I founded my video games company Frozax Games in 2019. In terms of work habits, it was a really big change from my previous job as cybersecurity engineer:
No more fixed 9am-6pm, Monday-Friday work time
No more open-space full of coworkers
No more commutes, but work from home
No more project managers telling me what to work on
No one checking on my work
No need to ask my boss to take a day off
No team, just me as solo developer
Some of these changes can be scary for some, and a dream for others. However, we can all agree that getting motivated and productive when you are alone and working from home can be tough. This post lists some tips and techniques I've used to help with these issues. I know some of them are controversial, but I just list what worked for me.
Schedule
Before going full time indie, I spent time on game development as a hobby, during some evenings/nights/weekends. The small amount of money I could get from this hobby was just a bonus, and not required to live, pay my house or raise my kids. My day job was sufficient for that, so there was no pressure in game development hobby. Therefore, I could also few weeks working on my games nearly everyday, and other times, I would not write a single line of code for months.
When going full-time, it was weird to work on my "previously-hobby" during classic work hours. At first, if I wasn't actively working any moment between 9am and 6pm, I felt bad. I thought I had to keep this "normal schedule".
Even though it was non consistent day after day, I estimate my productivity to be at about 50%, without really understanding why.
I then realized that I should embrace the fact that I work alone and nobody is here to enforce my schedule. Companies have constraints that I don't have. I don't need to work at the same time as coworkers. My office being my house, it's not open only during day time. I finally applied this first advice:
Work when you are motivated, not when the clock says so.
This means I sometimes work weekdays 9am to 6pm (quite rarely, actually). But I can also work Sundays, or the evenings if I think this is the right time.
Being able to work anytime allowed me to not feel guilty if it's Tuesday, 3 pm and I don't feel like working. Now I accept it, and I'll do it when I'll get motivated, probably later during the day, the next day, or even later.
I can also use any time during the day to do personal things, such as: driving kids to school, shopping outside peak hours, doing a nap to recharge my batteries for the rest of the day and much more...
I can also just wake up and decide: "I'm not feeling motivated to work today, I take my day off". This can't work for all jobs, and I also do sometimes have meetings or calls that I can't postpone but you get the general idea.
Of course, we need to be careful with two things:
Procrastination: Never being motivated and actually not doing anything (more tips later on motivation)
Burnout: Working long hours every day, without resting enough, leading to potential burnout after some time.
A good balance between work and rest is important.
Getting Motivated
I'm lucky to have a job I chose, so I love (most of) it. But we've all been through more difficult times, where nothing motivates you and it's not just because you are tired. Here are my thoughts about this.
I found out that the main reasons I'm not motivated are caused by the work itself, for example:
I just completed a task, or released a new game, and I don't really know what to work on next.
I should work on boring tasks (such as paperwork, support, marketing...), but I don't feel like it today
I'm a bit bored with my current project
The most common issue is the lack of objectives or unclear objectives. The fix is obvious:
When you seem a bit lost in your current project, spend some time on your todo-list and split the tasks in smaller tasks.
You might also need to add more details to existing tasks. It will help you have clearer objectives and you'll usually be able to jump right into it. The hardest part is identifying the problem.
The other issue is simply that you've spent too much time on boring things, and you want something new and refreshing.:
It's fine to temporarily change your roadmap to work on more rewarding things
I doesn't mean you'll give up or cancel your current project and tasks. Just spend some time on something else: start a new project, learn something new... Here are examples of how I've done this recently:
New project: At the end of 2020, my current project (I mostly work on puzzle games) was going very slow and felt a decrease of motivation. At the same time, I just got an idea for a simple hyper-casual game that felt interesting.
I stopped everything I was doing, and spent 3 days working on this new idea for
