February 10th, 2009

The Waiting Game

I am going to copy paste my comment I made at Quick Fix Copywriting on Multitasking.

You know the time when we are waiting in the “waiting room” when we are at the Doctor’s to get a check up? Well, we are basically doing nothing! (I got to write an “quality” article on this @ dotSpiral. OH SNAP!) That is when I bust out the NINTENDO DS! A lifesaver of boredom, a killer of time, but also a production value of Zero! But since we are not doing anything productively: we might as well make ourself “happy”.

The Waiting Game is simple, fun, and easy. Basically, you find any task that makes you wait, and if it does, you find another task to do. This allows you productively to go in two ways. Make you happy, or produce higher production values.

(Additional edit: Now don’t be a fool and “do nothing”, that is the worst thing you can do.)

Just like the doctor example before, I could replace that Nintendo DS with a laptop, and just start jamming something productive like writing future articles. Thus making the waiting production of zero turn into something like a hero.

Here is another example: you are on the phone with Sony’s Customer Support because the laptop you bought from them died. The Servicer tells you, “Please Hold”, so now you are on hold (I really recommend a speaker phone for this!). 30 Minutes later, they come back. Now those 30 minutes, I hope you better be doing something because I do not like waiting for nothing! Thus the DS can save butts again! Or if you some other tasks you want to finish, now is the time to do it!

Continuing from where I left off!
The best examples of them all!

There are games out there that require you to wait for your turn to play. These games waiting time may take forever, and it is up to you to do something about it. Most people wait, and observe for entertainment, to me that is a waste of productive time!

In Warcraft 3, a game by Blizzard, there is a mini game call “Gem Tower Defense“. Within that game, the wait time to play can be extremely long, thus I switch back to reading articles, marketing, web designing, you name whatever productive. The point is, that if you want to enjoy doing tedious things, why not add a game that makes you wait? It’s fun!

For instance, you are tediously working at inputting data into your database, which are lots of lots of number that needs to be crunched down. Then your head start to hurt! Stress starts piling up on you, or you’re falling asleep and also being tantalize by a pillow that looks like a keyboard. Thus, the game! Taking the smallest break, the smallest time to switch over, and a little play can result a killer of stress or sleepiness.

It’s a big win for everyone.

It actually turns a boring tedious job into a fun tedious job!

The only thing is to “identify” more of these waiting games. The more the better!