My first challenge, the Avatar included a time and project management book, which I have still yet to complete. While I do not consider myself a time and project management master, it is an area that I feel I have some experience in and have found some systems that work for me.
I adopt a few key principles from the Get It Done school of thought, including, if it takes you less than 2 minutes, do it now. Documenting it, coming back to it later, and the associated context switching will be more expensive.
I dedicate time to reviewing my task list and breaking the large projects that are just too big and scary into smaller, bite-sized chunks, which are more manageable, and I can check them off sooner, getting that awesome dopamine rush.
I do struggle with time prediction. Often expecting things to take considerably longer than they do in most cases. However, in other scenarios, projects take orders of magnitude more effort and time to achieve the same level of completion or quality. The key differences between these scenarios may be the level of preparation and research on the areas surrounding the tasks. The foundational elements or learnings needed to complete them.
For the upcoming slow game Jam, I’m going to spend more time on research and preparation than I would normally, and will more carefully plan out the things I need to learn and know in order to make the project a success. The definition of success will come from the plan.
References
- ROGERS, Scott. 2014. Level up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.