Tilting, or “How I learned to not rage quit”
“Usually a term in video games (though it can really be used in any activity or hobby), tilt is an emotional state when doing the exact same thing activity over and over produces negative results. It’s an emotional breakdown and fustration of your hard work not resulting in the success that you crave so desperately. When you or someone is in a tilt state of mind, the best thing to do is take a break from that activity and try not to think about it as much.
Phage: Dude I lost a lot of Ranked games in League of Legends and it’s all my stupid noob teammates’ faults.
Sheen: Dude you’re on tilt. Take a break from League for a bit man.”
Oh tilt, you glorious beast you.
Aside from the definition and the accompanying article above, if you want to see a true definition of tilt, watch me miss a 75kg snatch and the chaos that usually follows.
There is a lot to be said for picking up new skills, new sports, new activities later on in life. Aside from potential physical limitations caused by lifestyle choices, you also have the hidden factors of mental strength.
By mental strength in this context I refer to being blindside by emotional immaturity. Learning a new skill etc later on is made difficult by your mental state, you start from a stage in your life where you feel confident and happy that you are accomplished. You have a degree of mastery of things that you have been doing daily for the last 2, 3, 5, 10 years, now, all of a sudden you are starting from scratch. And throwing your toys out the pram. And the pram as well.
This is a humbling experience that causes a range of responses within an individual, in my case it resulted in my coach having to give a reassuring pep talk, in others it means that they will give up at the first step because they are not approaching it in the right way.
Coding is the same, you learn new concepts, you attempt to put them together, you have some missing gaps in knowledge, it doesn’t behave how you wanted, you throw the computer out the window and declare it stupid.
My cohorts all felt the above when they went from completing the Ruby track on codecademy and then begun playing on Codewars. It was frustrating, however, the more I draw parallels to other aspects and moments in life, it is the same thing.
There is frustration, there are learns, there is rage. However, if you accept this and take time to gather your thoughts and limit how much emotion gets involved you will find the next steps or the tweaks you need to make in order to catch the lift, compile the code, bake the cake or touch your toes.
Or disregard and just tilt. There is something satisfying about kicking things across rooms.
