July 1, 2022

Keyboard Smashing Fury

For the past month or so, my 8-year-old daughter has been building games with a platform from MIT called Scratch.

She’s been having fun copying YouTube tutorials with great success, but things are getting more complex...

Today for the first time, she experienced something that I have historically referred to as “Keyboard Smashing Fury.”

Keyboard Smashing Fury (KSF) occurs when the software you’re working on isn’t working the way you want, and it makes you want to smash things like you’re The Hulk.

The keyboard, the monitor, the chair you’re sitting on... pretty much everything in sight.

Here’s the thing...

KSF is just one specific example of what Seth Godin calls TENSION.

What is tension?

Tension is the feeling of wanting something.

Common causes of tension are:

a painfully itchy mosquito bite, or
a prolonged bout of hiccups, or
unrequited love, or
belt-busting constipation, or
a persistent lack of qualified leads

TL;DR:

Tension sucks.

When wrestling with tension, you have a few of options for dealing with it.

Here are three:

Fight
Surrender
Retreat