On the podium!
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The Turtles in Time Grind - Day 21 of 36
On July 7, I looked at my schedule, assessed where I was at with Ninja Turtles, and decided to put some deadlines on this project. Erika and I are going to a cabin in the woods type of situation with Podo on August 12. That setup August 11 as the last day of this Ninja Turtles grind.
Today is day 21. Yesterday, I set a new personal best of 19 minutes and 3 seconds. Check out a screenshot from the stream:
The run was already verified - so I’m now officially on the Turtles in Time podium:
I’ll fill you in on a secret: Raph is the fastest turtle
First of all, I’m extremely proud of this accomplishment. Around three months ago I was #18 with a 25 minute time. A month later I was #9 with a 20 minute time. Another month after that we inched up to #7 with our first 19 minute time. And now, during this Ninja Turtles sprint I’m in the midst of, we’ve gone from #7 to being in a tie for #2.
During this stretch, I’ve been streaming every other day. That means I have time for 8 more streams of attempts during this Turtles epoch. Here’s one benefit I see of the deadline / timebox approach thing I setup: if I hadn’t done that, I feel pretty confident that yesterday’s run would have been my last Turtles run. The world record of 18:41 feels really, really far away, and other than that I guess breaking the second place tie or getting an 18:xx time would be the motivations.
I suppose it’s up to each of us to decide when to stop playing a game. I do feel that for me personally, I could walk away from Ninja Turtles satisfied and happy with what I’ve done here. Getting into this 19:0x crew feels in some ways like it was my ‘biggest’ goal all along.
However, having already pre-decided that we’re running Turtles until August 11, I’m definitely going to see this assignment through. I’ve already seen the benefits of being locked in during this period of hyperfocus. I’m also already in the swing of doing it, so it’s a lot easier to do this grind right now than it was on day 1.
When I feel sick of playing I typically just think, “After August 11 I am going to learn a new game, and then I will miss Ninja Turtles!” I wholeheartedly do believe that will be the case.
Now, without this mental deadline system I’m using, the thought process wouldn’t go that way. It would feel more like, “the amount of effort I would need to put in to get an even better run than this is really high, and I’m already at the top of the leaderboard, so gg”. That thought process also makes sense to me. I’m in the final 30 seconds of the competition. There’s no margin for error anymore. That means I need to play perfectly. That means, there’s more resetting, and fewer runs that feel successful. So, if I’m already at a tie for #2, why not move on?
What does all of this mean? I don’t really know. I’ll report back sometime after August 11 and we’ll see how the rest of this grind went.
There’s not a ton else that’s new with me. I did make this nice Rydia perler the other day. The pink outfit is one of the outfit swaps that Rydia wears in the Free Enterprise FF4 randomizer.
That’s all from me - thank you for reading! Have a great day!
