Are You Navigating Life like a Video Game NPC? Maybe You’re Driven to Distraction
Are you stuck in an endless loop of monotony?
Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? The polar opposite of Katy Perry’s plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Maybe you could get value from a new pathfinding algorithm!
Just make sure you’re not falling into the trap of giving up your freedom by scrolling into the void.
What is pathfinding?
Pathfinding is an element of game development that involves creating the pathways that characters (and other things) traverse in a game world.
Pathfinding algorithms use nodes and connections to work out ways to travel from point to point in a way that’s plausible and efficient. Some are even capable of spicing it up by doing things like:
- Dynamic obstacle avoidance
- Waypoints introducing variability
- Selecting a path based on certain criteria
- Adaptive learning through multiple iterations
Have you ever followed a video game Non-Player Character (NPC) around only to find that seem to be walking around from point A to B, stopping, and that’s about it?
For me, even though I have a little bit of an insight into how the sausage is made, I find effective NPC behaviour (of which pathfinding is a part) can completely add to my immersion and feeling that I’m actually viewing a window into someone’s life.
A life that will continue after I stop playing.
But seeing a character visit the same couple of locations and do the same couple of things in an endless cycle? It feels inauthentic to life in that regard.
And yet, are we not essentially doing this in our own lives?
Stuck in your ways?
If you’ve ever commuted to work before, how often do you see the same people at the same points in your respective journeys enroute? Look at all the stars that have to consistently align each and every day in our routines for that to happen. What does it tell you about how devoted to our routines we are?
I know I am.
I am a devout creature of habit and routines have been an emphatically prevalent aspect of my life:
- I ritualistically make coffee and drink from the same mug every morning.
- I pretty much eat the same breakfasts and wear the same clothes.
- When I drove to work, I left at the same time and took exactly the same route.
- I buy the same groceries from the same place at the same time.
- When I exercise, I take the same route around the same park.
This is entirely intentional and has been a big help in crafting a minimalist life that I value greatly. Removing the decision making of every little thing from my daily routine allows me to focus more of my mental energy on deeper creative pursuits and quality time which I value.
And to a large extent, it works.
But if we applied this to every single aspect of our lives, are we decluttering away the opportunity for spontaneity? Are we letting an auto-pilot make us miss some interesting and beautiful moments in our day?
Is being present the opportunity cost of being efficient?
Your attention, please.
The digital life zeitgeist is awash with talk of dopamine, our relationship with our brain’s administration of it, and attention in general. And it’s not surprising; social media and modernity in general is obsessed with competing for our attention. It is one of the great currencies of our generation.
As Cal Newport writes about in Digital Minimalism, our personal devices are designed to ping, pop and little-red-button-notify us by any means necessary as long as we engage with it. Our minds are numbed to the present moment so we go looking for those little dopamine hits in our tiny glowing screens.
One more check of the app.
One more scroll.
One more ping.
I think this is relevant to the topic of routines and pathfinding because (for me at least), my device has inserted itself into every quiet part of my life, leaving me with a mental lacking and a lack of space for little moments to be savoured. Spontaneity in a well-tuned routine has been usurped by mindlessly checking my phone.
It’s festered into my days like some kind of dystopian digital fondue oozing all around the marshmallow that is my brain.
Every ounce of efficiency from the other aspects of my life has been counterweighed with the fact that I find myself scrolling into the nothingness when I could be doing literally anything else — including just being present. I am working on addressing this, but my experience with minimalism is such that it is easier to let something go if you know the reason why you’re craving that relief from letting It go.
For me, it’s about expanding and enriching my path. Both figuratively and literally. To not be some kind of boring NPC who sticks to the same routines so they can spend that attention staring into the digital void. Who knows whether a tiny imperceptible change in a daily routine could have a monumental impact on your life and make a seemingly minute moment actually a momentous event, then and into the future, in ways you couldn’t possibly have imagined?
- What if you walked home on the other side of the road?
- What if you turned left a bit further up than usual?
- What if you just stood there in the queue, looking around at the world and not at a screen?
- What if you listened to a genre of music that you never usually would?
- What if you said yes to that thing you would never usually do?
- What if you looked up?
- What if you said hello?
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
New year, new meandering.
In The Pathless Path, author Paul Millerd takes the path metaphor a step further by making a distinction between the Default path (a life lived based on other’s expectations and conventions) and the Pathless path (a life that may be unconventional but is one of intrinsic creative freedom and exploration).
This was one of my favourite reads of last year. It’s rare that I read something where I a feel as though it’s speaking directly to me, but this book came into my life at exactly the right time; I begin the new year having moved on from a 15 year career to pursue my own version of whatever a pathless path is to me.
One thing is for sure, I’m going to allow space in my routine for both the big and little things to happen. For my own path to be a little more meandering. Who knows what could happen?
