Need advice about motivation, discipline and focus.

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Hi there!

I come here because I need some perspective about working on personal projects whilst having a day job. First let me give some context:

I’m 22 years old, I’ve been programming since some 6 years, and using Unity since 4 or so. I have a day job in a mobile game company where I use Unity (albeit less than I’d like) and, as many of you here, have a pet project I want to develop in my free time.

But since I started working, I just can’t find the motivation/discipline to put any work on my stuff. This is a problem i’ve been having from some time, but last week was a low point that made me rethink things: Last Monday was a festive day in my country, and I took a day of vacation yesterday. So I had 4 whole days to focus on my personal project. That was the initial plan… yet here I am: It’s Wednesday and I did no meaningful work. I constantly sat in front of the computer and felt I wanted to rest, play or whatever else.

Now what’s worse, I could not rest and enjoy a little vacation either, because I constantly felt guilty of not working on my game. So I ended with no work done, no rest and in a bad mood.

Another problem I have is that I have a really hard time focusing on deliver, I constantly get stuck on details, trying to perfect a particular system or aspect, and the sad truth is that I’ve never shipped a game. I’m positive both problems feed each other back, but I just can’t help myself.

I’m open to hear any opinion, advice, question or whatever. Thanks for reading!

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The thing is, if you spend full working day intellectually thinking and problem solving, after coming back home, your brain wants to rest. So may lead to evening procrastinating. Or doing something more physical for a change.
Maybe you are exhausted, or even burned out.
Or maybe you need small clear steps and goals for your own project?

Better utilize these 4 days, for anything outside IT. These 4 days wont make any difference, if you keep deving., since most projects takes months anyway. But may bring a huge difference, in terms of your mental rest. Get fresh and try to comeback to a project few days later.

I for example took few days break from a computer and focus on house renovation. Refreshed mind, allowed me for better jump start on my projects.

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Have a minimum of 20 minutes everyday. If you sit down and work those 20 minutes its a big chance it will turn into an hour or two. And if it does not 20 minutes are better than zero

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Don’t do projects with complicated AI or mathematically/physically advanced.

Do projects with fast gratification. (one that will not involve a lot of work before things are on screen and working)

Use Mr. Gadget kind of attitude - design project based on what you can get from assetstore.
ex. you bought FPP controller and it is missing functionality you planed to have. Ditch the functionality.

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Yeah that’s something I’ve been trying to do without much success. I will try harder :smile:

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That’s an interesting approach and definitely opposite to what I usually do. I will keep it in mind, thanks!

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Honestly, why do it at all? A hobby is something you should fully enjoy. If you are having a hard time motivating yourself to do, try finding something that you do enjoy and don’t need to force yourself to do. Maybe it is something completely different, maybe it is in games but something more specific like animation, or worldbuilding or UI or something.

It’s not a job or a commitment and no one but you is forcing you to do it. If you aren’t getting joy, don’t give yourself sadness by forcing it. Find the joy in it, or in something else. Folks who have done well at it, and have done if for a long time typically do so, because that can’t stop making games, not the other way around. Most creative endeavours are like that, motivation is rarely an issue, (focus, organization, planning, etc… are stuff that may need to learned/forced). But if you can’t find the motivation to make games… don’t make games. Find what makes you happy.

Spend some time on different areas of your of your project, see if anything specific tickles your noodle. If if does spend time on that and see if brings you joy.

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I agree to some extent, and at 22 with a full time job maybe OP just needs to spend time resting and playing :slight_smile:

However I do think there is a missing piece here: having trouble starting something and enjoying something are not mutually exclusive.

One of my most favourite things to do is play basketball with some friends, but getting off my butt and organising a group to get together and play is often something I can’t be bothered doing. Similarly I find making games very rewarding, both for the end result and in the doing, but I have still had times where I have struggled to start working.

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I honestly believe I enjoy programming and game dev in general, both as a hobby and as a work. Maybe the problem is that I’m conflicting the two, and treating the hobby part of it as, well, a job. I have to reflect on that.

