PLANNING

After so many things not going to plan during my group project at university I realised how important planning is to anything as well as the importance to sticking to it. It took me back to schools days, back to when I was learning business studies by my legendary business teacher Ms Ballantyne. She taught us the S.M.A.R.T ways to do things in business but essentially it can be applied to anything.

Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Target is the foundations to succeeding in what you want to do well or achieve it.

SMART: has many meanings but in the personally helpful sense here we’re on about the plan being intellectually right and that it makes sense and also to have a point or more reason of actually doing what your planning to do. There’s no point in a company planning to make something that is going to cost more to make then its going to make when sold, unless its for an unprofitable gain.

MEASURABLE: how long is it ideally going to take, can you figure it out and give your self a time scale and stick to it? Do you have any leeway or extra time if something goes wrong or for improvement? If a gaming company went to far over the deadline it could be a case of they don’t have the money to stretch their time scale and risk going bankrupt because they don’t have the income they forecasted from the game that was meant to be released 3 months ago.

ACHIEVABLE: can you actually get it done? Do you have the time and the man power to get the job your setting done? You shouldn’t over estimate something or you can end up having a passive negative effect on all your other plans. First thing we did in the group project was to try and set an achievable sized area for us to do.

REALISTIC: is it something that can even be done, we humans have a great imagination, its been one of our greatest assets to help us develop over the centuries but we still need to be able to tell what’s a good idea from what’s complete madness at the time and era. Otherwise a way of looking at it is do you have the necessary skills and equipment to do your task… a farmer is hardly going to build a NASA space rocket for instance.

TARGET: what is your overall outcome of the plan you are inputting, what must be met in order to finish. Effectively your list of things to do.

From the start of summer I’m planning my own SMART plan to help me achieve more in my yearning to learn and do more for my course as the past to years have seen me do a rather minimal amount due to the lack of a smart plan, so implementing one over summer and setting it right for year 3 will mean I’ll get what I should be doing done if not more. Effectively they’ll be a branch of SMART plans, the major one for the year and the various smaller ones that I’ll make for each individual project.

MULTIPLAYER MODE

In today’s world is a must have for games these days if they want to sell big. We’ve played multiplayer games for millennia’s as human beings, as children and as adults. From hide and seek to stick fighting, British bulldog , football, monopoly the list goes on point is multiplayer games have come in all shapes, sizes, forms and medias, computer games though are the latest thing .

Instinctively man has always strived to do better, strived to survive, strived to conquer… strived to surpass. History shows us that this instinct has lead to many regrettable events as well as a lot of blood shed. So over the years we’ve effectively created less destructive and less dangerous ways to deal with this instinct to eventually more fun then dangerous.

Now as I see it when you’re a kid you play pretend with your friends and you act/rein act a story as it were but strive to win, you however can only pretend and imagine so much though and before computer games came along if you wanted the real experience you’d have to do the real thing, we play war games there were, even still are those who literally went and fought them.

The birth of computer games meant we could finally fulfil this instinct without any risk what so ever part from the occasional thumb strain or crazed friend throwing the controller at you when you beat them., and thanks to different genres and types of games there’s something for everyone real life, rein acting, fantasy and so on. Problem was at the beginning beating a computer by yourself was great for a while but you get used to it, you catch on to it, you know its tactics and after so long its boring you strive for a new challenge and something that cries when you beat it.

And on the 8th day god created multiplayer games and saw it was good. This feature on games has grown exponentially fast and essentially remodelled the gaming world as well as the platforms their played on, from just playing on the same console to connection to friends worldwide, it really is the new age for gaming and with more new ways to interact and compete with your friends always becoming available there’s new ways of satisfying that thirst you’ve got to kick ass.

Left for Dead has got to be one of the newest and latest big hits in the multiplayer gaming world, I’m forever on it as survivor or infected with new people to play against each time you never know what to expect as everyone as what they see as the ideal tactics. Its also good to see that games are in some what way communicating with its players as well as L4D have recently released their own in game blog with new features ready to download. With other big franchises such as COD taking huge advantage of this era you have to wonder what’s next for us and them.

