Im coming late to the party: in February Errki Lindpere posed an worthwhile question on his blog that want to talk about:
“Anyway, please comment, if you are also a programmer, or a geek with a different specialization, who has a lot of hobby projects, how do you manage not to get swamped with them or get the feeling that you are always working on cool stuff but never releasing?”
Myself, I have been developing a fantasy mobile game Heroes of Arcadia since early 2005. While so far Ive got some funding, formed a company and released 2 beta versions, a finished game remains /at least/ 12 months off. [full story: http://bit.ly/e3UKE]
I would never have dreamed in early 2005 that I’d still be unfinished in 2009. I would never have imagined the marathon effort it would require of me to create a polished, fun, playable and stable game.
This experience has taught me an important life lesson: Pick your creative battles!
Our lives are finite. There are actually a limited number of things one person can attempt and complete in one lifetime.
Therefore, I feel it’s important to try to understand what you truly aspire to, what you are really good at, what you’re going to be happy doing. Find the sweet spot and really try to focus on it.
My strategy increasingly is to ensure that everything I am involved with fits with my overall aspirations, reinforces each other, and reuses what Ive learned and done already in life. In a word, Synergy.
By trying to create something large, Ive gained a sense of how much creative ‘mana’ Ive got in me. The blunt truth is that it feels somewhat finite, and less than I had idealistically imagined in my youthful daydreams.
So I want to ensure that I spend this mana in the most fruitful way I can.
Anything I attempt to do, I want to
- yield some outcome
- create something beautiful
- be proud of what Im doing
- enjoy the journey as the well as the destination
- learn and grow from
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