Hello, fellow-Developers and welcome to the end of September!
This month, I’ll talk about schedules, deadlines, and holding yourself accountable. To encompass all of these things, I’ll start with a discussion on To Do Lists.
Conducting research on the Internet about writing tasks down in advance will yield some amazing results:
“…you become 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams, simply by writing them down on a regular basis.”
“Vividly describing your goals in written form is strongly associated with goal success, and people who very vividly describe or picture their goals are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to successfully accomplish their goals.”
One of the fascinating things about making lists is that it activates both sides of your brain. You engage your right hemisphere, responsible for imagination and creativity. This is exactly the place I want any developer or designer tapping into when they embark on a new game. Additionally, you’re also engaging your left hemisphere, dominated by logic and structure. These areas also prove helpful to any designer and developer. For me, I tend to boil these two sides down to the right-side thematic part of any game I’ve worked on over the years, while the left-side assists me in writing and editing rules, ensuring there’s balance in the game, and that the mechanics make sense.
Among the myriad articles I’ve read and briefings I’ve attended over the years, I’ll focus on three broad reasons to write down the things you need to do…which in-turn feeds schedules, deadlines, and ultimately, will hold you accountable. These reasons include increasing your motivation and decreasing stress; improving your focus; and finally tracking your progress.
Increase Your Motivation and Decrease Your Stress
By visualizing what needs to get done and writing the most important things down on paper will assist you in driving up your motivation. Each item on the To Do List provides an exciting and outstanding opportunity for you as a creative being. Instead of viewing the To Do List as a constraining device, look at it as a way in which you tap into your potential for greatness. Look to each item as an occasion for expressing yourself in a possibly new and interesting way.
Now, how does a simple To Do List decrease your stress? In short, if it’s not on the list, it’s outside the purview of your responsibility at an individual level or the project at a much higher or macro level. In this way, you eliminate a degree of stress and any associated emotional responses so you can turn your attention to the most important aspects of the game at this moment. Additionally, one should craft a To Do List which includes only the most important, relevant items to be addressed. Thus, it should be no surprise that decreasing one’s stress also aids in improving your focus.
Improve Your Focus
When you are not stressed about elements of a project outside your control, you gain a degree of exquisite clarity where you can simply focus on the most salient aspects of the tasks at hand. Also, a To Do List, provided it’s not so long as to cause its own level of stress, allows you to stay on track and prevents you from being derailed. While it’s inevitable that you’ll have some number of distractions during your project, having a great To Do List will steer you back onto the road to success.
Track Progress
Arguably the most important step in the process of designing that game or editing those rules or selecting the artwork is the ability to track your progress. No surprise these three areas for consideration are not mutually exclusive and instead feed one another. If you diligently track your progress, you will inevitably improve your motivation to achieve the next step. Now, if you’ve been a designer or developer for more than five minutes, you have no doubt experienced failure and setbacks. Keep track of those too, if for no other reason than to avoid them in the future.
Schedules
At the risk of sounding like a shill for a number of companies, I won’t mention any by nae, but I strongly suggest that to this job well, you need to schedule your activities. A schedule is a bit different than your To Do List in that To Do Lists generally have no hard-and-fast temporal component, whereas the date on a calendar is often sacrosanct. Definitely take the time to schedule things accordingly over the course of weeks and months. Also, don’t be afraid to move things to the right (later, rather than earlier) f necessary. Unless you’re doing this fulltime and through your efforts you’re putting food on the table and/or paying your mortgage, don’t cause a burden for yourself. Respect the schedule, but ultimately respect your time and that of your family’s time much more…in the grand scheme of things, it’s only a game.
Deadlines
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Douglas Adams
If schedules serve as the tool for planning, deadlines serve as the execution time for any action. However, we must take care in the world of board games. In short, deadlines kill creativity. There’s not a designer working today who has on their calendar, “Sunday, devise new game 1200-1430.” There are tasks which lend themselves to completely appropriate deadlines. I work with exactly six clients a year so that I can provide the necessary amount of time to each of them.
Accountability
If I haven’t made it abundantly clear, schedules allow you to hold yourself accountable while deadlines (often imposed from outside) make you accountable to your client. If it helps, find someone you trust in the industry to help hold you accountable to the timelines you’ve established or milestones you hope to achieve. Never ever think that you’re alone.
I absolutely love serving the community as a Developer. How do you address the issues of schedules, deadlines, and holding yourself accountable?