Introduction:

Previous articles:

• Part 1: Prototyping
• Part 2: Planning and Execution
• Part 3: Staying Motivated

Once again, this article is directed primarily at solo developers and small indie teams but it hopefully contains some interesting tips for everyone.

In the last article we discussed some rather extreme ways to create motivation, passion and determination, but we must be careful when using them. Don't overuse them and please don't try to live your everyday life using those techniques. Think of them as a safety net that will catch you when your natural motivation levels are running unusually low and you need a boost. It's better to fuel yourself with positivity rather than caffeine.

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In this article we'll be looking at time management, rest and ways to generate the highest levels of productivity naturally.

Time Management:

As game developers, and especially solo game develoeprs, time is likely our most precious resource. There's never enough of it and so it's important to use it as wisely as possible.

Solo developers, and members of small indie teams, must wear many hats. We don't have a boss to keep us in line, a weekly paycheck, nor co-workers to keep us motivated. Instead, we must be self-disciplined in our approach to work.

One of the easiest ways to create discipline is by creating a regular work schedule that we can stick to.

The Benefits of a schedule:

• It creates a natural habit to work during work hours.
• It prevents procrastination
• It allows us to monitor productivity and tweak our schedule to maximize it.
• It gives us essential time away from work to rest, unwind and have a regular life
• It helps to create a sustainable work ethic that avoids burnout

Ideally we want a schedule that is as productive as possible. If time is our most precious resource then we don't want to be wasting any of it.

Over the 4 years of my game's development I did a lot of experimentation with schedules and productivity to find the perfect balance. This will vary from person to person, but I'll share the lessons I learned.

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Experimenting with work schedules and productivity:

During early development I was excited by the prospect of my game. I wanted to work on it all day and to a large extent that's what I naively did.

For the first two months I was averaging 60-80 hours of work each week. I felt proud of myself but I was being stupid.

That work load was unsustainable and this soon became apparent. Relatively easy problems soon became intangibly difficult and frustrating to solve. I was tired. My mind was wandering. I was working too much. I was making bad decisions. Motivation levels were dropping. I was wasting precious time.

The 40 hour week:

Over the course of the next few months I experimented with different schedules. Eventually I discovered that the typical 40 hour working week was ideal for me. I'd start at 10am, take a 30 minute break for lunch, and work through until 6pm - 6.30pm.

By 5pm, my natural motivation levels would usually start to waver, but that was fine. I'd use the final hour to make a rough plan of what I'd be doing the following day, write up my daily devlog, answer emails and wrap up any other odd jobs.

Time away from work:

In the evenings I learned it was best to totally switch off from work and not think about it. I had so much work to do, and such limited time, that initially this was difficult for me. I was inexperienced and didn't know better, but after experimentation I discovered that my productivity levels increased if I gave myself a proper break and didn't think about my game in the evenings.

I soon discovered that it was equally important to take weekends off. Productivity levels increased again once I started doing that. Perfect. I wanted to be as productive as possible, but I also wanted to maintain a healthy life outside of work. It was comforting to confirm that the most productive schedule was an even balance of the two.

Regular week long breaks:

The next scheduling lesson I learned was to take regular full weeks off from work. I would take a week off once every three months. This helped to keep motivation up but after monitoring this schedule for the first couple of years I had hunch that it might not be the best.

I would work for 12 weeks and then take a week off, but I found that my productivity from around week 8 onwards was consistently less than during the first few weeks of a work cycle. I would slow down. My eagerness to work would be lower, problems would seem harder and take longer to solve, and I'd find the last couple of hours of each day to be dramatically less productive.

Eventually I discovered, through experimentation, that it was actually better to take a week off closer to every 2 months, rather than 3 months. With the 3 month schedule my productivity in weeks 10-12 was as low as 50% of what it was in weeks 1-6. A little basic math suggested that it would be equally productive to work at my full potential over an 8 week schedule rather than push past that and eventually slow down.

Late into my third year of development, I tested the idea and it proved to be true. This was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed my work more. I was more naturally motivated, I did better work, and I found myself with more free time to unwind and enjoy life. It was a win win scenario, and I suggest all solo game devs at least experiment with this schedule.

Short breaks each hour:

Once an hour take a 5-10 minute break. Get up and walk around. Both the exercise and giving your thoughts a break are essential to increasing productivity. I wish more professional working environments realized this.

Concentration becomes increasingly difficult the longer we need to sustain it. I personally found my concentration would start to waver after 45-60 mins, but a quick walk around and a change of scenery would soon fix that and I'd be ready to get stuck in again for another hour.

Regularly moving around helps to prevent back problems and other issues caused by sitting in one position for too long.

Another benefit is that the additional visual and mental stimulous helps us to solve problems. I'd often find myself solving a problem and then planning what I'd be doing for the next hour during those walk-around breaks.

Productivity increases, concentration levels improve, and work becomes easier.

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Sleep:

Don't underestimate how essential getting enough rest and sleep is.

Game development is a taxing process full of problem solving. Solving problems becomes exponentially harder and slower the more tired we become. What would normally be a simple ten minute job can easily turn into a wasted day of going round in circles when we are tired.

