Going the Distance

There is little point starting a project unless you can finish it. That said, each project can have it’s own goal to be considered finished. Be it to learn a new skill, test a new gameplay mechanic, or of course make a full game experience.

You may be willing to stop a project after you have learned something new, and you will think that starting over now that you understand something better is a good way to do it. There is some truth to this, but it is very easy to get into the habit of starting over all the time. You will get very good at starting new projects, and very bad at finishing projects. You may never finish a project cos starting projects gets easier, and finishing projects gets harder in comparison.

Depending on the size of your project this will all be hard at the start. It is extremely rare when a whole project is all fun and rainbows.

There are many things you can do to make sure you can actually do this. Use the ideas discussed in this chapter to keep your creativity flowing, make sure to actually get into the good habits and avoid the bad habits. Continued development is something you will always fight for to your dying day. Good health, motivation but more importantly discipline is what you want. The human psyche has a plethora of ways to make you not. Not work, not create, not believe in yourself, not everything! Every creator suffers from this. Accept this now, so when you do face this you will be prepared for it and overcome it sooner than later.

That said, let's begin at the beginning. As that is a pretty good place to do so.

TL;DR

Failure is part of the journey.

Finishing projects is important.

Practice.

Eventually things start making sense.

Leveling Up

There are many stages to learning any craft. And the beginning is the WORST. Prepare for that. If you keep at it you will find the rewards are more than worthwhile. I kept waiting for me to just be better. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. You only get good after getting good.

The Failure

Initially you will fail at what you want to do. This is good. It won’t feel like it but you need to start at nowhere to get anywhere. Making mistakes will be your first step to not making mistakes. Learning to embrace failure will get you better at failure, more comfortable with it, and therefore your overall experience with development will be better because of it.

Finishing projects is important at this stage. This will get you into the habit of doing so early, and teaching you all steps of the process equally. If you don't finish a project however, for any reason, don't stress! It’s early days yet and you’ll have tons of opportunities moving forward. That said, your early ‘projects’ don’t have to be a finished project. It can simply be using a new tool in an application or creating a simple game mechanic.

Sometimes doing the same project twice may help you. One to learn the skills to do it and a second time to actually do it properly. This will also help remember your new skills, pick up natural improvements as you go along and improve your overall speed as well. If the idea of doing the same project twice doesn’t really grab you, then do a similar project using the same basic skills.

The Terribleness

You will make terrible things that you think are good. You will make good things that you think are terrible. This process is quite long, and takes many, many hours to get through. But it must be done for every new skill and sub-skill you want to learn. Use this time to find your abilities, strengths and weaknesses and your craft. Explore and play. If you make a mistake, keep it! Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Go into this phase of your craft knowing you will not be making anything ‘worthwhile’...but know it is part of the process to make something worthwhile later. Everything you do here is learning to be a skilled craftsman. You won’t see it directly, and it will take some time before you understand. But it will happen.

You need to start finishing projects here. They won’t look like what you want in your head, or even remotely near the quality of ‘the pros’. This is normal and every artist has been there, it is just rare to see the countless hours before things got good.

Continue learning, and processing through the countless resources open to you. Use a lot of reference and do (not just watch) lots of tutorials. Feel free to ask for critique on your work on forums, but don't be surprised if there are few answers. Also many will be quite harsh, you will have to take this in stride and take out of it what you can.'That anatomy is complete crap! ' is simply a recommendation to focus on studying anatomy more, and shouldn't be taken as a personal attack on your work. If you look at it in the right light the worst critics can give you the best feedback. People often forget there is a person behind the work even though they themselves have probably been there as well.

Many art / developer communities can be very supportive! Use them to get feedback whenever possible.

‘Copying’ how the pros work is perfectly fine for learning. Just make sure you give credit where credit is due! Everybody hates people who steal work. Don’t be that person. It’s actually quite difficult to be a respected craftsman if people find you stole work previously. Tracing is pretty useless as well as it teaches you how to trace, not how to make your own art or style or anything but trace. Copying a style, drawing fan art, programming with other people's code as a base then tweaking, using premade loops to make new music...all of these things are on the table as long as credit is given.

