Sorting is as fun as a video game

Most people see the act of organizing and sorting things as a chore.

When I was a kid I would even take some pride and tie it to my personality that my room was messy, I loved feeling like a chaotic mastermind-artist with stacks of drawings all over the place. I took pleasure in it because it was my mess, I loved seeing my stacks of drawings grow and to patiently cover my walls with the best drawings.

But after I moved out of my childhood room every new place felt temporary. I couldn’t leave a mark on the walls. So the way I inhabited those spaces and found pleasure in my creative environment had to change.

Instead of drawing on loose paper I got sketchbooks. Instead of covering my walls with drawings I put them on my website.

It became mostly portable and digital.

I have many types of ideas that fit better into different formats.

• Visual stuff belong in my sketchbook.

• Discoveries go into my ‘Input Log’ in Notion.

• Loose thoughts belong in my notebook or ‘spark-file’ on my phone.

It’s very pleasant to fill up sketchbooks, see my Input Log grow bigger and more useful. 15 years of thinking, drawing and writing is always within my reach.

I know where everything is and I think more clearly.

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a video game that capture this buzz perfectly.

Imagine Tetris, blocks fall from the top of your screen. Every time you do something successful, you lose the blocks that you managed to place so nicely. Only the mess stays.

Wilmot’s Warehouse is similar to Tetris, but it has some key differences.

Blocks are delivered through a truck by the bottom of the screen. The blocks are actually boxes with different contents inside, they’re the supply of this warehouse you’re working in. All you need to do is bring them to the counter at the top of the warehouse when they are ordered (through something like Amazon). As long as you can do that, you’re meeting the game’s goals.

But!

The crux is that the boxes are all jumbled when they are delivered. It’s a mess.

So in order to make the deliveries at the counter on time, you need to be able to get the boxes for the order quickly. This means you need to 1) make everything easily accessible and 2) easy to find.

You’re free to organize the boxes in any way you like. Whatever makes sense to you. Wilmot’s Warehouse is basically an open-world Tetris.

“You see the mess over there? YOU CAN ORGANIZE IT”

For some people organizing things seem stressful. When I was a kid I thought so too. Tetris was overwhelming, they just kept throwing problems at me, faster and faster. Until I learned a few tricks, which taught me how pleasurable it can be to organize well.

Sorting boxes in Wilmot’s Warehouse is the same to me as any endeavor in life. It’s messy, it doesn’t have a REAL solution, you just need to get by. The key to not get stressed out about sorting is to accept that every system will have flaws, you just gotta adapt and remember your goal.

Wilmot’s Warehouse, unlike Tetris, has an end. It’s a nice fantasy that problems stop coming to you, that you can complete your job.

It feels creative how I decide to interpret and sort the boxes. I see my warehouse fill up, just the way I tried to cover my walls with drawings as a kid.

And it’s fun.