75. Yoda's Dance/In the Hall of the Jedi Master

(Epistemic status: a riff on existing cogtech. May not land for you unless you're a huge puzzle game nerd like me. Mild spoilers for The Witness.)

There's a practice you may have heard of or even use yourself, in order to break through blocks and make progress on hard problems that you face. It's called a Yoda Timer, and it goes like this: First, fix the problem in your mind. Understand it. Face it. Then, set a timer for 5 minutes. Start the timer. Then, simply... solve the problem. Completely. In 5 minutes. Don't try to do it! There is no try! Do, or do not! Usually you will fail to actually totally solve the problem, but what you will have done is make serious progress on it. Maybe you've made a solid plan for tackling it. Maybe you've solved a significant subproblem and are now unblocked. Maybe you've spent time figuring out what you need to even make a serious attempt; you were underprovisioned from the start, and those 5 minutes weren't wasted, but rather a meaningful scouting mission. If you're really lucky, you'll have realized that actually, that problem wasn't so hard in the first place, and you'd developed unhelpful aversion fields around actually engaging with it. The point is: you faced a problem, you set a timer, and you made an earnest full-bore all-out effort to solve that problem.

There's a game you may have heard of or even have played yourself, with a semi-secret sequence to it that's infamous for its difficulty. It's called The Witness, and that semi-secret part - The Challenge - goes like this: In a seriously difficult puzzle game where you at least had the benefits of deterministic puzzles and as much time as you needed to solve them, you're now thrown into a sequence where neither of these things are true. You start, and a diegetic record player engages. The strains of Anitra's Dance begin to play, and as the triangle dings away like an alarm clock and the string section begins, you face a few initial puzzles; nothing serious so far. You keep navigating your way through the sequence - I won't spoil it much - and at least for the first couple of times, you realize you've forgotten crucial information and need to go back. You get it, and you keep going. You fail one puzzle and try again... except, you don't. You realize that this is a different puzzle. And another. And another. Anitra's Dance ended a bit ago, you realize with a shock, and you recognize In the Hall of the Mountain King's booming brass. At some point, some of the puzzles are deliberately unsolvable, and you must determine which of the procedurally generated puzzles confronting you gives you a way forward. The brass is accelerating heedlessly towards its end. Three riffs. Two riffs. You make it to the final chamber only to be confronted with even more nightmarish puzzles. The final riff of In the Hall of the Mountain King plays. Time's up. You've failed. But you've lost nothing but 6 minutes, 34 seconds of your time, and you've gained knowledge, experience, and no small dose of exhilaration. So you try again. And again. Each time you measure your progress against the paired songs; you're at the cavern before the end of Anitra's Dance, and you're doing well; In the Hall of the Mountain King has started before you've even cleared the first maze, and you scrub and return to the start in self-disappointment. The song begins to haunt your dreams. And after more white-knuckled run attempts than you can easily remember, you at last make it to the final chamber. In the Hall of the Mountain King is entering its final sequence. Three riffs. You finish your second puzzle in the final chamber. Two riffs. You're nearly done; just a little more. The final riff plays, and heartbeats before you time out and fail, you complete the final puzzle. The music stops. The gate opens before you. You let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding. You've won.

But if you're anything like me, that song still haunts you. I've told many friends and partners that if you need to get me up and moving and finishing something up RIGHT NOW, you play Anitra's Dance/In the Hall of the Mountain King for me and I'll be off like a shot, full of nervous energy. I'm on the clock, you see. A bit of me still lopes through that cavern, still sprints through the procedurally generated puzzles as fast as it can. There's no stopping me once that music starts for a solid 214 seconds; even humming the first few bars of Anitra's Dance or mentally playing back the final measures of In the Hall of the Mountain King makes me vibrate and fidget a little.

So what if we combined these two bits of tech? Rather than set a 5-minute timer, queue up The Challenge Music. (There's a good Youtube video for it.) Anitra's Dance starts to play, and you have a task to do, a problem to solve, a challenge to complete. There's no time for caution and nothing for it but to drive forward with all your speed and cunning. You must solve this problem by the time that those final shouting chords of In the Hall of the Mountain King finish ringing out. Push onwards and be swift.

I've tried this personally to massive success, with writing, folding laundry, coding, packing luggage, and filling out applications. I'm actually listening to it right now as I put the finishing touches on this post just before midnight. The extra minute and change doesn't really change all that much about how much you can get done, but the music as a timer is an excellent driver. If you've played the Witness yourself and have the same conditioned response to The Challenge Music as I do, give it a try and let me know how it goes for you. Now hit play, let the jangling triangle kick off Anitra's Dance, and let nothing break your stride. And remember: 214 seconds is longer and shorter than you think. Good luck.