Productivity Breakthrough

I spent years studying game systems - min-maxing builds, breaking dialogue trees, finding edge cases in game logic. Turns out that's useful for software development. Who knew.

The shift happened when I stopped consuming and started building. Gaming became less interesting. Hacking things together became more interesting. Not because I forced it - something just changed.

AI lowered the barrier

AI tools helped bypass the tutorial hell that used to kill my momentum. Instead of spending weeks on setup and configuration, I could jump straight to the interesting problems.

Sure, we go off the cliff like lemmings sometimes. But I'm having fun all the way down. The experimentation became the point, not the obstacle.

The evidence

My GitHub activity spiked once I started using AI more intensively. Ideas I'd had floating around for ages suddenly became buildable. The threshold for experimentation dropped to nearly zero.

A contribution graph is easy to manipulate - I could write my name if I wanted. But the sudden change was worth noting. Something shifted.

What transferred

Breaking down complex systems. Recognizing patterns. Grinding through iteration. Working through challenges until they click. The same skills I used to optimize game builds, applied to building software.

The drive is mostly intrinsic now. I build because it's interesting, not because I'm supposed to.