It's amazing how much a change in our attitude and mindset towards fear can alter literally everything. Game development can be a lot of looking into the unknown and fearing the decision you have taken is the right one.

There's the fantasy football draft board from my main league this year. I got into it a little later than most of my friends, and I've always felt like I've had to play catch-up with their knowledge of players as well as the dynamics at play. You can see my team with a thick border around it - I went third this year.

If you've never played fantasy football before, every round you get to pick a player to add to your roster. We start at the top left and follow a snake pattern. If you went first in round 1, you will go last in round 2, etc.

What this means is it's not only about your knowledge of the players/teams/schedule, etc. But it's also a matter of looking at what other people are doing.

- What position is everyone else going for?

- Will that player be available that round?

- Is he/she going to take my pick?!

Plus, there's always the moments when someone makes a bad pick or didn't know this player was out for a few games. We're friends, so it's fine when we give each other a hard time (definitely a big part of the fun) - but I'm surprised how often in business and in our lives we're focused on what everyone else is doing and what they would do in our situation.

So this year, I made a plan, trusted my gut and used my instincts. Instincts in business and development is a simple way of saying “I trusted the accumulated knowledge and experience I have accumulated over the years to make this decision”.

Back to my Fantasy Football team; positions are worth more than others in most leagues, but our scoring makes Defenses and Tight Ends potentially very valuable. There are only a couple of players worth getting at those positions every year (in my opinion), so I decided to target those positions specifically.

And when I did, look at what happened. Everyone else began snatching those positions after I went for them first - you can see the picks of the same position by color. Right after I made my pick, the rest of the "worthwhile" players at the position were very quickly gone.

I had decided before the draft what position I was going for in each round. Everyone groaned when I went for Travis Kelce and the Bears Defense, but then they reacted to (and even emulated!) my picks.

Going for a Tight End in the third round is traditionally, a bad move. And a Defense in the seventh? Ridiculous! Sure, other teams were able to get good or ok players, but I got the best at two different slots on my team.

I had given serious thought towards my strategy and was confident in it because I knew why I was making the "ridiculous" picks.

Because of my willingness to use a bold strategy, I forced other teams to react to me instead of me reacting to them.

At the end of this draft, my team ended up receiving the highest score on every rating service we checked. While anything can happen this season, I'm in a great spot.

Now I'm not trying to say you should have exclusively individual ideas that you just know are awesome. Quite the opposite - you should definitely run your ideas by others and consider their input voraciously, especially if they have years on you. All of it informs what you do and why.

And while it's easy to say "take risks!", putting it into practice can be far more difficult. It's one thing to take risk in a fantasy football league - quite another to add risk to your professional, business, and personal lives.

But if we are willing to be as bold and purposeful in the rest of our lives as we are in fantasy, Halo, or poker, we would "win" a lot more.

Noone's approached game audio the way Unlock is - but being confident in our research and the reasons why it's a better option for indie and mid-level teams is a huge part of why we're doing it!

Don't discount your thought process, strategy, and instinct. There's a reason you're doing what you do.

Be sure to check out Unlock Audio and grab some free stuff. Want to reach out? hello@unlockaudio.com