Help How to avoid burnout and demotivation?

[Namelesa]

I have been developing a game for a few years now on my own but I am in a cycle of have so much motivation and being so obsessed about it to spend as much time on it as possible to then having no motivation and doing nothing on it. During the obsession period I actually feel okay and that my life has purpose but when demotivation comes back in I become empty and drained and have a strong want to die.

How can I stay in the motivation phase longer or forever? Or should I be more healthy with my work and try and put less time into it each day when I am in the motivation period?

 

[Life_and_Death]

balance.

i cant give you a specific answer, each persons balance is a little different.

but the biggest general advice i can give you is; rest. youre burntout because youre tired on another level.
try not to beat yourself up to bad on the days youre not feeling up to it.
youve done a lot of work, you should be proud of yourself. everyone deserves rest.

 

[Namelesa]

balance.

i cant give you a specific answer, each persons balance is a little different.

but the biggest general advice i can give you is; rest. youre burntout because youre tired on another level.
try not to beat yourself up to bad on the days youre not feeling up to it.
youve done a lot of work, you should be proud of yourself. everyone deserves rest.

Thank you <3 I just find it really hard to do balance. I feel like my autism makes this harder to do cus when I get hyper-fixated on something, I just want to do that specific thing and feel demotivated to do other things.

 

[Electra]

I also think the answer is balance. And not being scared of getting demotivated to do something. Allowing yourself rest and maybe even stop that thing for a bit to regain that interest again.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

You have to find a way to get a balanced life. It seems you like/love what you're doing (developing a game) but keep in mind if you're burnt out when you finish the development of the game you can't enjoy the results. Try to find a balance and don't force yourself to sth when your body signals you should rest for a while.

 

[OnMyLast Legs]

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

 

[Namelesa]

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

You have to force yourself to exercise in the morning.

What's exercise got to do with my motivation with a project on the computer?

 

[OnMyLast Legs]

@Namelesa maybe I should have read OP better, wasn't specific, I just find motivation comes back for everything when I "rev up" my body every day

 

[GlassMoon]

Are you taking small steps, to have a clear sense of achievement? For me, it always feels nice to check off items on my to-do list. It also allows me to pick something simple and feel progress when I can't fully focused.

Have you defined an MVP that you are working towards, or is it an always-moving goal? Are you working with focus on one issue at a time, or do you feel like you work a bit here, and a bit there?

Sorry for the many questions, but that's all I was able to come up with at this time of the day...

 

[Namelesa]

Are you taking small steps, to have a clear sense of achievement? For me, it always feels nice to check off items on my to-do list. It also allows me to pick something simple and feel progress when I can't fully focused.

Have you defined an MVP that you are working towards, or is it an always-moving goal? Are you working with focus on one issue at a time, or do you feel like you work a bit here, and a bit there?

Sorry for the many questions, but that's all I was able to come up with at this time of the day...

I do try and break up what I have to do but I sometimes think of everything there is to do and get overwhelmed with how much is there to do. What's a MVP? The goal does change around a bit whether that causes more or less work to do to achieve it. I sometimes work a bit here, bit there cus I can sometimes get bored with doing one bit of it that I then switch to a different part.

No need to say sorry about asking questions <3

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

I don't know much about game development specifically, but I worked on numerous development projects professionally over the past 15 years. When the business depends on a project, it has to get done on time no matter how organized or motivated people feel and there are numerous tools and methods designed to help.

First projects are broken down into pieces achievable in a reasonable amount of time, like a few hours. You can group pieces together to build a particular feature, and group features together to build bigger pieces of the product. That helps you understand what you're building, and it makes it easier to decide what to work on because it's all laid out already.

Second we had regular meetings to discuss projects, which forces accountability. This is where you set goals for the upcoming week, and an opportunity to show off what you accomplished last week. Even if you don't have anybody else working with you, you still could write it all up in a journal.

Finally we always tried to assign work to teams, even if small, like 2 people. If you can find someone to work with it will help keep the ball rolling. It also brings in different perspectives and skillsets.

 

[GlassMoon]

I do try and break up what I have to do but I sometimes think of everything there is to do and get overwhelmed with how much is there to do. What's a MVP? The goal does change around a bit whether that causes more or less work to do to achieve it. I sometimes work a bit here, bit there cus I can sometimes get bored with doing one bit of it that I then switch to a different part.

No need to say sorry about asking questions <3

I also get overwhelmed by too many tasks all the time. Then I dream of how the perfect task management system will solve that... not that that will ever exist in my OCD world
...

