often.

Mentorship - Having a person that can act as a mentor is invaluable when trying to learn something new. Finding a mentor is easier said than done, but there does exist knowledgeable people willing to pass on their knowledge in surely every subject. I haven't yet found a mentor for our video game project, but I'm not giving up hope!

Do the learnings

Learning is a requirement for doing anything new. There are a ton of ways to learn new things, and I don't want to focus on that here. Staying with the Godot example, I mostly read documentation, online forums like reddit, and looked at sample projects. My friend on the other hand relied mostly on YouTube videos and trial-and-error. The goal here is to learn what I need in order to act using whatever methods are best for me.

Act

In order to do new things, I have to actually do new things. Learning and preparation cannot and should not be a replacement for taking action. Here is a guide to make that a bit less intimidating and making it stick:

Get an early win - When trying something new, it is easy for me to quickly become discouraged at the first sign of difficulty. To combat this, I try to get a quick early win to build confidence. For this project, my friend and I followed the Godot 2D tutorial and it felt good to build a complete game that our partners were able to play after a few hours of work.

Break it down to super small progressive steps - Learning new things can be hard and intimidating, so we should try to break it down to small manageable pieces. The most important thing is to have forward progress, it is okay if those steps are small as long as they are forward and I'm learning on each step along the way.

Work on it regularly in its own dedicated time - Good habits and discipline can make up much lack of talent. For the Godot project, I've ear-marked one evening of the week where my friend and I pair on the project for a dedicated 3 hours. This isn't much, but this has allowed me to build a routine that works for me and supports my new effort in a way that fits into my life. I very much look forward to that time each week.

Throw away all expectations in the beginning - I've been guilty of getting my hopes too high on many occasions. Great learners need to be okay with making mistakes and feeling confused in order to grow. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable, removing expectations of yourself, and letting yourself fail are required traits of great learners. I think what helped in this scenario is I had a friend who I could laugh with when we made mistakes and help each other maintain our perspective.