>> Link to the awesome Google Sheets Automatic No Executive Function Needed Task List

I dare anyone to tell me cocaine is better than splashing around in a bathtub and thinking,"ooo, WHAT IF MY MONOPOLY-ESQUE BOARD GAME HAD A QUEST SYSTEM THOUGH?"

Addiction (to scope creep or otherwise) is one of the most damnable mechanics in this game of life, because 

1. the rewards are immediate and intensely pleasurable,
2. the cost isn't visible for months or years,
3. and the alternative ("hard work") is the exact reverse: immediately unpleasant costs, and no visible benefits for months or years.

It's a bit like buying happiness on credit, at an extortionist's interest rate.

To gather all these metaphors into one handbasket:

Addiction = Champagne and Caviar on Credit = Scope Creep

Getting Clean = Tedious Work With Little Immediate Reward  = "Finishing"

And as you can imagine, the "scope creep" has to get pretty extreme before "finishing" starts looking good.

But - 

- gulp -

I'm there now.

The View from the Bottom

This is an actual screen cap from my roadmap for "The Hustle," ostensibly a board game inspired by Monopoly.

I want to underline the fact that my exaggerated "quest system" joke from earlier was not the last feature to creep in.  It was not rock-bottom.

It got so much rockier, and so much bottomier.

And I would have continued sinking to new lows of scope creep, except for two things:

• Steam has a festival coming up that would be perfect for The Hustle.
• I have other games I want to make and I have to get this off my plate.

I'm aware this isn't exactly healthy: yes, I see a healthy opportunity for this game and I'm moving towards that, but fully half of this is me standing up in a support group saying, "I'm AGuyNamedEdward, and I'm addicted to cocaine.  But I want to get past this.

"Because I heard Super Cocaine is coming out next year."

But whatever.  As marathon runners and Nordic eugenicists say,

"Whatever gets you to the Finnish."

Ok, it's time to get serious.  How?

I have a list that looks like this.  

How do I know which do I work on first?  An item on this list might be a simple coding fix, or a major system that needs graphics designed, systems, everything.

I can't do all the things I need to do in the next month AND be my own supervisor, too.  I needed something that would do that thinking for me.

Executive Dysfunction is a thing

Enter: Google Sheets, and about thirty minutes of calculation writing.

This is what the brain-dump of my remaining tasks for the game looked like when I started. 

 A hodgepodge of deadlines, difficulties, and priorities.

This is what it looked like after I wrote the "auto-sort" for it.

Everything is sorted according to 

1.  deadline, obviously,
2. descending order of importance and difficulty combined.

The most important, hardest stuff goes first, then most important but less hard, and on down the list from there. 

It does all the sorting and deciding "what comes next."  I just shut up and work.  And when I mark X (or anything) in the Finished column, it instantly drops to the bottom of the list.

What do those ratings mean?  1-5 Difficulty?  Why do I have 1-5 Importance and then the BUG at the bottom is rated a 10?

For me, I ended up using it like this:

• IMPORTANCE: 5 means "must happen at all costs," and 1 is "unnecessary but I want it."  3 is "really need this but I can cut if I have to."
• DIFFICULTY: 5 is "this will possibly take a week."  1 is "I can do this in under an hour." 3 is something like "a day or so."

But the numbers don't matter in any real sense.  They're only important in how I personally interpret them, and in how they relate to each other.

The bug (finished, at the bottom) I rated 10 because it was literally "the game is broken until this gets fixed."

This is a simple tool, and I like that

What I needed to finish the crazy amount of work I have left was a supervisor, and that's exactly what this thing does.  

Case in point: you're reading this devlog, which I wrote because my list told me to.

If you want your own automatic list thing, make a copy from my template here:

>> Link to the awesome Google Sheets Automatic No Executive Function Needed Task List

If you do something cool with it, leave a comment below so I can blatantly steal from my betters.

Next Friday: I'll share my further adventures in Google Sheets, like how I tricked it into writing some of my code for me.  

And, at some point, I'm sure I'll start talking about the game itself.