The MVP is the minimal viable product which you would be ready to release, or define as done and playable. And once that is reached, you could re-evaluate what the next goal could be.

I can relate to the boring parts also, for me it's however the parts where I get stuck when I realize I did not plan ahead and ran into a dead alley.

Maybe you could intentionally switch between fun and boring parts, and try to get some boring parts done first, I think that's called "eat the frog first".

As for sticking to one part of a project, Kanban could be an option. It basically limits the number of sub-projects that you work on at any given time, leading to quicker results on individual parts and thus a feeling of progress. I'm trying to stick to that for my personal life projects, to make sure I get things done before starting anything new. I keep a list of projects that lasted several weeks or days, and which I continued in spite of delays or other urgent tasks. After my burn-out, my biggest fear is proving once again that I started something that I did not finish in the end...

What's the current state of your game, if I may ask? Can you play it a bit already? What kind of game is it, and which framework are you using?

 

[Namelesa]

I don't know much about game development specifically, but I worked on numerous development projects professionally over the past 15 years. When the business depends on a project, it has to get done on time no matter how organized or motivated people feel and there are numerous tools and methods designed to help.

First projects are broken down into pieces achievable in a reasonable amount of time, like a few hours. You can group pieces together to build a particular feature, and group features together to build bigger pieces of the product. That helps you understand what you're building, and it makes it easier to decide what to work on because it's all laid out already.

Second we had regular meetings to discuss projects, which forces accountability. This is where you set goals for the upcoming week, and an opportunity to show off what you accomplished last week. Even if you don't have anybody else working with you, you still could write it all up in a journal.

Finally we always tried to assign work to teams, even if small, like 2 people. If you can find someone to work with it will help keep the ball rolling. It also brings in different perspectives and skillsets.

thank you <3 I should probably just work on small bits each day instead of just going full obsession over it. Maybe I should show off more on what I am working on as I have mostly kept development details to myself. I do not want to bring another person to work with me cus I just want it to be my own thing and have full creative control over it. I like being able use my wide skillset to make different aspects of the game (coding, modeling, animation, game design, etc) as that makes it less boring.

I also get overwhelmed by too many tasks all the time. Then I dream of how the perfect task management system will solve that... not that that will ever exist in my OCD world
...

The MVP is the minimal viable product which you would be ready to release, or define as done and playable. And once that is reached, you could re-evaluate what the next goal could be.

I can relate to the boring parts also, for me it's however the parts where I get stuck when I realize I did not plan ahead and ran into a dead alley.

Maybe you could intentionally switch between fun and boring parts, and try to get some boring parts done first, I think that's called "eat the frog first".

As for sticking to one part of a project, Kanban could be an option. It basically limits the number of sub-projects that you work on at any given time, leading to quicker results on individual parts and thus a feeling of progress. I'm trying to stick to that for my personal life projects, to make sure I get things done before starting anything new. I keep a list of projects that lasted several weeks or days, and which I continued in spite of delays or other urgent tasks. After my burn-out, my biggest fear is proving once again that I started something that I did not finish in the end...

What's the current state of your game, if I may ask? Can you play it a bit already? What kind of game is it, and which framework are you using?

I don't really find particular things boring, its just that they getting boring as I work on that part. I should probably keep what I am working on to a certain area cus at the moment I am working on multiple areas of the game at once and that's making me feel like there is more to work on than there actually is.

I don't want to say much about the game here in public as I don't want to get cancelled for being on here if the game gets popular (I honestly just want a small audience so its less overwhelming and there being less pressure) but there is a playable demo of it you can download online which include a few areas of it that are going to be included in the full game.

My plan at the moment is to finish the areas that have been started but are unfinished at the moment and when they are done to send a version of this game to playtesters to test it (I haven't given them a updated version of it in like a year) before I work on the last few areas of it and some extra things.

 

[ForgottenAgain]

Oh, another game dev, that's so nice!
I feel like I have practical advice I can give, from the perspective of a professional game programmer but also from the perspective of someone that worked on a personal project for 7 years that had regular users. I really understand the hyper focus, I'm like that as well and I've driven myself dangerously close to burn out in the past.

Making a videogame from scratch as a solo developer requires an enormous will power, patience and resilience. If you're doing work on all those different areas yourself, then it's extra hard to know what to prioritise.

The following advice doesn't take into account any debuffs from being depressed or anything else, it's assuming you're healthy enough to do all these things. See it like the ideal scenario.

