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[True Valhalla]

Hey everyone. This morning I wrote an article called "Breaking Bad Indie Habits". It kind of details some of the changes I had to make during my transition from a hobbyist developer to a self-employed full-time indie.

I'm pretty new to blogging, and spent around 4 hours on the article.

Would anyone be able to provide feedback/opinion/critique?

The link (bitly for click metrics): http://bit.ly/INdiE
Or: http://www.truevalhalla.com/blog/?p=284

Thanks, and I hope it's a decent read.

[James Coote]

Well presented and split up into reasonable sized sections, with pictures to visually break up the wall of text. Also has hyperlinks so people can follow what you reference if they wish. Not that I'm an expert on writing blogs myself

You have to extend the disciplined routine a step further than you suggest I think.

Although I currently work 8 hours a day, starting at 9am, I find sometimes I lose whole days. Like someone will say "Oh, I'm in London on Wednesday, and I'm heading to the art gallery. Want to come?" And that's bye bye Wednesday. And having a whole day's break every two or three days means I'm less productive than if I work 5 days, then take the next two off.

[True Valhalla]

My site is back online. Sorry about the downtime, that was awful timing.

@James, Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree with your last paragraph...I find myself doing this quite often when a friend wants to go to lunch or the movies. Since I always have free-time it's hard to say "no". I would have mentioned it but the problem is I don't know how to avoid it myself, beyond harnessing free-will that is beyond exhausted by that point 

[bateleur]

Good article, thanks for writing it.

My experiences haven't quite matched yours. In particular, physcially removing what you call "distractions" is treating the symptoms but not the cause. If you are, for example, playing video games during your work time you need to think properly about your motivations and behaviour. If you're finding your unconscious impulse is to ignore your work and just play all day then taking away all the toys may fix the problem in a symptomatic sense, but you risk ending up just as depressed as if you had an office job (or maybe more so if you're the kind of person who misses the company).

Game development should be fun. If it's not actually fun, you might want to fix that.

[True Valhalla]

Game development is enjoyable for me still, but like every job it is work in the end. However I'm at a point where I have to makes games for 8+ hours a day so it does get stretched beyond a hobby, and becomes less fun.

But, I'm still very much enjoying where I'm at currently. I'm relaxed, having a blast, and relatively distraction-free!

If I get sick of what I'm doing, I can always shake things up whenever I like. I try to keep side-projects for that exact scenario.

[Moczan]

I also think that forcing outside motivation and removing all entertainment that got you into making games is not way to go. It's sad that you are in position where you are forced to work 8+ hours cause it will only hurt you in the long run.

[RudyTheDev]

It's sad that you are in position where you are forced to work 8+ hours cause it will only hurt you in the long run.

I don't think it will necessarily hurt most people to work 8 hours/day. After all, 8 hours is just a regular work day for those with "real" jobs (and that's without commutes and such). Would it really adversely affect someone in the long run? It was my impression most indies spend even more time than that.

[True Valhalla]

I also think that forcing outside motivation and removing all entertainment that got you into making games is not way to go. It's sad that you are in position where you are forced to work 8+ hours cause it will only hurt you in the long run.

This article is very much based on just what works for me. I know my own personality well, and tailored my transition from hobbyist to self-employed indie very specifically to my own situation.

Forcing myself to work 8+ hours a day might sound bad, but really it's exactly what I need to be any kind of successful. I don't expect that just because I make games for a living that every day will be enjoyable...it's just more enjoyable than other jobs

I've been doing this full-time for 4 months now, and I still enjoy working on games.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

It's sad that you are in position where you are forced to work 8+ hours cause it will only hurt you in the long run.

I don't think it will necessarily hurt most people to work 8 hours/day. After all, 8 hours is just a regular work day for those with "real" jobs (and that's without commutes and such). Would it really adversely affect someone in the long run? It was my impression most indies spend even more time than that.

actually, 8 hours *isn't* normal for people who work 8 hours a day. they have lunch breaks. they often don't work every single minute of that time, often having breaks for meetings or goofing off on the job. there was a study that measured actual work in the typical 8 hour workday / 40 hour workweek, and they found something like only two and a half hours of actual work got done, the rest of the day, even for *salaried employees* was wasted on distractions, breaks, periods where they did nothing and stretched or went to the bathroom or drank coffee, travel time, walking between rooms, time spent socializing with other co-workers, time spent staring off blankly into space, etc.

