I had a thought of creating this website where I can show off some of my work in progress websites and to help remind me to push myself towards learning and getting some of my work out there. Throughout that time neither seemed to have happened and this site was just out there collecting Internet dust. If you asked anyone what I was doing they would each say that I was working on a game, or some side project, or even learning a new language. If you’re like me then your initial reaction would be “Awesome, when can I see it in action!” and that’s where it would end. I would have tech demos sent to my buddies, or have a small little gameplay video to show but after that it would be silence. Life would intervene and push my side projects on the back-burner. When I found myself with extra time I always had 2 options open: Either get some sleep and prepare for my next day or attempt to go back to the project but completely forget where I left off and step through my logic to figure everything out. You could say that I had a big picture in my mind for where the project was supposed to go but never had the small puzzle pieces lined up as to what to tackle next.
Having a big picture of what to do is great and it gets you fired up to do something. You start to plan for the project by compiling a list of ideas and making a plan of attack before programming. I started to fail when the pieces of the big picture were still too big to put together within my short span of free time. Between working 60-80 hours of my professional job and spending the rest of the time keeping up with family and friends left me with a couple of hours a week for myself, which would mostly go to sleep.
With the limited time left I am going to try a different approach to my side projects to help not only motivate me, but to help with execution. I am going to see if I can split m tasks down into short hour or 2 bursts that can be found here and there. This way tasks can be simple and independent of each other without having to go back to another part of code and trying to see what had been done. I’m hoping that this will help break down my giant puzzle pieces into smaller ones.
If this little experiment works then hopefully there will be content here to show for it. Otherwise, we’ll be back to collecting dust and figuring out another way to approach this.