Use this time to make yourself better! Read forums and learn from other people's mistakes. Listen to other people's help, even if it is not directed at your work just yet. There is a very high chance that other people's problems will come up again later in your own work. Be introduced to the issues later in the process so you can improve now and be prepared. You can deal with it better when you get hit with it in greater detail again later.

On the flipside, don't get stuck in tutorial hell. This is very common nowadays where we have so many resources and online gurus telling you what to do. Watching these tutorials feels like you are getting better, but you are not. Only if you do the things that they explain will you take what they have taught and applied it to your own experiences. How many tutorials have you watched recently, and how many do you actually remember?

Watching tutorials is good for you to understand what can be done but only doing them will mean that you can do it. Only search for tutorials for tasks you are actively trying to learn, and then do those things. Watching endless tutorials is more a waste of time, when you could be creating yourself.

The Click

You will feel things start to click. After a while things will start making ‘sense’. You will start seeing patterns you recognise, things you like and things that feel right. You will also start to see things that are wrong, and things you don’t like. Watching tutorials and looking at references starts looking like things you ‘get’, but you don’t know how to get there just yet. You are still learning a lot, but you can actually create things that are interesting on your own. There is hope for you after all :)

The Apprentice

You will begin to feel like you know what you are doing. You don’t actually know what you are doing, but things make enough sense that you can find out how to do something once you know it is possible. And knowing what is possible is only limited by your imagination and resources. You can teach yourself through using online resources, tutorials, and also start feeding back into the community from the perspective of ‘I’ve been there’ because...you’ve been there. This is where the largest chunk of the hours of practice comes in. It is simply made up of constantly doing. This is where you really start to get into the meat of practice rather than learning. You start sharpening your skills as an artist in your own right.

The Craftsman

Your work continues to improve and the time to make it starts to decrease. After so many hours practicing and helping others you are well versed in many areas of the craft and the quality is a thousand times better than when you began. The improvements and your own style comes more naturally from here. This is where you become a craftsman. You look back at your original sketches and lines of code with warm nostalgia, but realise you can always be better...and once you learn that…

The Master

You realise a true master (in my personal opinion) is never a true master. A master of a craft accepts that to stop learning and practicing is to stagnate and die. Your work is amazing, people love and adore you and your work. You help others learn, just as you learned. You pass on your knowledge to others, hopefully ushering in the next level of the craft for the benefit of mankind. It all begins anew and the circle is complete.

That or you make a lot of money selling your abilities on the black market...take your pick :)

Either way, the process to get from zero to hero is learning, practice and hard work. A lot of the early stages is learning and failing. It’s the suckiest stage, for sure, but remember that everyone else has been there too! After that is just the constant doing and refining.

Then of course if you want to be a generalist rather than a specialist you do the same process over, and over, and over again. This decision is actually a pretty big one to make early on with pros and cons to both, with the main one being do you want to be amazing at one thing or good at many things.

In the case of following your craft as a career, a lot of the time you learn your craft by the seat of your pants! Deadlines add a whole new ball game, but the rules are the same...you just ‘assume’ you can do something, before you do it and then you can!

Staying in the Zone

Developing is difficult. Know this fact and you are on the way to greatness! You will come up against terrible trials and tribulation. You will hit creative block, negative criticism and all manner of nastiness. You will, if anything else, feel like stopping your creativity to do other things.

Don’t.

I’m not saying this to dissuade you. It’s just a cold, hard fact. Nothing will happen overnight. In fact, it takes several years. You have to accept a lot of truths in order to become a skilled developer.

The difficulty comes with a lot of reward however. Your ideas can come to life! You can entertain, educate, influence and manipulate people! The sky's the limit. Only you are stopping you now.