so it really depends on how an indie measures "working 8 hours". i feel it's impossible, long-term, to work 8 hours a day without breaks or distractions of some kind. if it's impossible even for those being paid for it, so how would it be possible at home when nobody is watching you?

also, valhalla, working 4 months at 8 hours a day certainly is doable, but is it doable long term? could you do 30 years of it? you might "burn out" after a number of years. i've found that about 3-5 hours works best for me, any more than that and the quality of my work suffers. i don't force myself to only work 5 hours a day if i'm feeling particularly motivated, but i don't feel bad if i only do 3 hours a day either. three *good* hours a day is still more work than most people who have a salaried job do (since those actually average two and a half hours of real work per day)

for time management i suggest the pomodoro technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique -- it breaks time up into short 25-minute chunks that must be uninterrupted or they count as void. it trains you to avoid interruptions and to focus, as well as to organize your time

another issue is that in the long-term, in creative fields like game design, nobody cares how hard you work, they care only about the quality of what you produce. take writers: if you're a writer and work hard you can release a new novel every year. and some writers do that. but when they're dead, most of their average or bad novels are forgotten, they're remembered only for their one or two best novels. and even while they're alive, 90% of their income will come from their one or two most popular novels, not from the vast body of their work. people read philip k. dick because of a scanner darkly and do androids dream of electric sheep, and a couple of other stories and novels, not for the man who japed, dr. futurity, humpty dumpty in oakland, or for most of his 44 novels. except for hardcore pkd fans, nobody has read all 44 of his novels. i feel it's more important long-term to ensure that what you do is top quality (without being so much of a perfectionist that it's never released) than that you create a lot of stuff or that you get it done fast

also keep in mind that indies tend to work on their game every day, not just five days a week the way that people who work at a salaried job do. if you work 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, that's almost as many hours as 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. i feel that the habit of working on your game every day of the week (even weekends) is pretty important to keep the momentum of a game going, and if you work every single day rather than only some days, time adds up differently (40/7 is 5.7, so if you want to work 40 hours a week you only need to work 5 hours and 45 minutes every day)

regarding distractions, i find that if you take more breaks (intentionally) you have fewer unintentional distractions. if you are conscious of what is work time and what is break time, and know that break time is coming up very soon (less than 25 minutes away at all times), you don't get as distracted. but also important is that if you are conscious of break time, and conscious of every distraction (through the pomodoro technique), you realize that a lot of distractions aren't worth your time. after i started using that technique, i found that i had just as much time not working as before, but the time i didn't spend working was spent better: my break times were spent reading good books and playing great games rather than reading internet articles or watching youtube, for example

[jack_norton]

If I compare to how much I was working in a office before, now I work much more, but in a different way.
Now in practice I'm 10h/day on my indie business, but I don't CODE for 8h! I code probably 2-3h a day. The rest is spent brainstorming, testing, playing games (because is necessary to get new ideas / stay up with the news) and coordinating other people.
Now it might seem easy but in reality is stressing because you never actually pull the plug from the job (at least, that's what I do, other indies might be able to take break and long holidays, I don't know).

[eyeliner]

actually, 8 hours *isn't* normal for people who work 8 hours a day. they have lunch breaks. they often don't work every single minute of that time, often having breaks for meetings or goofing off on the job. there was a study that measured actual work in the typical 8 hour workday / 40 hour workweek, and they found something like only two and a half hours of actual work got done, the rest of the day, even for *salaried employees* was wasted on distractions, breaks, periods where they did nothing and stretched or went to the bathroom or drank coffee, etc.

It hugely depends on each person's willpower and stamina. I used to work from home for a while, translating, and I worked 8 hours a day. I timed it, but translation is a mother of a task, specially when you have great chunks of text that don't particularly interest you. Of course, I burned out quite fast, but mostly because of the subject (I  like translation, actually, but not all texts).

so it really depends on how an indie measures "working 8 hours". i feel it's impossible to work 8 hours without breaks or distractions of some kind. if it's impossible even for those being paid for it, so how would it be possible at home when nobody is watching you?