I believe you’re right about spending time on different parts hen I feel overwhelmed or demotivated.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

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You’ve articulated what I feel very well.

All in all its clear that I need some life balance and reflection time to find out what I want to do and why.

Thanks

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When people are having trouble getting something done, the advice is usually to relax, start a routine, do a little bit every day etc. It’s pretty good advice for the most part, but I think that for some people at least, it’s the opposite of what they need to hear.

If all you want to do is to enjoy making games, then by all means just kick back and do whatever gives you a sense of fun. But if you’re goal driven and your goal is to ship a game, I think you need more of a sprint than a marathon. Find something you can do in 3-6 months, plan every week what you’ll be doing and focus on the end goal. Then work, work, work until you have at least done everything in your plan and finished it.

This is how I work best. I can’t stay focused on some long term routine, I need to be always reaching points I’ve never been at before to stay interested. It’s like there’s a cache of motivation every so often, and if you dally it’ll dry up. And then you get to a new level and realize that the sense of excitement and opportunity and renewed motivation you needed was just around the corner.

Everyone’s different, of course. I know that for myself, especially during the beginning of something (where everything is most uncertain and the most investment is wasted) there is absolutely no substitute for an obsessive sprint. Some people get things done by doing a little bit every day, you just have to know yourself well enough to manage your resources and emotions.

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If you work 5 days out of the week then spend a 6th day on your project when able. This way you are always moving forward but not burning yourself out.

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Few suggestions / tips, how I’m managing to still work on the same hobby project for ~3 yrs (on weekends) while maintaining dayjob (5 days a week) (and potentially, some sanity. Although I don’t have any personal life :stuck_out_tongue: ):

  • Don’t work at evening / night.
    This might be individual, but, you’ll be just tired from it, and may loose some hours of sleep as a result.
    Which may ruin your next day. And the results of such work may vary from non-existent to mediocre at best.

  • Split work time. Usually I work on hobby project 4hrs / 8hrs ~12hrs a week.
    This allows to have some free time on Saturday to solve household chores. 10hrs is total fine too.

- Don’t overwork on holidays
This will just lead to the results you’ve described. If you really would like to - limit work time to half, and give yourself some kind of reward for doing it. (Tricking yourself using psychology is fine)
Same applies to vacation days.

- Make tasks / plans while procrastinating.
This may also lead to some productive thinking, and will also reduce that guilt feeling :wink:

And, probably most important one:

  • Its not a sprint, its a marathon.
    Make sure to have some rest in between. Don’t do it, if you don’t want to.
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I think this is absolutely necessary if you’ve never finished a game before. No matter how stupid or simple the game is, the experience of developing end-to-end, from concept to release, is necessary for understanding all the activities needed to finish a project and be satisfied with releasing it into the wild.

If you decide to take on a larger project that will take longer than 6 months, you certainly have to pace yourself, which includes allowing yourself to take breaks to recharge and reset. And then, getting back into things, can sometimes take a bit to build the momentum back up, so smaller steps are necessary to ease back into it, if you’re not immediately reinvigorated with motivation.

A “life hack” I use, is before taking a break, leave yourself plenty of notes where you left off, or if you have the energy, program systems that will make future development easier. Make things easier for your future self, and rely on the progress that your past self has achieved. Leap frog, rinse repeat. It’s very much like working a day, leaving yourself reminders and alerts and alarms for the next day, so that when you wake up from sleep, you have a little bit of guidance how to move forward when you’re completely lost.

Did you need it? Or is it more like you felt like you weren’t sure if you needed it? If it’s more the latter, you have to identify what’s stopping you from tackling on your project and filling it with distractions.