The hardest lesson I’ve learned is that things take time. A lot of time. The reason other people's work looks good is because they put time into it. They learned and practiced for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours. And if their current work that looks amazing didn’t take a lot of time to create it’s because they spent the time to get that fast at creation. They had to learn too, they had to do the hard yards just as much as you have and you will.

There are no shortcuts to a great piece of work. There are helpers such as better programs, plugins, tools etc. But no shortcuts. Speed comes with practice but to create the work that you have in your head, you need to learn how to create quality. Learn quality first, no matter how long it takes, speed will come later. Otherwise you will never learn your art to the level you need to in order to become skilled, and you’ll either quit from frustration, or start over again and learn right once you’re older and wiser and see the error in your ways.

Basically, you will need patience to get through the slow, dull, annoying, frustrating parts of development.

Every Stage is Important

One thing that I have noted is the importance of the early stages of any skill are actually more important than the later stages. One might think that the later stages need more time to get those finishing touches to make a character really shine, for example, but the truth is if your basic anatomy is wrong then no amount of polish can save your character.

Beginning artists want to jump in and add the details as soon as they can because that’s fun! And you get to see ‘results’ faster. But your end result will be poorer for it.

Learn to appreciate every stage of your process for what it is. Appreciate the blobby mess that you get at the first pass for it’s attention to form and silhouette. Appreciate the first general detail pass of your silhouette, but still adding no specific details. Use this buildup to look forward to the detail passes later on. You’re basically setting up your creation for an even better experience when you get to the later stages by making it easier to create a fantastic asset be it a character, environment asset or even code.

This works for every aspect of the development process.

There generally seems to be about 3-4 main phases to the passes. The overview, the general detail, and then the specific detail. The optional addition would be the fine detail, depending on the level of quality needed on the asset in question, or time allowed to complete it. Each phase can have any number of passes until that phase is complete to your satisfaction.

Knowing beforehand that you cannot jump to the end goal before it’s time will hopefully help you be more patient when it is your turn to create. Patience can be extremely useful. Accept that it will take time, and start creating for creation sake. The destination is not the most important thing but the journey to get there. Just like everything in life really! This pattern holds true and you should learn to embrace it. The reward is only worth the effort put into it. The greater the effort, the greater the reward. Keep this in mind as you go a long and you will find the journey much easier to survive.

Motivation Schmotivation

The most consistent method to staying motivated is to throw away the idea of ‘getting motivated’ completely. Motivation is not your friend. Ever. It may seem all warm and fuzzy when it’s ‘helping’ you create your next masterpiece, but half way through..BAM! Maybe there is only so much motivation in the universe and we all have to share it, who knows. The fact is it will not be there when you need it and it definitely won’t be there at when you need to submit your next amazing idea and you have a blank piece of paper in front of you. The last thing you ever want to do is what you need to do. So learn to not rely on it. Learn to power on through regardless.

Learn to override the ‘need’ for motivation to get started and replace it with discipline and start already! If you don’t want to work, work anyway. If you can’t come up with a good idea, put all your ideas down, no matter how bad. Bad ideas are better than no ideas, but more importantly bad ideas usually lead to mediocre ideas, which lead to alright ideas, which lead to good ideas, which lead to great ideas, which lead to millions of dollars in your bank...maybe...don’t quote me on that.

You can read all the motivational posters in the world but when it really comes down to it all you need to do, is do. That, and reading motivational posters is taking up important doing time...so stop reading motivational posters.

That said motivation does help. Think of it like the icing on the cake. The extra power to make your creations shine. And continued motivation is extremely useful. Consider developing motivation like inertia. If you slow down it is harder to pick up speed than if you just continued on. If you stop completely...well, who knows how long it might take for you to get back on all cylinders. You will need to stay vigilant. Like a ninja.

