I was just wondering what hours people here put into their games? I have this problem at the moment where every time I do something else like watch tv, or read a newspaper, I feel quilty and self-loathing because I'm not working towards my 'goals'.

I work from home most days each week and find it really hard to enjoy doing other things, like playing PS2, DVD's etc. When I know I've got so much work sitting right there waiting to be done.

Any suggestions?

I can relate to that situation.

When I first went full-time as an indie developer a couple of month back, I placed an unrealistic expectation on myself - I said I will work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Of course this didn't work out, I ended up not sticking to the plan and then felt guilty whenever I wasn't doing any work.

So a few weeks back I changed my workplan. I said, I'll work 8am-6pm from Monday to Friday (with breaks), like a normal job. This works out at roughly 45 hours a week I'm spending working, which is a reasonable amount of time.

Then, in the evenings and weekends, I'll do what I want, i.e. surfing the Internet, playing games, going out etc. I may also do a little work if I feel like it, but I won't feel guilty if I don't.

So far it's worked well. I just make sure I am strict with my daytime work, in which I must do the necessary hours, and then look forward to my free time.

Of course you may not be full-time but even so you can set aside certain days or periods of time for not feeling guilty.

I'm doing this part-time. I've got an 8:30-5:30 job with a 45 minute commute. I've managed to cut back on sleep, so I am typically up to about 1:00 am. However, my sleep schedule doesn't "compress" much past that.

I'd like to work 20 hours a week, but instead I push for 15. I work for about 4-5 hours on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and for about 3-5 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Mondays and Tuesdays I have other evening commitments, so I can only work for 1 or 2 hours (after 11:00). Those are good times for hitting my "quick jobs." OCCASIONALLY I can put in an hour or two late Friday night - but that's "Date Night" with the wife, so that takes priority.

So add that all up, and I average about 15 hours a week, but if I'm really motivated and pushing it I can get 20 (or even beyond).

I also keep a notebook around with me at all times, which I use during my off-clock minutes (like during lunch hour at work) for jotting down ideas, prioritizing task lists, etc. This comes in pretty handy when I start work at night - I can sit down, open up the notebook, and have my tasks already planned out. This is MUCH better than just sitting down, booting up the game, playing it a round or two, and saying, "Gee... what should I do next?"

Thanks for the suggestions, I keep telling myself that rest is as important as work. It's just knowing that there is so much stuff to be done, I can't help but keep working.

The set hours plan is a good one, I even considered buying a £800 laptop to keep just work on, but I don't really think I should be spending that much when I might need it later on.

The idea being that I put dev stuff and only dev stuff on the laptop. Then each day take it to places (i.e. uni library) to do my days work, then come home, put it away and forget about work totally.

Give up the television!

The idiot box is a massive time waster :) If you use tv time to work instead, you'll be amazed how much extra you can get done.

Lots of people watch 3-6 hours of tevee a day. Which ads up to 21-42 hours a week! Now use twenty of those hours for rest/sleep, time with your family or time in the dungeon. Use the other twenty hours on your game.



Have fun!
http://www.holepit.com/

Yep, I get that horrible guilty feeling too. I think that is the biggest problem indies face. Giving yourself targets that are unreasonable, and then feeling guilty for not meeting them.

On a good day, I will work for 6 or 7 hours. Unfortunately, I'm not having as many good days as I would like. A good plan (which I intend to try) is follow Steve's advice and build up to working 8 hours a day.

That's what evens things out for me. The feeling of knowing that I've done a good days work under my own steam outweighs those days when I go to bed and think "What a waste today was".

On the subject of TV, I got rid of mine for a few months. It increased my productivity at the start, but after a while I felt burnt out because I couldn't relax and watch some tat.

Here's to productivity ;)

I find I am much more productive if I accept myself for however much work I get done. I have more bounce in my step the entire day and work much harder and enjoy it more when the time comes. Having "shoulds" in my life kills overall enjoyment and it's even harder to start work than ever.

Of course, I've still got a day job so I don't need to worry about money in the immediate. Things are slow enough early and late in the day I can fit in some work on my game too. Your milage may vary.

I agree with the comments about how TV can be a big time waster.

What currently works for me is to unplug the TV during the week and set up the VCR to record all of my favorite shows to later watch all at once in one sitting.

This way you can skip all the commercials, you only watch the shows you want to watch, but you aren't totally depriving yourself either by getting rid of that source of entertainment altogether.

Currently, I'm only working on indie projects part time - I've got a full time job during the day. I found that I was usually too drained after working a full day to do indie development at night, so I changed my work schedule.

I decided to get up early every morning and work for an hour or two before my job. This way I could do some series development when I'm still fresh. Now with only an hour or two, it means you have to be very focused. I keep an in-depth todo list and stick to it. I'm usually planning out during the day what I'm going to do during my development time.

In the evenings, I usually reserve that time for my wife and doing things together. I think that there's other things in life more important than work and you've got set your priorities right (I don't want to just work my life away).

Graeme

I found myself in that situation some weeks ago.
I was stressed because I wanted to go full-time indie: but I couldn't go full-time indie yet because I just started.
Also that frustration got me some health problems, and in general was ruining my life.