If you are genuinely tired it should be your highest priority to fix that as soon as possible. I'd occassionally find myself taking a nap for an hour in the middle of a work day because I knew my increased productivity for the rest of the day would far outweigh that lost hour.

This seems like fairly obvious advice, along with eating well and taking care of ourselves, but I would be remiss not to stress it in an article like this.

You will hear this same advice everywhere but that's because it's essential: lead a healthy lifestyle.

If you aren't resting properly, and taking care of yourself, you are making both work and life considerably harder than they need to be.

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Avoiding Burnout:

If this article had been written in a different order, the discussion around burnout could be a much longer one but by creating a sustainable schedule we've all but eliminated the possibility of burnout.

Burnout is essentially nothing more than over working. The further we push ourselves past our natural limits the more rest we will need to recover. Push too far, for too long, and we can break. It's not worth it.

If you burnout, you'll feel terrible and assossiate all of those terrible feelings with working on your game. This can be so severe that you may never want to go near your game again. Avoid burnout at all costs. Never let it happen. It's a game breaker.

I soon learned that even when I was super motivated and eager to work, I should still stop work at a scheduled time. Whenever I continued working enthusiastically into the late evening my energy levels and productivity would invariably suffer over the coming days.

So my advice is stick to your schedule. Even if you are feeling full of energy, it's better to save that energy and enthusiasm for another day. In the long run your productivity will be higher and you'll get more done.

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Time Management and Planning:

We discussed making a master job list in the second article. That list contains the backbone essentials for your game. Stay focussed on completing these in a timely manner.

However, if you are anything like me, you will be constantly dreaming up cool new ideas that would improve your game. They can come at any time but if we were to implement every cool idea then we'd never finish our games.

So, create a list of those ideas. Note them down as they come to you but leave them in your list for now.

New ideas always seem so much better than old ones. It's easy to feel like we must implement a new cool idea immediately but that isn't good time management.

Stick to the job at hand. If you get distracted by a new idea, even if it's something that should definitely be in your game, don't stop what you are doing to implement it. You will only be wasting time if you do that. Note down the new idea but finish what you are working on while it's still fresh in your mind. You'll be more productive that way.

We'll come back to this 'new ideas' list soon.

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Planning what to do next:

After taking a week off, my first job would always be to spend a day planning what I'd be doing over the course of the next few months. I'd make a list of the jobs that I'd like to complete. Then I'd think through those jobs to get rough idea of what the next couple of months would be like. This type of mental preparation is very productive.

To do this I'd start by looking at my master plan list. I'd pick the jobs that made the most sense and add them to a new list. Sometimes there wouldn't be an obvious choice, so I'd simply pick the jobs that I was most enthusiastic about.

I'd also make sure to throw in at least one or two of the more boring or tedious jobs. Nobody enjoys adding things like save-game functionality but eventually it has to be done. Spreading these more tedious jobs out over the course of development prevents the scenario where all the cool stuff is done but we are left with months of tedious boring work at the end. I've heard many tales of game devs quiting because they made that mistake.

Next I'd go through my list of new ideas. This was usually pretty big. I'd scan through the list and there would always be a couple of ideas that stood out from the crowd. Many of the ideas that I'd enthusiastically added in the past would suddenly seem terrible in hindsight, or I'd realize that the time investment required to implement them simply wasn't worth it compared to other better ideas in the list.

Choose the ideas that you believe would improve your game the most compared to the time investment required to implement them. Add those to your job list for the coming couple of months.

Now, you have a rough plan for what you will be doing next. Scan over your list and spend the rest of the day considering each job in turn.

The idea here is to get the mental ball rolling on these new jobs. If we start thinking about them now, we will naturally find ourselves thinking about them again over the coming weeks so that when the time comes to start implementing them, we already have a good idea how we are going to do it.

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Planning Tomorrow:

Here's a similar, simple, but effective routine.

• At the end of each day, spend fifteen minutes planning what you will be doing the next day.
• Consider what jobs you will be doing and what those jobs will entail.
• Make some brief reminder notes and read them again in the morning to kick-start your day.

Doing this has many benefits:

• You get the mental ball rolling
• Ideas and solutions to potential problems will often come to you without any conscious effort during the evening.
• You will be more eager to dive in to work the next day because you are already prepared.
• You do better, more productive, work yet it feels much easier.

I can't recommend this simple routine enough. Try it and you'll immediately see the difference it makes.

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Wrapping Up:

That concludes this series of articles.

Thanks for receiving them so well. I enjoyed writing them and learned a thing or two myself along the way.

My game, NeonXSZ is releasing on Steam on Feb 16th. I'm tremendously proud of the game. All the signs point towards it being successful, but if I have one final piece of advice it's to treat niche gaming genres with caution.

I originally believed that aiming at a smaller niche market would balance out eventual sales due to lack of competition in that space. However, getting your game noticed is already extremely difficult, and getting coverage for a niche game like mine is significantly harder. This has consistently been one of the hardest challenges while making my game.

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Good luck with your own projects, and I hope these articles proved useful.