Basically, the best way to be creative is to be creative. The human psyche, depending on your upbringing and conditioning, has a way to make you fight against your inner creativity with everything it has. The closer you get to achieving, the harder it will be to continue and especially finish. Procrastination, lack of focus, excuses (when you KNOW they are excuses) should all be left at the door and you should be true to your creativity.

From a personal perspective what I have learned is that you have to work through the difficult times of creative block or lack of focus. If you don’t feel like working on it today, there is a very high chance you will not want to work on it twice as much tomorrow. And it only goes downhill from there. Don’t give in to the internal demons by avoiding what you are destined to do. Even if your task is difficult, work through it until it is finished and then you can get onto something else that is more fun, otherwise you will stagnate, and potentially murder your inner creativity.

Don’t be a murderer. Nobody likes a murderer.

You will find that you are probably just as creative when you push through it than when you are running on all cylinders. You may not enjoy it as much at the time and you may not feel it but you are STILL working towards your goal. And when your passion does kick in, you’ll be thankful that you are that much closer to the finish line AND you have probably cleared a few of the lesser interesting aspects of your project.

One approach is to do the tasks you don’t want to do in your creative lulls so that when you hit your stride again you can jump straight back on to the fun stuff. Or vice versa, make the lulls less painful by doing the fun stuff and then the ‘must do’ tasks when it comes easier when you are excited to work. Give both methods a spin and see how they feel. Balance it out so you can enjoy as much of the process as possible on average.

You could always do the ‘important’ things during your creative charge though. If you have a main character design, do the development of that character during the highs of the creative process. This will make that character shine all the more.

Start and think small aka Scope.

The best way to create big is to start and think small. Make sure to set goals that are achievable within a timeline that you can see results before losing interest. Seeing the fruits of your labour is one of the most motivational aspects for a craftsman, but if you never hit that point because you lose interest, or you set your goals too large and lack the capacity to stick to it for the duration of the project, then all is for naught.

Scope is the one thing that can break you before you even really begin. It is what you can see from your current position but if the perception of your project is an insurmountable mountain of neverendingness, then you are pretty sure to fail simply because it is difficult to think you will ever climb it from where you are currently standing.

So when starting as a developer, make sure your entire project is smaller than you want. It is very difficult for beginners to keep scope (what you perceive versus what you can do) in check. Design a task you want to focus on that can be finished within a week which will no doubt turn into a month. Once you get a bit more experience behind you in both finishing projects and understanding scope, you can start scaling up.

Once you start moving onto bigger projects you will need to start thinking on the parts rather than the whole. Make sure to keep your immediate scope small. Instead of aiming to create a whole map for a game, make a crate (cos we all know how important crates are in a level). If you are making a game, don’t think of the game, never think of the game otherwise you will be crushed in the intense weight of despair and anguish. If you always have the full scope of your end goal in your mind you will easily become disenchanted and lose interest.

Trust the Process

In many parts of your development you will have to journey through what Ryan Kingslien coined as ‘The Valley of the Suck’. It is a terrible, depressing, desolate place that is absolutely no fun at all and you will need to get through it to reach the holy grail of a reasonable piece of work, let alone a finished one of good quality.

The Valley is basically the time when you look at your work and ‘It’s not good enough!’, ‘It doesn’t look like the pros’, ‘It doesn’t look like it does in my head!’ or ‘Why does my human look like some weird frog?!’... Your work will range from looking nothing like what is in your head right up to it still looks nothing like what’s in your head. You will have doubts, and they will be strong. You will want to give up.

Don’t.

As with anything in life, understanding the Valley Of The Suck will help you overcome it easier. Looking at a problem as parts rather than the whole, in this case your ‘present’ state VS your ‘eventual’ state allows you to focus more on what is important. So let's break it up some and expose the valley for what it really is...I’ll give you a hint, it’s pretty lame.

