Motivation

One of the biggest challenges set forth for developers when they are working on "side projects" is motivation. You know, you get 20 minutes here and there to learn a new element of your platform, or to go write some code for your game. The hardest part of this is getting motivated to put aside all the other distractions or work that you might do and just sit down and GTD. (Get Things Done) For me the turning point has been watching my daughter win Girls Make Games and get to go on an internship at Microsoft.

I see her at the start of her career and realize that there will always be that "next thing to do" at work, or some other game to play or distraction to click on, but if I want to make a difference, tell a story, or actually build something that other people would ever actually try out, then I need to do it NOW. No more delays, or excuses. I spent a long time in "platform paralysis" where I was trying to decide what game engine to use, or IDE, or whatever. Every one of those frameworks wants to lock you and and keep you separate so that you'll spend money only on their stuff.

However there are no perfect engines, or perfect frameworks. At some point you just have to pick a horse and place your bets. So I believe I found the right one, but now I just have to get motivated. And to do that you have to set goals - small achievable ones that you can pick up at any time.

Having these goals will allow you to stay disciplined and make incremental progress. I'm hoping to use this Hashnode site to document my progress in learning and building games with Defold. Today my goal is to get through the first tutorial. You can find the link to that here.

Motivation comes from will. You have to want to do something in order for it to happen. If you are not seeing the time, or opportunity, or somehow you are not getting the things done on your side project that you want, it means that your will to do so is not there. You have to find out if this is something you really want to do. If it is, then you'll be willing to get up at 5am every morning and take that extra couple hours and work on your code. There will be no stopping you!

So, find your motivation, and let your will drive you to succeed.

As for me, I'm making progress on the first tutorial. Once I get it done, I'll post a link on this site to the HTML version.