 So we are almost done with the time management series. We'll probably be closing things up within the next week or so, and then we'll be right on our way to Unreal Engine. It took forever, but I finally finished sculpting, modeling, and UV mapping the tactical military night character that we're going to be using in the new engine, and I'm really excited to explore and test the differences between Unity and Unreal, so I hope you guys are also looking forward to that as much as I am. In the meanwhile, since this current series is coming to a close, I've been thinking really hard about what the last three videos should be, because I want to make sure that they're important and useful for you guys, and while I'm not sure what the last two should be, I know that today I wanted to talk about one of the most important resources I think everyone has that I see a lot of people waste all the time. Your thoughts. Do not waste your thoughts. They have a lot of value because your thoughts are the fuel for your actions, both consciously and unconsciously. Every word that comes out of your mouth is just the sound of your thoughts. You cannot say something you didn't think about. Likewise, aside from your muscle memory, you cannot do things you don't think about, and this idea really resonated with me when I was watching an interview with Magnus Carlson. Now, for those of you who don't know, Magnus is basically a chess god. Now, I'm not particularly good at the game. Personally, I've always loved chess. I used to be in a chess club when I was a kid, and if you ever took a really close look at the Royals Guys logo, you can see that the king and the queen of the chess board are both integrated into the logo itself. And that's just because I love the game, it's beautiful. So I kind of just follow the chess scene with my downtime, but the point is, chess is cool, and Magnus is basically like the king of it. And when I say king, I mean, this guy remembers just about every move from every game he's ever played. He can beat you without looking at the board blindfolded against 10 people at the same time. This guy is just on another level. And on one of his dayoffs, he accepts an interview from 60 Minutes. And remember, this is his day off when he's just relaxing. And here's what happened. He had a day off. He'd been in London before, but told us he'd never seen the sites. We took him up onto this. It's a giant ferris wheel that overlooks London. And it's right on the south side of the Thames. So you can see the houses of parliament, Big Ben. We were up in the London Eye for, I guess, 45 minutes or so. He didn't look at the window. Just, it wasn't interested. Do you ever stop thinking about chess? Sometimes, but right now I was actually thinking about chess. And you were thinking about specific moves? Yeah, I was thinking about something specific in my preparation for my game tomorrow. You know, I've always wondered what the inside of a genius's mind would look like. And then it kind of just hit me that part of being a genius is that all of his spare thoughts are about chess. All the time. It doesn't matter where he is. It doesn't matter what he's doing. He could be walking through the street. So what are you doing for the rest of the day? I'm preparing for the next game. He's buying groceries? Yeah, I was thinking about something specific. On a lift with a beautiful view of London. And my preparation for my game tomorrow. Still planning his next chess move. He's not on his phone, scrolling through Twitter. He's not sitting idly thinking about what to eat. He's constantly thinking and planning chess. Usually, how to prepare for his games tomorrow. So I actually believe that one of the most important differences between a genius and a normal person isn't necessarily how their brain is structured. It's how they organize and focus their thoughts. Like, of course, that's not everything. I'm not saying everyone could be a genius. But a part of it is definitely a genius probably spends 99% of their spare thoughts thinking about the thing they're a genius at. While a normal person probably only spends 3% of their thoughts focused on any one thing at a time. I mean, as a normal person, I can barely focus 90% of my thoughts on a single thing for more than 30 minutes. But really ask yourself, where are you spending most of your thoughts? Because how you spend your thoughts determines what you're going to get good at. If you spend your thoughts scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, you're going to become really proficient at scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. But if you spend most of your thoughts exploring game design, you're going to be more proficient at game design. Because obviously, the prerequisite to doing things is thinking about doing things. So to properly explain this, we're going to talk about something I like to call downtime, which is basically the dead time that happens when you're really not in a position to be productive the way you would like. You're not at your desk. You do not have access to your computer. You couldn't really work hard even if you wanted to. Usually these types of moments are when you are waiting in line at a restaurant or something like waiting for the next customer to arrive. Now most people I've noticed in these situations default to just opening their phone and scrolling through Twitter and TikTok until the situation has passed. But I highly recommend taking a page out of Magnus' book. Utilize this time to organize your thoughts. Plan out your attack for when you enter the zone at home. For example, I used to work on the sales floor at the mall and at Best Buy, selling whatever my boss needed me to. Now I wasn't particularly passionate about my job. I much preferred spending my spare time learning how to program games in Unity, but I really needed to pay rent. So I was stuck at this job. There was no way around it. This was just a sunk cost every day for eight hours. My dream was not being built. But then I realized there were certain points in my job where no customers would come and I'm just waiting. Everything is stacked perfectly. I've done my job to the best of my ability and I'm literally sitting there with nothing to do, which for me felt like a big waste. So I started to use this time to plan the rest of my day or to organize my thoughts and think about the best way to fix that glitch that kept popping up. I started to think about what are some potential solutions to these glitches? What are some things I haven't tried yet? What parts of the code might be giving me the most problem? What are features in the game that still need to be created? What characters do I still need to make? What animations are missing? How many frames should those animations be? I started filling up my downtime planning my next move so that by the time my shift was over, when I grabbed my coffee and arrived back at my computer, I would be in the zone and immediately start executing everything I had planned for the last eight hours. And the performance difference was crazy. Like the first day I tried this, I got so much done when I got home, I was baffled at how smooth my workflow was getting because all I was doing was things I rehearsed in my mind. And simply rehearsing what you need to do in your head before you do it allows you to hit the ground running because you're not trying to think about it for the first time. And that makes sense, right? Like, obviously, the less time you spend thinking about something, the less good you're going to be at it. Which means, conversely, the more time you spend thinking about something, the better you're going to be at it when you finally turn those thoughts into action. So, don't underestimate the power of filling your downtime with planning your next move. Just because you're stuck at your job for eight hours a day doesn't mean you can't still use that time as fuel to hit the ground running once you get home. So, I hope that helps. And as always, hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.