For a lot of the journey you will see that the result is not as good as you would like...in many cases you will not see the true result until it is completely finished. This is something you should get used to, as hoping or expecting good results early on simply does not work. You will find that you will want to veer off the development path or take shortcuts so you can finish the current example sooner so you can feel better about the project. You will also find that if you do this, you will probably have to do that part all over again because it doesn’t work together with the rest of the project at hand. The end result is you have wasted a significant amount of time for the ‘quick fix’.

The Quick Fix is fine in the very beginning. In many cases you might even need these in order to keep moving forward as you lack faith in your ability. But make sure you don’t get into the habit of delaying your development for quick results when you know that they won’t lead to finished quality. Once you start understanding your abilities and having faith in your skill set you should always stick to the process and be patient to get your results.

The best results come from the longest journey. As noted, there are no shortcuts.

Trust the Process.

Accept this fact now so you don’t waste time losing yourself to it later. Have faith it will look great in the end. And if it doesn’t, you are a step closer to being a better crafter for next time with everything you learned this time. The Valley will be easier to get through each time as you have passed through it before. Only practice makes the Valley previously mentioned more like 'The Annoying Ditch of Meh'. As noted, you never really get over it completely.

There is hope however. To turn the concept on it’s head and let the Valley work for you, focus on the opportunities the valley offers you. Take this opportunity to explore new ideas, play with your art and see if anything comes of it. What you learn here may help you in a future work or you might even come up with a better result on this project as you weren’t acting so ‘rigidly’ to your end concept in your head.

The Valley of the Suck can be The Playground of the Awesome, but you need to shift the usual perception that you may have currently locked into.

Finish Projects

As mentioned previously, don’t fall into the same trap as me and feel that once you have learned something you should start the project again. Every aspect of a project is an art in itself, especially the last 5-10%. The polish stage of a project takes different skills and mindset than the beginning. Make sure you complete projects so that you are a well rounded artist. This also gives you the advantage of actually having things to show for your labours. I spent many years ‘learning the craft’, only to find that in the end I had absolutely nothing to show for it except my knowledge. Which is very useful until you need to prove you know it.

If you plan a project, finish it to completion and lock it away as a folio piece at the least. If you think you can do better, then do it all again if you have to. But do not stop half way through because you think you have learnt an important aspect of the craft that you can improve from scratch...this will ALWAYS happen, so just finish it! Consider the fact that you can only practice the last 5% once the previous 95% is completed, obviously, but that means you have a lot less opportunities to practice the skills required in the last 5%. Make sure you create those opportunities every chance you get.

Stay on Target

If at all possible don’t change to another project half way through thinking you will come back to it. You will find that it will become quite difficult to go back to your original projects. Stick to your project to the end and THEN move on. That said, you can always start on different parts of the same project. If it is a character, work on the arms instead of the legs, if it is a level, start on a different section. This sometimes adds additional ideas to other parts, but it also adds a certain level of consistency to your project.

That said I find that it is possible to have two projects going at any time and manage to stay focused enough on them with good time management. This doesn't include paid projects of course where you might have many going at once. The fixed deadline and threat of lawsuits is usually enough incentive to keep the ball rolling there. I'm just talking about staying self motivated when you don't have any real outside factors forcing you to. Many independent developers starting up are in exactly this situation for example.

If you have the leisure of not having any deadlines that count towards your professional well being then you have the option to take a break whenever you like. The biggest problem you will face is you will take breaks all the time. If the next section of work isn’t as interesting as the last, or you can’t get through a particular problem or you just don’t feel like it you'll find you will 'just go for a quick stretch', but not actually return to the task at hand for three hours. You will have to work past these yourself. No one is going to tell you to carry on, no one is going to tell you how to do it. You will actually need to set your own goals and tasks to keep going as it will be extremely easy to just take one more day off.

