Are you always in a hurry? (Stop it now!)
As I write this, it's Monday. It used to be one of the most stressful days of the week, with its impact even stretching into the day before (Sundays) as the looming piles of work, deadlines, and pressure started to kick in. Over the past year, I've been teaching myself to break this cycle and discover ways to make work more enjoyable. It seems like I've made some progress! Here are the tips based on what I've done:
DO LESS
The first thing I started doing when I established my small game company was attempting to handle all the tasks typical of a medium/big company. Social media, sales, marketing, game development, blog writing, creating tutorials, selling Udemy content, teaching in schools, assisting young game developers, consulting startup game studios/companies, managing a family of three kids, spending quality time with friends/family, exercising, and REPEATING!
It doesn't take a planning mastermind to see that it's impossible to manage all of this. You might be able to handle it for a week, or maybe two, and in extreme cases, a couple of months. But eventually, burnout sets in. Burnout isn't a sudden occurrence; it creeps into your life slowly but steadily.
Unfortunately, running a company involves a variety of tasks that you have to manage. While you can hire help for some aspects, budget constraints often limit your options. So, how can you accomplish everything necessary?
If you decide to work alone (or in a small team), consider the size and scope of the tasks you want to focus on, and anticipate the consequences of your actions. Trying to juggle many tasks simultaneously will likely lead to burnout and little progress. The illusion of "getting a lot of things done" is a deathblow to any startup because you spread your time and energy across numerous tasks, making minimal progress on each.
My workdays last five to seven hours. I spend a good amount of time planning my upcoming week on Mondays to make the most of every day. This approach SAVES A LOT OF TIME compared to blindly running around for hours each day. I have a plan for what I want to try out, and I evaluate the potential value of these actions. Admittedly, these evaluations may prove wrong in many cases, but at least I have an idea of what I should do and why.
PLAN CAREFULLY
Planning allows you to save time. Keep your plans simple, so when the time comes, you can focus on actual work rather than figuring out what to do, how, and how long you should spend on each task. (Check out some common design mistakes here)
Need to do some marketing? Reserve one hour for it, do what you can within that time, and move on. You're not supposed to save the world in one day; you just need to make progress, even if it's a little.
With a good plan, you can identify when your work is complete and even get a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Without a plan or daily goal, it's easy to either overwork or lose the feeling of success because there's always something left incomplete at the end of the day.
When Friday (or your chosen end-of-week day) arrives, reflect on your plans and see that you achieved most, if not all, of the week's goals. With that sense of accomplishment, you'll be energized to enter the weekend and take a break from everything. This time off will leave you more pumped up for the next week!
PRIORITIZE EXCERCISE
I used to skip exercise, convinced that I didn't have time for it. My days felt so packed that squeezing in a gym session or a walk/run seemed impossible. After a full workday, I was so exhausted that exercising was the last thing on my mind. It was a never-ending cycle to step into.
The irony is that you're exhausted because of the lack of exercise, but incorporating exercise into your routine would alleviate that exhaustion. When I realized how much energy exercise provides, it became a no-brainer to schedule even that 15 minutes of exercise for each workday. I prefer doing this in the morning to kick off the day or after lunch to avoid post-meal lethargy.
I noticed that in the morning, I often spent those 20-60 minutes just staring at a wall or something similar to wake up. That's the perfect time to force yourself outside and go for a walk, do those ten pushups, stretch or maybe take a cold shower? It awakens you to a whole new level, setting the tone for a better rest of the day.
You don't have to go for a 'blood-sweat-tears' type of training. A casual walk around the neighborhood is enough.
Do not aim for perfection; aim for 'just above enough.'
What does everyone expect from you? As an entrepreneur and independent game developer, the reality is that they expect nothing from you. You're basically thin air for the world.
This is an awesome place to be. You can try out different stuff without the pressure of 'losing your crowd' or tarnishing your brand. You're 100% free (just don't do anything illegal).
When you create something, the natural inclination is to make it as awesome as possible. Creating awesome stuff takes time, and sometimes, it takes way too much time. Always plan your project so that it is theoretically possible to be developed within a short period. If you bite off too much, you'll never get it done and might lose motivation along the way.
Start with projects so small that you can complete them before losing interest. As you learn, you'll be more prepared to scale up and create bigger games. Start small and build up from there! Even if you read this tip, you might still start too big of a project, but I'm telling you: This is the NUMBER ONE reason for almost all developers to fail.
Build your perfect dream game after shipping multiple smaller games; then, go for the big prize! (Here is a tutorial series to learn game development with no-code tools, in case you're interested)
TLDR: CONCLUSION
When you find yourself hurrying with each task and never feel that you have enough time reserved to finalize your work, you are most likely doing it wrong. Aim to reserve enough time for thinking and planning, since in the end, it saves big chunk of your time. Don't feel like so? Try it for couple of weeks and let me know how it worked on Jestercraft Discord channel!
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