SECOND YEAR

SECOND YEAR, TERMINATION OR CONTIUATION?
Ok so end of another year at university and yet again I‘ve found myself in almost the same situation as the end of year one and rushing to get things done. Though I’ve managed to keep on top of more things then previously I believe I’ve realised that I am just not pushing myself or more encouraging myself enough to learn more or do more, inside I want to, like the end of year one my real passion, my real love for the subject really surfaces because I really focus and motivate myself to do it and enjoy it, after all my agreement with myself is to do something I enjoy. So question is I guess what’s happened in the second year to cause a repeat performance of year; after all I am not going to get to do what if I just keep scraping by.

Now don’t get me wrong I’ve learned a lot this year towards making my future but not really as I expected. To my thinking the second year was designed to be a 50/50 learning curve i.e. 50% is your discovering things by yourself, teaching it to yourself and then putting it into practice within your work and then the other 50% be taught by the course and its lectures and to be honest it doesn’t really feel like its met anywhere near that target. Don’t get me wrong Mike’s words of wisdom and intellect are brilliant and really helpful and Chris’s way of thinking when it comes to art is brilliant and brings new grounds of way of doing things compared to what I was traditionally taught in school, however only getting a one hour tutorial from Heather when were scheduled 10 to 5 once a week, when life models don’t show for life drawing and when your only hour a week with the course leader is cancelled due to numerous interviewees you being to wonder why bother, its kind of like ‘well if that’s all they do and get paid for it then I don’t need to much either’ if you understand me. Back in college my lectures would devote themselves to all of us and work really hard to teach us and because of that I felt it only fair that I work just as hard if not harder, I wanted to be them, doing a job and being passionate about it. See to me if your going to plan something on a time slot that’s already taken reschedule one of the two for another time not completely cancel it numerous time. If your original plan session can’t proceed then compromise more, teach us something else we’d find useful or take us out to somewhere interesting and base a lesson round that. And finally I’m not saying do a 7hour tutorial but break up the day with time where you go round the students to see how they’re doing, its always nice to get someone who’s experienced in what your doing to critique what your doing and set you in a good direction and then use the other time for teaching. I know it sounds quiet abrupt but I feel it just disappointed me when I felt like we were missing out on things vital to our future, which in turn seemed to make me lose my passion for what I enjoy doing, at what point I stopped going to life drawing because of the consecutive times we’d not had a life model and not done anything else as a lesson plan instead so I felt like I was wasting my time going.
Year 2 has been a big eye opener though, I’ve finally come to realise all the sacrifices I must make as well as the amount of planning I need to make from the very beginning and stick to succeed and come year 3 things need to change. Even though I’ve just ranted about what I feel was a lack of lectural input I’m looking forward to the independence that is expected of us in year 3, even though I haven’t thus far shown much independence I’ve come to realise that after working in teams this year as well as the previous issues that you can’t always fully rely on others but instead must do extra work yourself and strive to reach your goal. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy working in teams, yes the team I was working in had some major floors but it was my biggest learning curve of the year and I found it interesting what can be produced when people come together with ideas and designs. I also discovered with the project that planning is a major part of time management, ideal and realistic planning that is, taking three weeks to compile an asset between two people whilst the majority of the rest of the team do practically nothing is neither ideal nor realistic. This then has a knock on effect of which was shown with our group where the major time consuming parts of the project had to be condensed and rushed meaning the ‘finished’ pieced was poor and did not meet the brief. Though a downer in respects I don’t let this partial failure deter me from working in teams in the future to come as I still found it an enjoyable experience even if there was stressful times.

The only other thing that has had a negative effect on my university work production is Sainsbury’s. My mum always used to say wait till you’ve got a full-time job karl and see how easy life is then…. Pufffft she should try doing a full-time university course whilst having a job and also trying to fit a social life somewhere in there to, its not easy. This year I tried to arrange a transfer to work in a store a Leicester so that I might still do university work at the weekends after work however with the present economic climate this was not possible and I couldn’t afford to quit as I need the income to afford university so I’ve been stuck in the same circumstances as year 1 leading to a very similar end to unfortunately. Fortunately arrangements have been made so this does not occur for a 3rd.

So sumatively year 2 has essentially been a repeat of year 1 of both positive and negative proportions. Negatively I’ve aloud Sainsbury’s to interfere again with university and aloud myself to depend to much on others which in turn effected my work output. Positively I’ve learned more and hit a big realisation… that I have a true craving passion for this subject, though it does not show in my efforts really so far this will change, this year has been the kick in the ass to get me rolling again and I’ve put into a place a new life plan to majorly accommodate this new key factor in my life.

