Question for successful long-term developers

You have to be insane. Very insane. Your success will be inversely proportional to your mental stability.


No, I am not joking.

why are you asking this question in the lounge, home of the procastrinators?

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Original post by Eelco why are you asking this question in the lounge, home of the procastrinators?

I didn't seem to fit in any of the other categories to me. Should it have gone elsewhere?
(I'm also relatively new to these forums and didn't know this was the 'home of the procrastinators')

I keep working on different proyects so when I get fed up with one, I just move to the other, clycling numerous times, never getting anything quite "done", but never really giving up any of the projects.

That's what I do, I dont claim that to be the best way, probably isnt because the time it takes for a single project to get to the Gold stage.

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How do you keep going, especially if you're not getting paid for it?

In my experience most people don't. They project-hop when things start to get tedious and all the interesting problems are solved. I also don't think that there's anything wrong with that for hobby code.

If it's your job then what keeps you motivated is the prospect of being out on the street :). There are people that are either disciplined and/or anal enough to make themselves take things all the way to thier own virtual RTM but like I said, in my experience most don't.

Setting deadlines and forcing yourself to meet them is a good way to keep it going.

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Original post by ApochPiQ You have to be insane. Very insane. Your success will be inversely proportional to your mental stability.

That's the best explanation ever. No, I'm not joking either.

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Original post by CoffeeMug Quote: Original post by ApochPiQ You have to be insane. Very insane. Your success will be inversely proportional to your mental stability. That's the best explanation ever. No, I'm not joking either.

It's also probably the least helpful explanation given so far.

How does "being insane" help me not burn out on my task? And why is not burning out a bad thing?

They're serious about needing to be insane. If you're not now, two weeks of work overload will do it to you. It's much better to lose it beforehand than to break down and burn out in the middle of a project. Sitting and coding for hours and hours on end is not something a reasonably sane person can handle.

Also, from experience on own projects, I've found that my most creative (and effective) code has been written when I start zoning out and acting funny. It's usually accompanied with loud singing to whatever I'm listening to and then dancing when the code runs as it should. Needless to say, I keep the door locked..

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Original post by MobileOak How does "being insane" help me not burn out on my task? And why is not burning out a bad thing?

Zen teachers train their young pupils to express themselves. Two Zen temples each had a child protégé. One child, going to obtain vegetables each morning, would meet the other on the way.

"Where are you going?" asked the one.

"I am going wherever my feet go," the other responded.

This reply puzzled the first child who went to his teacher for help. "Tomorrow morning," the teacher told him, "when you meet that little fellow, ask him the same question. He will give you the same answer, and then you ask him: 'Suppose you have no feet, then where are you going?' That will fix him."

The children met again the following morning.

"Where are you going?" asked the first child.

"I am going wherever the wind blows," answered the other.

This again nonplussed the youngster, who took his defeat to the teacher.

Ask him where he is going if there is no wind," suggested the teacher.

The next day the children met a third time.

"Where are you going?" asked the first child.

"I am going to the market to buy vegetables," the other replied.

I guess I need a better definition for "being insane" then.

Working on an independent project for nearly a year for no money and probably low chance of producing anything noteworthy doens't qualify?

What is "being insane" in this context?

Head over to Help Wanted and check out the Raduprv interview thread. I bet he'll be willing to answer a few questions too.

For me, I always have more than one project going at a time. Each one has to be completely different from the others too. This way I can prioritise on one, but every now and then when I get a bit tired of it, I can change focus for a little while to another problem elsewhere. Works wonders for me.

The only other thing I can say is that it is true, the last 10% takes 90% of the work. So if you are burnt out before the crunch phase, then you are at a big loss!


Marc.

There is no "right-way" to "keep going" ... real job or uni deadlines aside. Since many of us are hobbyists it's mostly for pride and a sense of accomplishment, maybe for a chance at the games industry or just to show Bill who really wears the pants in software development [smile].

However, I would recommend setting deadlines and attempting to meet them. Gives you a sense of purpose, and something tangible to work toward.

*waits for EDI's words of wisdom*

Thanks, I'll check the thread out.

I guess I'm trying to head off a problem before it arrives - I'm not burned out on my current project at the moment, nor do I want to get burned out. It is something that might happen, however, and since I'm kinda the team leader, I'll want to minimize the burn-out time.

You want to maintain a tempo each day and try to stay focused. Don't think about the whole at once, partition it off and think about individual things. The whole will seem huge if you don't do this. Say, you will have to solve 5,000 things in your project. You just keep checking each one off, one by one each day. Then you also kind of have to love this stuff. When I was 10 I got to touch a computer for the first time and I just fell in love with it. It wasn't until 13 years later that I realized that programming was for me. I couldn't afford a computer when I was 10 and later when I bought one I was busy with other hobbies to pursue programming. Later I accidentally ran into QBasic and the rest is history as they say. I don't think you can go into this field if you don't have a passion for it. Certainly, you can't have money be the driving factor because if you don't like programming or burn out you just be miserable. I'm happy when there is just me, the computer and my problems. Then I'm in this little world all by myself and my thoughts. Some people dig that :)

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Original post by ApochPiQ You have to be insane. Very insane. Your success will be inversely proportional to your mental stability. No, I am not joking.