Productivity Tip : I find a good method of staying on task is writing down what tasks you completed at the end of the day and what tasks you are realistically able to complete tomorrow. Some use the Rule of Three (from the book Getting Results the Agile Way) method. Here is an excerpt from A Year of Productivty : The rule is simple: First, write down three things you want to accomplish today. Second, write three things you want to accomplish this week. Third, write three things you want to achieve this year. That’s it. The book has four recommendations for when you implement the rule: Start every day by figuring out what to focus on for the day. Test yourself throughout the day – do you remember what your three priorities are? Improve your estimates – pay attention to how long you think things will take, and improve your estimates as time goes on. Feel good about your results! Pat yourself on the back after you achieve what you set off to, for the day, week, and year.

If your income is banking on you solving the problem, you may not have a choice and this makes it actually easier on for you to continue as much, you may not like that fact however. Many people taking on these tutorials are doing it as a hobby, or maybe as a startup but you don’t have to meet any specific deadlines cos you are living in your parents basement for the time being. It will be much harder for you to stay focused and working on things because you know you don’t have to. And that makes a difference inside your head that gives you the option to stop whenever you like....don’t.

Productive Procrastination

Of course you will have your down time, your hobbies and social interests. These are very healthy and you should do them. But once you have set your ‘work’ time, stick to that like super glue and always be doing something productive in those times. Instagram, TikTok, Reddit are not productive uses of your time as much as you may think they are.

If you find you can’t face another set of programming commands, go for a walk around your neighbourhood and try a new restaurant for lunch you haven’t been to before. It might be a bad experience or it might be a great experience...but you have learned and done something. New things are even better!

If you can’t seem to get your character right, go sit at the park for a while. The sun will do you good and you can watch people be people. This might then inspire you as to what you could improve on your character. It might not. But once you get back you should start belting out more characters nevertheless as the character needs to get made sometime!

Once you get back to your computer start on the project again no matter what. You had your brief escape but you have to realise that thing you are working on that you are stumbling on for whatever reason will have to be done sometime. Might as well be sooner than later!

An even more productive method is do some other important task that needs to be done on the project to take a break from your current task. Get it out of the way. Then...you guessed it...make sure you come back to whatever task is next and get into it.

Allow yourself one task of productive procrastination for a limited time before getting back to work, make sure you use it wisely and make sure you limit it to one actual task or event. Also limit the total amount to a maximum of 2-3 a day depending on how motivated you are and how much time you can spend on it each time. No time and no procrastination would be optimal of course, but we also have to be realistic.

Fear to achieve equals achieving your fear

There are many people who do not take the first step, or many steps afterwards, because they are scared of rejection, of failure, of not getting what they want or to a quality they think is ‘good enough’. Fear is in all of us, but we must not let it get the better of us.

One simple reality to this is that if you do not try, you automatically do not achieve. 1% chance of succeeding is one million times larger than zero chance of succeeding. It’s simple math (the way I do it anyway!)

The first step is always the hardest when it comes to motivation and getting out of procrastination. As noted however it is much like inertia. Once you start walking it is much easier to start running, and once you start running...well, the rest is history.

If it is the case of not starting because you don’t think you will be good enough, or you see other people’s work and feel you could never achieve their greatness...the truth of the matter is that a large part of professional developers’ greatness is because they started. Not because of any natural gift or voodoo powers. Add to that the constant and unending number of hours that they practice and put into their craft and you will find that other people's work isn’t as daunting. To be honest they probably had the exact same thoughts about working on their craft as you. Maybe they still do!

There is also the fact that games are becoming less and less reliable in regards to what hits and what misses. Some games are terrible and make millions, some games are amazing and don’t make a cent. You are heading towards an industry that is based on never ending change, and in that you have hope because there is absolutely no way that you can control the whims of the end user.

Do what you love, and make sure you do it. Simple as that.

Plan VS Jam

As much as opening up your favourite art program and jamming out a character is a bunch of fun it lacks a certain level of...efficiency. There is definitely a place for both and should be viewed as equally important in creating the skills you need to be a creative genius, but use them wisely.

To me, planning is used for when you have a set goal that you want to complete in an efficient manner. Jamming is good for practice and exploring ideas. You can always plan time for jamming in a project, but make sure it has a limit otherwise you will get in the Valley of Unachievable Perfection™.