For starters over summer I plan to learn and develop my skills in 3dmodeling, engine handling, digital painting as well as development of my traditional art by travelling and visiting interesting and inspirational places, I want to become more independent over summer in readiness for third year and to stop myself thinking that I must rely on others including the lectures to get things done, it needs to become more of a natural part of my daily life.
I’ve also already arranged a transfer to a Leicester store for Sainsbury’s so that I don’t lose time over the weekend that could be spent on developing my skills further whilst also not losing my source of income.

Then my final actions to put in place will be at the start of the new year of creating an idealistic and realistic plan of my own for the year and sticking to it no matter what, whilst always continuing to grow my passion and knowledge of the game art course. I’d actually like to look into working alongside the lecturers more as I’ve an interest in teaching and doing so may help me towards this interest.
All that I need to do now is get into third year…..

Time management and motivation

The two are yet another example of all the partnerships that exist in our world i.e. ying and yang, right and wrong, positive and negative etc. They exist as separate meanings, two totally different things and yet you need one to achieve the other. Without good time management you fall behind, you don’t get things done and in turn everything piles up and you lose your motivation to do anything as you just don’t know where to begin. From the other perspective without motivation in the first place you don’t do anything, just find distractions and reasons not to do what needs doing and therefore completely messing up your time management and you end up having to do everything last minute.... not good.
So what causes us to have bad time management and lack of motivation? Well let’s start with time management, well were back to the opposites again. This time it’s between over-commitment and procrastination. Now to most people you might think over-committing would be a good thing, that they’re actually a workaholic. To be honest that should be everyone’s attitude towards their work but everyone should know their limits. Over-committing is dangerous because you find yourself wanting so much you often find taking on too much that you can handle and so in-turn don’t know where to start or where to finish for that matter. So you end up missing those deadlines and not getting what needed to be done, done. Problem is if you’re one of these people is that you like having so much to do, you like a full list and in all honestly you like to moan about how much you’ve got to do. So your answer here to avoid the problem of over-committing is to realise your limits, know how much you can handle at once and not take on more work until you’ve finished that of which you already have to do.

Now on the other end of the scale we have procrastination, which in simple terms is a person who says to themselves our do it tomorrow. You can start with having something so miner as the shopping to do and you say to yourself ‘you know what we’ll just have take-out tonight I’ll do it tomorrow’. Then tomorrow comes and you get new tasks whether it be from work or you got to take the kids to football practice etc etc. This is where everything begins to pile up, not in an over-committing context however as these things are stacking up when you don’t want them compared to someone who is over-committing and wants them to pile up. I have to admit that I’m a person who suffers from procrastination as I dawdle with things, I say to myself ‘I’ll just have hour playing Left 4 dead....oooooh another hour won’t hurt......four hours later......is that the time, well I’ll do it tomorrow and I’ll get some sleep now’. At times it can seem like an endless cycle, there are just so many things in today’s modern world that can distract you from the task at hand. The internet with endless distractions, Facebook is my worst enemy in this case. You’ve got mobile phones, TV’s, Games consoles, food and drink, cigarettes, people...the list is endless. Compared to days back in history when you were ploughing fields with oxen and trawl in hand, the only distraction I can think of there was the other workers but they’d be all working to, until the job was done. Now obviously you can never really get rid of all distractions in a modern world but you can at least set up yourself a more work suited environment for yourself, one which is motivational, organised and distraction free. This should help you face the tasks at hand better.

To deal with the more dawdle sides of things reward systems work really well, you see it work well with kids when their being taught good from bad so why should the same principle not work with us older folk. Me for example a reward system id have would be get one project finished then get a set time to play on my Xbox 360. The only problem we face as more mature people is that we have control over what belongs to us so whether or not we deserve it we have it, where as with the children the adults have authority over them and their belongings so they must obey. So for me this is where I get other sufferers of procrastination, i.e. my friend Priya involved. The idea is we give each other our luxury/distracting items to keep. Then when we finished a piece of work we go to each other for one of items back as a reward. Once done with it we return it so to carry on with the next piece of work. It works rather well as long as you’re lenient with each other. However everyone’s different so whatever you like doing the most which tends to be your distractions use that as your reward whether it’s as big as shopping for yourself or as little as having a smoke.

