However, I can only go for so long in a particular direction. When I find myself focusing really hard on learning a language, for example, I inevitably develop an intense hunger for doing something more related to the engineering disciplines. Usually, I'm constantly bouncing back and forth between these two poles - the "soft" pole of arts, language, music, and literature, and the "hard" pole of science, mathematics, engineering, and programming.

The phase I'm in now is a learning phase. I consider it similar to a wizard in a tower, scouring old books and learning anything he can to prepare for whatever quest lies ahead. I'm not inventing anything or discovering anything profound; I'm simply researching and gathering information before heading out on a new adventure.

Before heading out on this adventure, which will be my next project, I'm focusing on building up some of my "soft" knowledge. I just want to round it out a bit. But I'm also starting to develop that urge for something technical. This is where "dividing and conquering" comes in.

As I near the halfway point of my allotted three months to work on "soft" knowledge, I'm going to be dividing some of my time with learning some of the "softer" things about the "hard" things. This essentially means going back and cleaning up my programming skills, filling in any blanks I feel I may have. And by "blanks", I mean finishing the dozen programming books I bought at some point and never got around to because I was making games.