The Goal

Until we can download skills into our brain and muscle memory we are stuck with manual learning and constant practice to achieve our creative goals. That’s it, when you really think about it. Learn how to do the thing, and then do the thing until you are really good at it. Of course each of those has a whole plethora of subsections in there, but that’s basically it.

So the question is, how do we get to our goals as efficiently as possible. Note how I didn’t say quickly or easily. Creative goals are basically never quick or easy.

Not having a clearly defined goal will waste your time while you figure out what the goal is each step of the way. You are more than welcome to go about your process as you see fit, but I will guarantee that without a concise goal you will take longer than needed to evolve to the next level. Everything is easier when a clear goal has been set.

Goals allow you to stay focused which is very difficult to do over longer periods of time. If the project is bigger, then you need a clear main goal, which is then broken up into smaller clear goals. Adjust your goals to the level of your current bandwidth.

Setting the goal

A good goal setting technique is using S.M.A.R.T. goals. This method works here as well, so why not give it a shot.

Specific

A common problem, especially with larger projects/goals, is Analysis Paralysis where it is difficult to make a decision because there are too many decisions to make. Having a specific goal will usually keep your decisions in line with achieving that goal as there are usually only one or two best ways to achieve a specific goal rather than a long list of ways to achieve a general goal.

Measurable

What is the state of your project to consider it ‘done’?

Achievable

Is it actually achievable with the resources you have?

Relevant

Is it actually relevant to achieving your goal?

Time bound

Setting a deadline to a task increases the chances of you actually finishing it.

The Most Important Thing Is Practice?

It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to become a pro at any skill. That is a lot of hours. It is also a lie. The 10,000 hour theory has basically been debunked, and as much as that much practice is important (and it most certainly is) it’s definitely not the only thing on the road to greatness. There is a lot to be said for natural talent, ability to pick up new skills in different categories and all the other possible reasons that get you from a young padawan to a full fledged creative jedi.

But as practice is easy to talk about and actually do, let's begin there.

Always practice with a focus on why you are practicing.

Do it. It’s worth an extra line like this just to drive the point home.

Habits

Some of these bad habits you might already do, and really should change. I’m still working on some of these. Some of these you might not, but just happen to fall into them. Always be vigilant against these, as over time they can affect you in serious, game changing ways...and usually they are not to your benefit.

Good habits on the other hand, if you already do them, make sure you continue to do them. You’ll have a headstart on lasting longer as a creative genius.

Don’t Slouch

If you are like me you will slouch at the desk. It is easy to do. It is ‘comfortable’, or so you think. In truth sitting up straight is just as comfortable but requires a little more vigilance. And you need the muscles to support you doing so.

Over time a slouch becomes permanent and then it takes considerable effort to sit and stand up straight. It is much harder to fix a permanent slouch than to achieve it in the first place. It's much easier just to stay vigilant in the first place. Trust me when I say DON’T SLOUCH!!!

The problem is not that it is easier to slouch, but that most people look closer to the screen which in turn produces a slouch. Constantly keeping track of your posture is important. And affects more than just working on the computer, but your daily life and general happiness.

It is easier to sit straight with a good desk setup. However there should always be a conscious effort to sit up straight so that you don’t live in constant pain and anguish and terribleness.

Stretch Regularly

You may think it’s annoying now, but constant pain is more so. Trust me when I say having back and shoulder issues is not fun. In your breaks the first thing you should do is stretch, the minimum you should do is have a walk around. Generally when you work in one position, doing one thing, it can lead to all sorts of nasty results.

The most common example is Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI). A common enough problem that always seems to happen to other people but it won’t happen to you...yet. Bad habits will pretty much always catch up with you. Unless you are just plain lucky. Then you should just enter the lottery, win millions, and pay others to make your game instead.