One other to talk about which contributes to bad time management is underestimating your tasks , in other words thinking it will only take two hours to do when in reality it will take twelve hours. So then what happens is you waste that much needed time doing what you’d rather do until u leave it to those last two hours before its to be done and then u realise, so intern u rush it in an effort to catch up and get it finish and in the end its either not finished or it’s really rubbish. Only a lucky few can pull it off in such a small time scale, problem is everyone thinks their one of those lucky few. The best way to tackle this problem is to start the task as soon as you get it, list all the elements of it that you need to do to cover it then plan out what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. This way you’re at least being more realistic and you get the task done without stress, to good quality and on time. 

So in summary to keep a good time management scheme you want:

• To be realistic. Know your limits of how much you can do at any one time and know that just because you think you can get it done in two hours doesn’t mean it will get done in two hours.

• Plan. Know what needs to be to complete the task and schedule yourself so you know what you’re doing at what times in order to get it done on time. 

• Reminders are always good whether it is lists, sticky notes, a diary etc anything that reminds you of what is still to be done and how much time you’ve got left to do it.

• Distractions. Get rid of them as best you can create a work heaven for yourself where you can concentrate on what you’re doing.

• Rewards are good motivators as well as good time keeps as they inspire you to go on and carry on, they give you a sense of satisfaction that what you are doing is good.

• Also getting other people around to help out is good, not so much with the work load but more as inspiration to push you on and you can do the same, it’s more effective in the workplace as you’ll find yourself working with people in similar situations as you so why not help each other out.

Now to some people this may seem like a lot, it’s a bit like breaking an addiction really, hard at first and so tempting to give but when you get to the end it’s so easy and you really do reap the benefits, the main one being that your motivations stays high and intern you keep going and you stay on top of your time management. 

To me it’s finding the motivation in the first place which is the hardest thing to do. For everyone its different, we’re all motivated by different things which we use to help us through things but they don’t always work, me for example I’m motivated by music and my friends however my friends can’t always be around me and listening to the same music over and over again can get tiresome so you find yourself stuck at times. To conquer de-motivation you have to find the cause of it as though motivations and time management are paired it’s not always due to bad time management that we become de-motivated. When it comes to the human body there is two places that de-motivation arrive from, the brain and the heart. 

The brain is the more typical cause of de-motivation more to do with the bad time management as well as stuff like weight issues, money problems, work and other things to do with set goals in your life that you don’t feel your achieving with. These problems then make you feel low and de-motivated but are more easily fixed and once corrected re-motivate you and get you going again.

The heart on the other hand is totally different, the more serious and personal problems derive from the heart such as loss of a loved one, loss of a pet, loss of a friend, a break up etc everything that effects us more personally and emotionally. These problems are more dangerous than the ones the brain creates as they can lead to severe depression which obviously leads to no motivation. The thing that makes them real motivation breakers is that you can’t fix most of them so you have to start from scratch and find such a good source of new motivation to pull you out of the slump before they ruin you completely, you can lose a lot to these de-motivators, however no ones the same so it takes everyone different things and different amounts of time to re-motivate them and get them back on track. 

Now the problem you face once you are de-motivated is you don’t know where to start with anything even with looking for new motivation you just do something until you’re bored of it from watching TV, going shopping, eating, sleeping etc and this is where you effect your time management, where you procrastinate, looking for something more interesting and that might inspire you. Another example for me was the other day I went and saw Avatar, absolutely sublime film in my eyes and it inspired/motivated me to work. So it shows that when you find something that interests you, you can then use it productively to influence you to work. You’ve got to realise I think when you’re looking for new motivation that if it isn’t motivating you within the first thirty minutes then move on to something else instead of wasting your time and falling more behind. Whenever you’re struggling for motivation I find it best to look for something to do with your three I’s....INSPIRED....INTERESTS......INFLUENCE. All three of them are again different for everyone, which is what makes it impossible I guess to teach motivation but at the same times they make us unique. They are what give us all our different ideas. You should always use them to your advantage where best you can.

So in summary then, bad motivation equals bad time management, same rules apply the other way round. To deal with both find the cause of the problem and deal with as quickly as possible don’t let it fester it only gets worse otherwise. Good time management consists of good organisation and time planning and a reward to spire you on. Good motivation comes from having loads of things that INSPIRE, INTEREST and INFLUENCES you, and both are good when the other is good, but always remember everyone’s different so just because it works for you don’t mean it will for someone else.