Step 1:
If you're not familiar with production in videogames, I'd recommend getting familiar with that a bit as that's the driving force to getting things done. There are several methodologies, at work we usually go for a mix of Agile and Waterfall. I'm not going to teach production as that's not my field, I only know enough to do my job but in essence, this is a crash course of what you should know:

1) Every piece of work should be divided into small executable tasks (e.g. implement the main menu (programming), design the main menu (UX), etc)
2) Every task should have a time estimate (e.g. 4h, 72h, etc. Time estimation is hard, you can only get better by applying estimates and then seeing how far off you were)
3) While you work, you should set a timer so that you know how long you've been working on the task at hand. There are tools for this like EverHour
4) Tasks are part of a milestone, a deliverable (e.g. milestone 1 is getting a working prototype of the 1st puzzle in the game)
5) Every task has a category according to MOSCOW (Must, Should, Could, Would be nice). Putting a category in your tasks will help you figure out what is essential and what is just feature creep (e.g. "Implementing the 1st puzzle" is a Must, "Adding audio feedback when the player moves pieces in the 1st puzzle" is a Should)

Having a rough understanding of how to manage your project production-wise will better help you establish how to move forward.
Make use of good tools to manage this! Asana is a good one to check out, Jira as well, but I'm not sure whether it's available for individuals. EverHour has integration with Asana so you can start/stop time tracking from there. If there are too many limitations on the free plan, there are other alternatives to these softwares and also open source ones at Open Source Alternative To...

Step 2:
Adhere to a reasonable schedule. This will the backbone for avoiding burn out and making sure you make the most out of the time you are working. My schedules in the past were usually 9am to 6pm, 1 hour lunch from Monday to Friday, this was because I had finished uni and didn't yet have a job. You'll know best which schedule works for you, the amount of hours doesn't matter, what does matter is that the schedule is reasonable so that it allows for enough sleep, time for relaxation, eating, etc.

When you work extra hours due to hyper focus, make sure to compensate those hours on the next day. So if you work 2 extra hours today, then you should "leave work" 2 hours earlier or start 2 hours later. You can also spread these hours through more than 1 day. Just be strict with compensating the extra time.

Step 3:
Figure out which tasks from which discipline should be done first.
In general, Design needs to come first as the programmer needs to know what to implement. If the game relies on UI heavily, then a UX design may be needed but a programmer should be able to still implement this using dummy UI just to showcase the feature working first and then change the UI once the UX design is complete. So usually the order should be the following:

Design -> Programming -> UX

Step 4:
Do the tasks in the order you created, tracking time against them. If a task is done much earlier than the time estimate, no worries, just keep going to the next task. If one task was severely under estimated, don't change the original estimate, just keep tracking time against it and add comments on the task to register what issues you're encountering and how the progress is going. This is useful for keeping you focused, reminding you of what you tried so far and not discouraging you if something takes too long. Accurate time estimation is hard for everyone but it's very useful to give you an idea of how long a milestone will take to be achieved. It also gives you a ballpark deadline which is good.

----

This is all my general advice. I hope it wasn't too overwhelming...you don't need to follow all of this if you don't want an almost professional game dev work regime, you are more than welcome to take a more relaxed approach since this is your personal project, you can do whatever you want! Just thought it could be worth sharing in case you're looking for a lot more structure. So if you imagine a line where on the left is super relaxed and on the right is super organised, this approach is pretty much all on the right. So from this, you can tweak it to your own needs.

If you ever want some specific advice on anything game dev related, productivity, etc, feel free to send me a DM. I'm always open to talk about this with another creator.

I wish you all the best for your game and congratulations on all you have achieved so far! Those are great achievements, especially for someone working alone, it is super impressive. Also being on this website and achieving that much...truly incredible. I'm super proud of you!

 

[Namelesa]

Oh, another game dev, that's so nice!
I feel like I have practical advice I can give, from the perspective of a professional game programmer but also from the perspective of someone that worked on a personal project for 7 years that had regular users. I really understand the hyper focus, I'm like that as well and I've driven myself dangerously close to burn out in the past.

Making a videogame from scratch as a solo developer requires an enormous will power, patience and resilience. If you're doing work on all those different areas yourself, then it's extra hard to know what to prioritise.

The following advice doesn't take into account any debuffs from being depressed or anything else, it's assuming you're healthy enough to do all these things. See it like the ideal scenario.

