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[Alevice]

I have been working like 15 hours a day, and i have somehow found a way to still work on my Starcraft 2 mod every two days, not including design aspects.

[Bood_War]

I think about my game for long periods every day (school), but only get small amounts of work on it done, if any at all (homework).

CURSE YOU AP CALCULUS

[Sorano]

Well, I've just got a daytime game design job. But this is about indie games.

But for my own projects it's been increasingly lackluster productivity wise. 3D, writing and game design included.

[guillermo]

Every day. I used to skip a day (or many) of work if I didn't "feel inspired enough", but I'm gonna tell you right here, and right now that's BULLSHIT.

You gotta work everyday. If you are a one man team and don't feel like making graphics, code, or design levels, but do something!

I would go as far as saying that if you don't feel "inspired", work anyways! Even if later you gotta do again what you did uninspired. That's better than not doing anything. If you allow yourself to fail one single day you are allowing yourself to fail forever. You are doomed! Iron will, motherfuckers 

[bento_smile]

I would second guillermo... but would add to make sure to take weekends!  (I feel burnt out after 6 days straight, so can't work every day. Actually, I quite like working 2 days, taking 1 off, working 3 days, taking 1 off...)

[Paul Eres]

i also agree with that, i worked even on my birthday and on last christmas day

[Montoli]

I would second guillermo... but would add to make sure to take weekends!  (I feel burnt out after 6 days straight, so can't work every day. Actually, I quite like working 2 days, taking 1 off, working 3 days, taking 1 off...)

Yeah, I found out the hard way that skipping weekends, even on personal projects, is a good way to get burnt out and spend a day or two later staring at the monitor wondering why I can't get anything done.  Days off are essential!  Both for preventing burnout, and for helping reset your perspective, since of you stare at anything for too long, you start to lose a bit of objectivity.

Of course some people I know swear by the 7-day week, and don't seem to hit the burnout, so it's probably different for different people.

[moi]

i also agree with that, i worked even on my birthday and on last christmas day

Ow man, birthday, christmas and new years eve are the best times to code. When you are wondering if you shouldn't be dressing up and partying instead of doing that shit alone in your room, that's when you feel suddenly quietly inspired.

[Paul Eres]

akira kurosawa reportedly only took a single day off in his life from working on movies, the day his wife died. but the next day, it was back to work.

[TeeGee]

I've got a game dev job and then I try to work on ArcMagi at least a bit each day, so every day.

[Xion]

short bursts with lots of nothing, but sometimes those short bursts are pretty long (a month or two). generally the nothing is always longer though.

mostly I blame poor time management and refreshing tigsource every few minutes.

[Player Ʒ]

I usually try to whenever I can. Sadly, that would be once homework is out of the way, and even worse, that's not even for a whole week. Perfect for halloween would be that a twelve page essay is a part of the homework.

Curseth ye, complicated classes!

[st33d]

It's my day job.

I'm not sure the poll takes that into account.

[flavio]

Every day. How we can live without gamedev?

[KM]

I think a mistake being made it here is assuming that game dev is a simplistic task when relating to doing it every day. SInce game dev includes multiple complex tasks like art, coding, music etc. So what actually is going on is you're taking breaks everyday, just from different parts of the game dev process as chances are you're not doing brain storming, documentation, coding, art, music, optimization, play testing, SFX, and/or various business stuff everyday.

In most cases people are gonna get burned out doing simplistic definable tasks, kind of like eating the exact same food everyday, but how many people do you know of that get sick of eating when it's multiple kinds of food?

So in retrospect, it seems like diversity is the key to not getting burned out. And it's probably good for your creativity too that you take breaks as it can give you a clear mind or a different view.

There's nothing wrong with taking breaks, at one point in life I was playing guitar so much that I literally damaged muscles in both my arms to the point I couldn't open a pop can without help. 2.5 months of not playing the guitar later, I actually became a better player automatically as I had taken that break.

Quanity is also another factor, hard to get sick of something if you do it in small quanities if you enjoy doing it, but this probably has more to do with diversity than anything.

I tend to work in very short bursts of 3-4 months when I do something, then I take a break, if it's worth it, I'll pick it up again in the near future.