Every few months I embark on a new schedule to make myself work. It always lasts a couple weeks, then sorta fades away (unless some big interruption happens, like a holiday or a trip - then it just drops dead). I always really enjoy it though, especially making up the schedule, which is quite entertaining, putting things in boxes and all. I'm messy and lazy, but I love organization and planning. It's fun.
This latest schedule was started this Monday. I include categories for all kinds of things, not just working on games, for a couple of reasons. Foremost is that I very rarely do any work on marketing or the website or other business things, so by scheduling time for that, I make sure I actually end up doing some. Secondly, I schedule time for other things that aren't business, like chores, playing around with Fruity Loops (my music program), time set aside for "Art" (without requiring what the art is for), and for "Fun Read" (reading fiction) and "Work Read" (reading stuff that will help me in work or in life), and others. I schedule these because if I am left to my own devices, I will just take the path of least resistance: programming and art on a game for 6 hours or so (heavily interspersed with mind-boggling amounts of web-surfing), then crashing and watching TV or playing games the rest of the day. It hurts my overall energy level, probably hurts my productivity, and means I never actually
do anything but work and laze about. So scheduling these other activities, which I enjoy but never do, keeps me ... I don't know, more a part of the world or something. Makes me more complete. It's too easy to just lounge around, life is better with a little challenge. I don't know how challenging reading fiction is, but if I don't schedule it, I never make time for it.
So, this schedule is being pretty fun. One thing I got done is visible atop your browser - the pages now have good titles instead of all being called "Hamumu Software: Dumb Games For Your PC" (the home page is still titled that). I also contacted a site about advertising, finished the Supreme patch pretty much (coming soon!), and actually did a chore or two, which may be a record. So it's good. I actually only have 10 hours of the week scheduled for game development (plus 2 more hours for updating old games and 5 hours for working on board games), which is probably much too low, but it's the right thing for now - I haven't started in on a new game yet, and I'm just using that time to patch Supreme. I don't consider the schedule set in stone or anything, it'll change when needed, and it's good that I'm putting effort into some other directions of my life. When I'm in the middle of serious game development, I'll up it to 3-4 hours a day or so (and when I get really into it, I'll be doing it in my off-hours too). If this schedule lasts that long! It has to make it through Christmas and New Year's!
Journals are boring, huh?