As above, find out why you’re not working on your game. Distracted? Intimidated? The very worst thing you can do is not be in the moment. When you try to rest and relax, you think about working, but on the other hand if you work on your project, you just want to rest and relax. So, you are projecting your mind into a state where your physical body is not currently, and you basically get nothing done.
Distracted or unmotivated? There’s no cure to this other than sitting your ass down and reading/writing code or authoring content, or even designing or just thinking and conceptualizing something actionable. A common indie experience is to build something, realize it doesn’t work, or isn’t fun, and then lose faith in the project. You can either scrap it at that point, or tear down what you built, redesign it and try again and again, and that’s all part of the process.
Intimidated? Then, you need to break your tasks down into bite sized chunks that you can tackle. Write a hello world. Build a cube, attach a script and make it spin in Unity.

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A super important aspect of productivity is making time for breaks. As counter productive as that sounds, if you don’t stop eventually you slow down so much that you may as well have. Unproductive productive time sucks for exactly the reason you described - you don’t get rest and you feel bad about not being productive. It’s worse than if you’d just turned off your workstation and opened a beer. If you notice you’re grinding like that then take conscious note, make a deliberate decision about how you’d rather be spending your time, and if a day away from the computer (or playing someone else’s game) is the answer then cool, do it. Give yourself that permission and stop beating yourself up.

So that’s advice number 1. Make sure you’re acutally getting breaks and rest and variety in your life.

Another important thing is project management. Stopping production so you can plan production also sounds counter productive. Surely the best way to get stuff done is by doing, not talking, right? That’s only true if you know enough to make informed decisions about what to do, how to do it, and so on. At any stage in my work I want to understand a path to get from where I am to some version of “finished”, so that when I complete my current task I know what to do next, the specs it has to meet, and how it fits in with the rest of everything. I know upcoming tasks in reasonable detail, and just broad strokes for long term stuff. I use a task board like Trello to track the state of things, which is also great as a hub for certain team communication.

So that’s advice number 2. Being busy is not the same as getting stuff done. In fact, it’s possible to do work which gives you more work!

And advice number 3 is parroting something @zombiegorilla already said. Maybe the real “issue” is that you don’t actually want to make games at home. If your work is already satisfying your desire for making games then awesome, you’re privileged enough to have a fulfilling job that you actually enjoy. Spend your non-work time doing other things that fulfil you in different ways, and feel good about it.

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Lots of good info on motivation in this video imho:

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I would say that you aren’t sure about your pet project, and since you are perfectionist (I’m too), you don’t want to spend effort and time on something that you may scrap later. You need to rethink your project and ensure whether you really want to see it done, or you just like the idea about it. If you really want to do it, then you will need a plan with all major and little steps to accomplish your project. Use paper for rough plan and then redo it on computer if you want. And after that it will need work. :slight_smile: Also check whether your nutrition is missing some important ingredients. The Sun and the physical activity may help to increase your motivation and efficiency as well.

Today Youtube suggested me a video about this topic, which may include solution(s) for this widespread problem. Besides going to bed before midnight and sleep enough, you can substitute the subject in MCII technique with your problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q4XQpZPvkA

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Thanks to all of you for your answers! Sorry for the delayed answers, I’ve purposefully kept off the forums these last few days to try and cleanse my mind a bit.

This resonates with my way of working so I’m definitely gonna incorporate some of your advice into my future plans. Thanks!

Fortunately, I’ve managed to have a pretty healthy sleep cycle lately. I’m in bed at 11:30 - 12:00 at max and I’m up at 7:00 every day.

I’m definitely gonna incorporate this. I’m thinking about forcing myself to have 1 day (either Saturday or Sunday) out of the PC as much as I can, except maybe to play games. But I’ve realized that looking at a screen with an IDE on it every single day makes weeks disappear and turns everything into an endless stretch that makes me feel drained.

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After a few days thinking bout it, I’d say ‘burnt-out’ and '‘overwhelmed’ would describe it best.

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Thanks for the long, thought-out answer. I will try to keep this in mind from now on, and hopefully the rational part of my brain will overcome the background sense of guilt. And I’m definitely going to educate myself in project management to try and make the most of the hours I have!

Im taking a look into both videos now, thanks!

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