Stretches will stop the pain from coming on so soon, maybe indefinitely. You may find it will even make you feel better and healthier! So make sure you do them. I can not stress this enough.

Create a good Working environment

To combat the slouch, and many other bad habits, you need a good desk setup. A well positioned desk, chair, keyboard, mouse and monitor is imperative for long term development. So invest early to save yourself big later. You may need to spend a little extra now, but it could save you thousands in medical costs later on. $40+ a week for a Physio adds up real quick!

Creating a good working environment is imperative to long term development and well being. Apart from ergonomics it’s a good idea to get some natural light, or if you don’t get any in your ‘Den’ then make sure that you include a short walk outside occasionally to make up for it. It is scientifically proven that Sun makes you happy. And happy people make for better productivity.

Create a positive work area. Put things around you that inspire you and make you feel good. It affects your mood and productivity considerably, so make sure you keep in the practice of having these things around you. And don’t forget to update them as you need to. Change things around. Keep your work space dynamic, so you stay dynamic.

Take breaks and keep long sessions to a minimum

I know from personal experience that when you are in the zone you don’t want to leave it. So you will go about your merry creative way for hours on end until you have no choice but to leave it. Maybe from hunger, thirst, earthquake, zombie apocalypse etc. Whenever you decide to stop is usually too late. A hint at how bad this can be is by seeing how you feel adjusting back to ‘the real world’. Muscles and joints may be a little stiff, your brain seems a little weird adjusting back to ‘regular’ thinking, your vision may take a second or two to adjust to ‘out there’. These are not good signs. Think about these results getting worse as time goes on and you might appreciate the seriousness of what it can do to you.

Set an alarm, or a timer, even an egg timer would do the job. A minimum recommendation is a ten minute break every 2 hours. Although I would suggest a quick stand up and walk around once an hour just to get the juices (aka your blood) flowing. Do not simply go to your favourite social media site as a ‘break’, it may seem like you aren’t working but you are still at the computer. When I say stand up and stretch your legs, stand up and stretch your legs. Do a couple of stretches and then you can jump back in. Also make sure to look away from your screen to a distant location regularly every 15-20 minutes. This re-adjusts your eyes and gives them a bit of a stretch as well. Very important for keeping your eyes in good condition.

If you don’t set a timer it is extremely easy to lose track of time. And even if you have the best of intentions you will suddenly find that it’s night time, you are hungry and thirsty, your muscles and joints ache, you can’t focus on anything apart from the monitor in front of you, the zombie apocalypse has come and gone and you are the sole survivor of the human race.

The loneliness isn’t worth it.

You may feel that being in the zone makes you more productive, this may be the case. But taking breaks refreshes your body and mind and may help with your productivity and problem solving abilities. You may think of a different but better way to do something in your code. You may look at something during your break that makes you re-evaluate some aspects of your characters design to make it all the more awesome. If anything it will allow you to be more productive and produce better quality for longer, be it that day or over the course of your life. And that is the most important thing here. A few years of hard core development before burning out does not stack up against a full games career and riches beyond your wildest dreams!

Don’t Eat Junk

To be honest this is one of the harder ones to break, but it is quite important to get on early so it doesn’t become harder to break the habit later. Things like coke, chips, energy drinks and coffee to get you through the day and / or night all add up to a very unhealthy diet. When it comes to mealtimes, fast food is only convenient until your first heart attack.

You may not feel the impact of these as easily as the other bad habits, and this is why it is harder to give them up. The truth is they are probably just as damaging for the same long term reasons as slouching and long work sessions.

If you need some convincing just talk to a diabetic, or someone with a serious heart condition. Off you go, I’m happy to wait.

Even if you find that fruit is more expensive than a bag of chips, it’s potentially saving you money when it comes to months of hospital care.

And you won’t die as young. Which is a plus.

Summary

• Don’t slouch.

• Stretch regularly.

• Create a good working environment.

• Keep long sessions to a minimum and take regular breaks.

• Don’t eat junk, eat healthy instead.