I believe that the workers are legally entitled to a break. Not sure in america land, but in my country they are.

also, valhalla, working 4 months at 8 hours a day certainly is doable, but is it doable long term? could you do 30 years of it? you might "burn out" after a number of years. i've found that about 3-5 hours works best for me, any more than that and the quality of my work suffers. i don't force myself to only work 5 hours a day if i'm feeling particularly motivated, but i don't feel bad if i only do 3 hours a day either. three *good* hours a day is still more work than most people who have a salaried job do (since those actually average two and a half hours of real work per day)

You forget vacations, holidays, weekends and other days, you don't work. You don't have to slug through all days from nine to five.

for time management i suggest the pomodoro technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

That is not practical, because your task might not be possible to complete in a day, then what happens? You keep expanding the breaks and mess up a day? Quite a complicated system. I'd say that it would be better establishing a goal and work on it inside a realistic time-frame decided by you.

another issue is that in the long-term, in creative fields like game design, nobody cares how hard you work, they care only about the quality of what you produce. take writers: if you're a writer and work hard you can release a new novel every year. and some writers do that. but when they're dead, most of their average or bad novels are forgotten, they're remembered only for their one or two best novels. and even while they're alive, 90% of their income will come from their one or two most popular novels, not from the vast body of their work. people read philip k. dick because of a scanner darkly and do androids dream of electric sheep, and a couple of other stories and novels, not for the man who japed, dr. futurity, humpty dumpty in oakland, or for most of his 44 novels. i feel it's more important long-term to ensure that what you do is top quality (without being so much of a perfectionist that it's never released) than that you create a lot of stuff or that you get it done fast

Not a truism per se, but basically true. Quality over quantity.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'm not sure you're representing the pomodoro technique correctly -- where did you get the idea that you are limited to one task per day? i don't see anything about that in the article. basically all it's saying is to work in 25 minute bursts and take 5 minute breaks between them, and fully concentrate when you are working, without doing anything else, and fully rest when you are resting, without doing any work. one task might fit into one (or less than one) 25-min period, or it might take a hundred or a thousand 25-min periods, depending on the complexity of the task. it recommends that you break up complex tasks into bite-sized pieces as much as possible, but it doesn't say anything about only doing one task a day at all

so i don't see it as a complicated system, it's actually extremely simple (you can explain it in a few minutes to someone). i watched a 5 minute video about the idea and used it to great effect right away

[eyeliner]

Ok, let's go to a practical examlpe:

Setting a random generated, err... level. I don't know the first thing about it (I really don't). My task would be it. I can already see that I'd have quite a hard time dealing with it, and I can guarantee I couldn't make it up in a day.

How does this technique apply in a case such as this? I'm ignorant in this method, by the way. I just see it as hard to apply it in long tasks.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

again: where does it say in the technique that you have to do it in a day? it might take several days or a week, but each work day will be divided up into 25 minute periods of work and 5 minute rest periods

[eyeliner]

Ok, seems worthy to check out. I was under the belief that this was more applied to a task, to be resolved in a succession of breaks/work cycles uninterrupted by sleep.

My bad.

[TeeGee]

I like the article, but I too work differently. One of the reasons I went full-time indie was precisely to escape the routine of working 8-9 hours a day, and to have more time for hobbies and fun.

I have set a very simple set of rules for myself, mostly flexible:

- I wake relatively early. I don't have to start working right away, but I like to take the most of each day. I also don't want to turn into the stereotypical freelancer type who wakes up at 1pm and spends the day in boxers.

- Though, if I'm tired, hangover, have worked all night, etc., I don't feel bad about sleeping as much as I want.

- I make sure I have a very clear list of things that need to be done for the current milestone and the game as a whole. I find it hard to start working if I don't have a clear idea what should I focus on.

- I work precisely for as long as I can. If I start to notice I'm getting distracted easily, if I check facebook too often, or stare at the wall, I just call it a day. Pretending I'm working accomplishes nothing and only makes me more tired. On the other hand, If I'm excited for some feature and could code for 16 hours straight, I do so. I generally try to work in tune with my natural activity and creativity levels.

- If I need to get something boring or tedious done, or if I'm tired but can't miss a deadline. I set myself some attainable goal at the start of each day. For instance: "Today I'm going to implement two levels." Then I work for as long as it's necessary to reach that goal. If it takes just a few hours, lucky me. If it takes 8+, too bad, it had to be done at some point anyway. I make sure to do it everyday until the milestone is complete.