I, for one, have to agree with this, even though it is quite funny whene you read it. You really just have to have an everlasting flame of desire to program! I am not successful 'yet', but I have a good idea where I want to go. I have already have an insane amount of time spent programming over the past few years, and I am fare from getting tired or burnt out.

With that said, "how do I keep going without getting burned out or tired"? 1 word. Motivation. I know what I want to do in life and I know how to accompish it. I will not give up until I have what I want. So, that is my motivation, to go on until I am where I want to be and have what I want to have. However, I am 19, persuing a SE degree, and do not work, so my circumstances are a little different from you. However, the main point is the same.

I noticed how you said you are liking it and hacing fun, but you can still see yourself burning out. Maybe you need to reevalute why you are making the game. If it is just for the hay of it, and not for anything really, then you will find yourself being more suscptible to getting tired. However, let's say you are doing it as one of your life long dreams, then you will go on the motivation of being one of the few peoples that really 'acheive their dreams' before retirment [smile].

Lastly, you could alwasy use more help with the project to cut back on the work load. It sounds that you may be a little overworked right now, so as others have mentioned, you may want to set a tempo that is a little slower so you can achieve your goals, yet not drag out the project too far. As for a new definition of insane - live, eat, drink, sleep programming [lol]. Really though, this best describes me. I am not even employed yet I do easily over 50 hrs worth of programming a 7 day week on average - assuming a normal workload week from college. I just love it, so your mentality on it will also have an effect on how tired you can get.

- Drew

Pace yourself, like a quote from a certain book: Programming a game isn't like the 100 meter dash, it's more like a marathon, the problem with most developers is they try to sprint the marathon and end up being burned out. So set a pace and stick to it.

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Original post by CoffeeMug Quote: Original post by ApochPiQ You have to be insane. Very insane. Your success will be inversely proportional to your mental stability. That's the best explanation ever. No, I'm not joking either.

I work 9am-5.30pm as a software engineer for IBM. I program in Java for 95% of my working day. When I get home I "have to" work on the games project (link in my sig.) that I have quite a significant responsibility in - I program in C++ for most of the evening.

I'm a well balanced individual [grin]. I think. Or last time I had a conversation with myself I convinced myself that I was okay and that it was everyone else that had a problem... [rolleyes].


Seriously though, it's not a useful answer to this thread - but it is relevent. Game programming is very much a "labour of love" - only the best of the best probably get paid a salary that matches the hours they put (or have put) into project(s). The rest of us keep on doing it because of the motivation to do something cool - and something that, in truth, very few people can do.

An interesting aside that I thought of some time ago... If games playing and market penetration keep on increasing as they have done. If games ever hit the elusive "big time", then those with talent like the people on this forum are likely to get a whole lot of respect - maybe in an idealised world, similar to how musicians do... One day I'll have fans, groupies and maybe the occasional death threat/stalker

hth
Jack

Sanity.

Mostly it means doing the activities that maximize one's ability to survive as an animal. We go to work because it pays for natural resources that help us survive. We develop relationships so that we have someone to lean on in times of need. We exercise to stay healthy, read to learn new facts that might be useful for survival or a job, etc, etc.

Insanity, which is required to do unusual things, means doing the opposite. Your mind will tell you that the maximal course of action is not 80hts a week for years on end because the risk/reward is too high. You may never see a dime for your efforts. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost is high. You subconsciously calculate the cost vs the benefits of finishing the project. In the end, your brain determines its just not worth it even if you determine it is.

If you're insane, you don't do this calculation and you are able to work indefinitely without wondering what the big deal is.

This is why people are always looking for sales numbers for indie games and commercial games. They need to feed their brains evidence that there can be a payoff at the end of a large effort.

Procrastination is delay of work to see if a better opportunity cost situation arises. This is probably why programmers like to work at 2am. The opportunity cost in terms of time is high during the day and low at night. At 2am there's no sunlight, its cold outside, everyone else is asleep, stores are closed, etc, so you're not missing much if you're working. Its not until the health costs of being awake a 2am start to take their toll that working at 2am loses its value.

So basically, there has to be a payoff for completing the product. Game developers can underestimate the payoff because they don't include things like IP value, marketing spinoffs, and other profit avenues.

So make a list of overall payoffs: popularity, sales revenue, spinoffs, IP value, notoriety, ease of future contracts, everything.

Then make some short term goals and their short term payoff along with the cost:

bitmap loader: - benefit: have the ability to decode bitmap formats. cost: 4 daylight hours of time.

I guess it all comes down to planning. Planning is necessary to convince the brain that its worth it. That's all there is to it other than actually doing the things that were planned.

Also try to give yourself intermediate payoffs. Its difficult in game development, so take building a house for instance. The payoff for getting the walls up is working out of the wind. Getting the roof up buys you the ability to keep out of the rain. Enclosing the house means that you can stay warm while working on it. Electricity means you don't have to run a generator any more.

For games, the intermediate payoffs probably can't be monetary unless you can sell parts as middleware or art assets (unlikely). You have to equate other things such as web visits or message board posts with money. "Finishing this model will generate 1000 web visits of interest, which may translate into 100 sales."

If you're not doing the project for money (just popularity or fame), then you'll probably figure out at some point that the admiration of gamers is not worth much and quit. Ultimately, if you're not going to make money or make it easier to make money (i.e. get a job), its not worth it and you can't succeed unless insane.