Step 1:
If you're not familiar with production in videogames, I'd recommend getting familiar with that a bit as that's the driving force to getting things done. There are several methodologies, at work we usually go for a mix of Agile and Waterfall. I'm not going to teach production as that's not my field, I only know enough to do my job but in essence, this is a crash course of what you should know:

1) Every piece of work should be divided into small executable tasks (e.g. implement the main menu (programming), design the main menu (UX), etc)
2) Every task should have a time estimate (e.g. 4h, 72h, etc. Time estimation is hard, you can only get better by applying estimates and then seeing how far off you were)
3) While you work, you should set a timer so that you know how long you've been working on the task at hand. There are tools for this like EverHour
4) Tasks are part of a milestone, a deliverable (e.g. milestone 1 is getting a working prototype of the 1st puzzle in the game)
5) Every task has a category according to MOSCOW (Must, Should, Could, Would be nice). Putting a category in your tasks will help you figure out what is essential and what is just feature creep (e.g. "Implementing the 1st puzzle" is a Must, "Adding audio feedback when the player moves pieces in the 1st puzzle" is a Should)

Having a rough understanding of how to manage your project production-wise will better help you establish how to move forward.
Make use of good tools to manage this! Asana is a good one to check out, Jira as well, but I'm not sure whether it's available for individuals. EverHour has integration with Asana so you can start/stop time tracking from there. If there are too many limitations on the free plan, there are other alternatives to these softwares and also open source ones at Open Source Alternative To...

Step 2:
Adhere to a reasonable schedule. This will the backbone for avoiding burn out and making sure you make the most out of the time you are working. My schedules in the past were usually 9am to 6pm, 1 hour lunch from Monday to Friday, this was because I had finished uni and didn't yet have a job. You'll know best which schedule works for you, the amount of hours doesn't matter, what does matter is that the schedule is reasonable so that it allows for enough sleep, time for relaxation, eating, etc.

When you work extra hours due to hyper focus, make sure to compensate those hours on the next day. So if you work 2 extra hours today, then you should "leave work" 2 hours earlier or start 2 hours later. You can also spread these hours through more than 1 day. Just be strict with compensating the extra time.

Step 3:
Figure out which tasks from which discipline should be done first.
In general, Design needs to come first as the programmer needs to know what to implement. If the game relies on UI heavily, then a UX design may be needed but a programmer should be able to still implement this using dummy UI just to showcase the feature working first and then change the UI once the UX design is complete. So usually the order should be the following:

Design -> Programming -> UX

Step 4:
Do the tasks in the order you created, tracking time against them. If a task is done much earlier than the time estimate, no worries, just keep going to the next task. If one task was severely under estimated, don't change the original estimate, just keep tracking time against it and add comments on the task to register what issues you're encountering and how the progress is going. This is useful for keeping you focused, reminding you of what you tried so far and not discouraging you if something takes too long. Accurate time estimation is hard for everyone but it's very useful to give you an idea of how long a milestone will take to be achieved. It also gives you a ballpark deadline which is good.

----

This is all my general advice. I hope it wasn't too overwhelming...you don't need to follow all of this if you don't want an almost professional game dev work regime, you are more than welcome to take a more relaxed approach since this is your personal project, you can do whatever you want! Just thought it could be worth sharing in case you're looking for a lot more structure. So if you imagine a line where on the left is super relaxed and on the right is super organised, this approach is pretty much all on the right. So from this, you can tweak it to your own needs.

If you ever want some specific advice on anything game dev related, productivity, etc, feel free to send me a DM. I'm always open to talk about this with another creator.

I wish you all the best for your game and congratulations on all you have achieved so far! Those are great achievements, especially for someone working alone, it is super impressive. Also being on this website and achieving that much...truly incredible. I'm super proud of you!

Thank you so much <3 Don't worry about it being overwhelming, I can read long pieces of text fine. I definitely don't want to want to work with a full on professional way as I feel like that constricts me but thanks for sharing this. I will try to lessen the amount of work I do the next day if I become hyper focused and obsessive one day and try and force myself to do other things. At the moment I will just focus on making this boss for one of the areas of the game. I do have a concrete plan on what I want in my game and for it to be consider finished as a final product. I will put a timer from now on when I am working on a particular thing.

I have used game development as a way of coping with life especially when I can't rely on a person either cus they are not available or abandoned me so it has helped cope with my mental illnesses as well as not helped when I get demotivated as I become empty, depressed and suicidal again. Thank you so some much for this again <3 Maybe I might to share some of it in DMs later.