- If I have a cool game I'd rather play for the whole day, or if the weather calls for a bike trip, or if a buddy asks me out for a couple of beers -- work can wait. One of the advantages of being indie is that I don't need to limit myself to normal working hours or week days. What I don't do now can be moved to Sunday evening, and I will be happier that way.

- One thing I dropped, though, are stupid internet procrastination habits, like visiting "humor" websites or checking news portals compulsively. I needed them to get through my day in an office job, but they serve no purpose for me now. They are not really funny or important, and if I'm to slack off, I prefer to do it on a forum, where I can at least get some knowledge and motivation.

- If I feel burned out, or find myself unable to relax after the work day is over, I change the environment by working from a cafe or a bookstore. Make it easier to separate work time from fun time.

Worked for me for the past year and a half, though obviously everyone is different.

[Galaxy613]

One thing I've found is, sometimes music is actually a hinderance. It either has to be music you are really really familiar with and just fades into the background for you or just becomes another distraction, especially on high-focus tasks like figuring out programming problems.

[Moczan]

As for Pomodoro technique I found out that I work much better extending both time frames. 25 minutes breaks your 'zone' too often, while 5 minutes is too short to do anything that will feel like a break. I tend to for example work on a task 1.5-2h and than play one Starcraft match. So I get rid of the 'zone-breaking' alarm and strict time frames, and set myself task-reward chain. If I get into the zone for 3h accidentally, nothing will destroy that, and that's the time I get the most work done in.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

- I wake relatively early. I don't have to start working right away, but I like to take the most of each day. I also don't want to turn into the stereotypical freelancer type who wakes up at 1pm and spends the day in boxers.

in my case i have a lot of noise from family / neighbors / outside my window during the day, so i find it's easier to sleep during the day and work at evening / night. if it were quiet during the day i'd probably work during the day but because it's so noisy during the day i find working during the evening/night is a necessity, which often means staying up late (i usually stay up to around 2am and wake up around 9am)

- If I need to get something boring or tedious done, or if I'm tired but can't miss a deadline. I set myself some attainable goal at the start of each day. For instance: "Today I'm going to implement two levels." Then I work for as long as it's necessary to reach that goal. If it takes just a few hours, lucky me. If it takes 8+, too bad, it had to be done at some point anyway. I make sure to do it everyday until the milestone is complete.

sounds like a form of timeboxing. i find it hard to predict what is attainable in a day sometimes. for instance, the time it takes to fix a bug can vary between 5 minutes to weeks. same thing for some balancing issues. or coding things i've never coded before (for instance, back when i wanted to get text scrolling working with correct jumps to the next line, if you remember that problem, it took me about a week to solve something that i thought was a trivial issue). for a lot of tasks i can predict how long it'd take but for a lot i can't, but i like this idea and should try it (i've tried something like it before but not on the "day" level as you describe it, mainly on the "week" or "month" level)

[True Valhalla]

It would be hellish to quote all the individual comments I'd like to reply to, so I'll talk generally.

@Paul, I find breaks are definitely a requirement to get through an 8 hour work day. I take a 5 minute break every hour, and I take Sundays off completely. At the end of each day I also have a long break, of 3-4 hours where I watch TV, view news, or post on forums. So my work cycle is scattered with break periods of varying size (again tailored to what works for me). While a 5 minute break might not be enough for some people, I just get restless if it's longer.

If the quality of my work does suffer, then I will not hesitate to take a day off. Maintaining quality is always better than maintaining a routine. I'm also not perfect: I do break my routine occasionally.

I'm not sure if the Pomodoro technique would work well for me, as I do like longer work sessions. I find an hour of work with a 5 minute break is about perfect for me. It does encourage distraction-free work which I'm all for, though. I understand the appeal in the technique.

@TeeGee, I personally like waking early, but it's been far too cold in the mornings here so that hasn't been a possibility. I noticed my productivity has dropped since Winter kicked in. At night I'm no where near as productive as during the day.

I like the way you work in general.

@Galaxy, I always make sure the music I play in the background is suitable for the task. I don't play metal or dubstep when I'm trying to code procedural generation, it's too distracting! But I do play a mix of the Oblivion OST and Guild Wars OST when working on my ORPG Myriad Online. So it's about finding what is suitable for the task at hand.

Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone.