Comment:

A big part of being a responsible adult is managing your own brain.

As I write this, I'm sitting in silence. I know I can't write text that makes sense while also listening to other words. That's something I've learned about the way my brain works.

I also want very much to listen to the latest episode of one of my favourite podcasts, so I'm using that to motivate myself - no queueing up the ep until all these Forwards are transcribed and notated and formatted and uploaded.

I also know that my emotional landscape affects my productivity, so I'm not going check Twitter until after all this is done, because if I look at Twitter I'm going to see Politics, and that's just going to make me either angry or sad. Anger and sadness are appropriate, and can be motivating for doing political things, but they impact my ability to make comics, so I'll save them for later in the day.

There's all sorts of other tips and tricks I've learned to manage myself - when to listen to music, when to ingest sugar or carbs or caffeine, when to get extra sleep. As I wrote in The Barbarian's Guide to Life (available on Amazon or my Patreon), "Your mind is affected by your body, and your body is an animal. Lack of good food, lack of exercise and lack of sleep will make you grumpy and negative. It is your responsibility to maintain yourself."

Gamification is one of those mind-body tricks, something that can be very useful when you want somebody to learn something. That's why play is associated with youth, of course - play is a big part of how we learn.

Or, at any rate, that's how it works with kittens pouncing on fluff. There are quite a few things that humans need to learn that cannot be effectively gamified and many games humans play that don't teach jack squat.

Play also helps establish emotional bonds, in much the same way physical intimacy does, a basic psychological phenomenon of which Zoa is no doubt keenly aware.

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