Sometimes its really, really hard to do things. Or a specific thing. You feel overwhelmed by your game, maybe something’s not going right in its development – maybe there’s a task that you’ve been putting off for so long the guilt and shame are weighing you down like a rock the size of Alabama.
What do you do?
You procrastinate. You chat with people. You don’t do the thing you know needs to be done. There’s no hard deadline, right?
That’s how we get into the whole problem of your game never shipping.
That’s bad. Let’s prevent that.
Here’s one strategy I use when all else fails. When I’ve tried and failed to motivate myself. When I’d tried to break it down to small, accomplishable pieces and it still doesn’t feel doable.
Productivity is all about momentum. When you start, its much easier to continue. But starting, boy, starting is hard. So what do you do?
Put one foot in front of the other.
Say you are trying to get started on that game design document you know you should do, but everyone always says it needs to be a zillion pages and have all these details and that just seems ridiculously daunting. Why does making a game have to involve writing a novel, anyway?
Focus on the first step in the sequence of starting that design doc. Repeat the current step in your head, over and over. Focus only on executing this chunk.
“I’m opening a new word doc. I’m opening a new word doc.”
“Okay my word doc is open. Now I’m putting the title: “Game Design Document”.”
“I have a title. Now I am writing the titles of the sections. Just the different sections. A section for Overview. A section for Users. A section for Monetization. Now a section title for Inventory.”
“Okay I’ve got some sections. Doesn’t matter if its all of them or not. Now I’m going to write the first sentence of my overview. I’m going to type “My game is about ____.””
At one point or another, you pick up the momentum to the point where you get interested in the task. You feel happy that you finally started and you have words on a page, yay!
Don’t forget to refocus yourself if you get off track. Just keep repeating the current step over and over in your head.
What’s the first step in a task you’re about to go do? Let me know in the comments.
I suggest it be moving your cursor to the right side of the screen and clicking “Follow”, so you get notifications of new posts straight to your email. 