Working my way through lecture 17 “Clear your Cache”, and I must say, I found my list of things I’m putting off to keep growing. And most of those things aren’t the kind of thing that I can finish in a day. In the end I put an item to the end of the list just to have something that I can actually finish today, something that I’ve been putting off, but only for a few days. Just wondering if I’m the only one.
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Hey Ben,
Good to see you here again, feels like it’s been ages! In a related note, I still follow your email updates/blog posts regarding your project with great interest and really enjoy seeing the progress you are making.
Regarding the ever growing list of things you’re putting off, maybe it would be worth spending a little bit of time looking at that list and thinking about the reasons why they are put off. I’m not sure if they all relate to your project, but if they did, I would guess there could be a number of reasons, things like;
* “woah, that’ll be a massive change, I’ll come back to that later”
* “I’m not sure yet how to tackle that, I’ll come back to that later”
* “This bit needs doing first, I can’t do that until this is done, I’ll come back to that later”
* “I need to do that, but it’s going to be a nightmare, but I could add some extra bits here now, this is kinda fun”
I know I have done that, and more, on projects in the past, ironically, some of the things I actually put off were never as bad or as hard as I actually imagined they were going to be. It was often hard to not just keeping adding more and more to the feature I was working on, even though it wasn’t part of the initial scope, just because I was actually enjoying it, and because I was enjoying it, doing more on that was rewarding - as opposed to that long list of other stuff over there.
So, whether it’s normal or not I can’t say, but I can say that I have been and often still am there with you 
Perhaps taking a look at the reasons why you have put these things off could be a worthy exercise, that in itself is actually taking a step closer to doing them. Perhaps you might find a pattern in the reasons which will help you work out a way to tackle them? Noddy example, but lets say these were mainly categorised as “not fun” tasks, perhaps a way to approach that situation would be to commit to doing just one of those “not fun” tasks each day, but doing it first? Or, perhaps committing to just one of those tasks but on Wednesday mornings for example.
Again, if these are things relating to your project, perhaps they are just too big and need breaking down into smaller component parts, whilst this may add to the list of things from a quantity perspective, each thing would then be smaller and hopefully easier to grab a hold of and tackle in the one day.
Just some thoughts, oh, and well done on the item that you had put off for a few days but did tackle today!
I guess a lot of the things on my list aren’t so much things I’m putting of as they are things that I don’t have time for at the moment. They are things that if I had more time I’d love to do, and frequently annoy me, but they never seem as important as whatever I’m working on at the moment. For instance, there’s a few issues with the cloud system that I would love to fix, but I’ve just never had the time to do so. Hmmm, will think on it some more, but thanks for the thoughts.
For instance, there’s a few issues with the cloud system that I would love to fix, but I’ve just never had the time to do so.
I guess with your project you are kinda only accountable to yourself, so if you don’t have a specific “by this date I will have this done and my game will do these things” outlined, then you can just keep altering direction a bit as you want to.
Whilst you mention about having an alpha release by the end of the year, do you at the moment increment version numbers or anything? If not, you could set yourself a fortnightly target, something like;
“By the 14th February, I will complete version 0.0.0.26 and I will have resolved the [insert cloud issues here] with the cloud system”
They may only be your releases, e.g. not for anyone else, but it may help put a bit of a framework around the start/end of features and then if you spot other stuff along the way that relates to that, it could go on the backlog for that specific feature, which could then be incorporated into another fortnightly iteration.
You’re probably already doing loads of this stuff so I’ll pipe down now… sorry, just get excited seeing projects like yours that are really coming along… hehe…
Well, I’m prioritizing things that will let me know as early as I can if the project is going to be worth it.
I don’t really have a version number, they are kind of arbitrary. But what I do have, largely as a result of this class, is a set of major milestones that I’m going for. I will squeeze in a few smaller things that are somewhat related into each one too.
For instance, my next milestone is to get my economy working well, including determining how much of a particular good to produce, how much a population will consume at any one moment, how much they can create, etc. I’m going to try and squeeze in a few things like the ability to negotiate that seem like good fits to making fun, but they are lower priority.
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I don’t find it abnormal at all, when it comes to personal projects. Work projects, of course, are another matter. I like to use the //TODO feature, and then sometimes tag that TODO with “Important” or “Maybe” or “If I’m bored”… because sometimes I’ll have a hairbrained idea while I’m on a task, and later, that idea doesn’t seem so important anymore.
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Great idea about those versions, thanks!
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You’re certainly not the only one! I’m tackling my immense to-do, to-check and to-read lists as we speak.
Almost there now!
Putting on some good active music while going trough a large amount of notes and info works for me to get it done faster.
Great conversation and input guys.
Ben - the goal here is to not feel bad about your list, even if there are 100 things on there and a new 10 each week. The point is to consciously acknowledge when (or if) something will get done and if you can see very well that you’re not going to get to something in the next, say, 6 months, then you dont need to keep reminding yourself that its not getting done.
The other main point is to find those things that have been bugging you and slowly chip away at getting some of them done, especially the ones which dont take a lot of time but might have some other mental barrier to doing them. The term “putting off” is deliberately loaded… it means that you’ve been bumping it off your priority list, despite you feeling that its important.
Keep at it!
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