So now I imposed myself to take it easy. That doesn't mean being lazy: I still feel somewhat guilty when I play Pro Evolution Soccer 3 instead of programming, but I can't destroy my life for my dreams.

Just do everything you can, but don't be obsessive: that would give you no benefits! I quote this and fully agree :
I think that there's other things in life more important than work and you've got set your priorities right (I don't want to just work my life away).

Well, my scenario is a little different.

I can definately relate to it, but I work on a finished product (marketing).

Instead of setting hours I set tasks in my calendar, sometimes days, sometimes weeks/months beforehand. Each day has some tasks and I do those, no matter how long it takes. In addition I do what I need to do (as needed) in terms of customer service.

Whats most important about helping the players in our game is not number of hours, but STRANGE hours. Im availible to 'chat' with in our game for your standard 9-5 (more like 1-9). Its not uncommon that I log into the game to check support at 6 AM, 2 AM, 12 PM ect.

If, during the day when normal people are working their tails off, I have been known to take very long breaks. As long as I am achieving my goal for the day and able to offer some odd hour support that day, I have no problems (and neither does my boss) with me taking a couple hour long breaks to play my latest purchase (Bump n' Jump for the NES).

I imagine programmers dont really have that luxury though, your code doesnt write its self :-)

Joseph Lieberman

gsweet wrote:
Currently, I'm only working on indie projects part time - I've got a full time job during the day. I found that I was usually too drained after working a full day to do indie development at night, so I changed my work schedule.

I decided to get up early every morning and work for an hour or two before my job. This way I could do some series development when I'm still fresh. Now with only an hour or two, it means you have to be very focused. I keep an in-depth todo list and stick to it. I'm usually planning out during the day what I'm going to do during my development time.I'm going to start doing this too.

In the past I've actually done the opposite. I would plan my schedule early in the mornings before going to work and I would have these really ambitious goals scheduled for the afternoon and evening hours. But by that time, my energy level was already way too low and I'd often come up short and miss all these deadlines I had set up for myself.

And the more I think about it, the more I think it would be better to plan a work schedule in the evenings when I have the least amount of energy, and then work the plan the following morning when my energy level is at its highest. (But of course, even though it's a big revelation for me, I'm probably stating the total obvious. :) )

I'm a full-time indie. My problem, if it's a problem at all, is that I spend most day being occupied with my business. I would like to be able to work, say 9-5 and then be done with it but I spend so much time in front of the computer that I just couldn't stand seeing a tech support email drop in at 9 PM and not being able to answer it. I think seeing the email and knowing that due to my own imposed limits I couldn't answer it until next morning would motivate me to answer it more than any other thing could. Of course, this being the case I wouldn't be working 9-5 at all, I'd be working on and off all day, as I currently am. Has anyone come up with a good solution for this? Can you spend a lot of time at home with your business and still have somewhat "fixed" hours without being tempted to start working at 8 PM if you feel like it?

I'm not so sure this post is making much sense at all , but there you have it :)

I have a question about hours, does anyone here do contracting or consulting as well as developing a game?

I'm about to transition into this setup and im just trying to figure out my schedule. Would it be better to cut my days in half? half contracting / half game dev? or maybe a day of each? or two days gamedev two days contracting.

Is anyone else in that situation? Also if you are, would you recommend it? I'm thinking that maybe I should get some part time job flipping burgers or something, would the side development work take away from the quality of my game?

Originally posted by SpikeSpiegel
I have a question about hours, does anyone here do contracting or consulting as well as developing a game?
We do it, although each of us independently, not as a studio (so far). Most of our contract work takes less than a week to finish (sometimes even a day or less), so we don't schedule for it, we just do them when we got them.

Originally posted by mkovacic
Most of our contract work takes less than a week to finish (sometimes even a day or less), so we don't schedule for it, we just do them when we got them.

So when a project comes up, you completely get off the game and focus on the contract? How often would you do this? (ie. once a month?)

Originally posted by SpikeSpiegel
So when a project comes up, you completely get off the game and focus on the contract?
Not really. The contract obviously takes first priority, because there's a deadline, but the way I do it changes from contract to contract. Sometimes I'll do it over the weekend, sometimes I'll try to do it after the work hours. Sure, sometimes I'll need to put the game aside completely for a few days, but that doesn't happen often.

How often would you do this? (ie. once a month?)
For me, it's probably around 20 hours a month on average. Maybe even less than that.

mkovacic - I was just thinking that maybe it would be best to have an official schedule for 'threading' my game and my contract work but i wasnt sure if it would be conter-productive having 2 things on the go. I'll try it on a 'per project basis' like how you do (thats how i work best i think anyways)

thanks!

On most days I'm capable of putting in at least 8 hours of actual work (not counting any breaks). I often work thoughout the day with short breaks, and then leave myself 2-4 hours of free time before sleep. Basically I do the work on and off during the day thing that someone mentioned in this thread. It works pretty well, since one of the things I could never stand about 9-5 is the strictness of break times and start/end hours. I like having the freedom to wake up and go to sleep based on when I'm tired, and not when I have to get up for work.