How to get motivation for coding?

[ekeimaja]

Now last 2 months my own freetime projects are completely frozen. I would like to develop them forward, but coding needs also right mindstate, "flow". Every time when I open project, I watch code 2 seconds, sigh, and then close the editor. Do you have this kind of situation ever, and how do you beat it and get that flow on again?

[mattstyles]

You've got to be excited by the project, if you have that then you'll find things to work on.

I find it easiest to be highly modular, keep separate code separate, decouple as much as possible. This way you can pick up the project and work on it for 30/60 minutes and get some stuff done.

The problem with freetime projects is that its often done late at night, you're tired and might have been coding all day, you might also be distracted by other stuff going on. Its fine to be tired and code trivial stuff, anything that needs smarts and you're going to struggle. Problem is, very few parts of a project are trivial, particularly when you have a number of systems going on. The way to try and keep them simple is to decouple and modularise, that way you can focus only on a small portion of the overall codebase at a time. This is the best way whether you are tired or not.

It might simply be that your code quickly becomes a bit of a tangle and those sorts of codebases (i.e. much legacy stuff that has been hacked at by numerous unrelated devs or varying skill) are a nightmare to work on. Anything you can do to stop this will be beneficial (however, it requires a good level of skill and discipline).

Keep things lean and keep them clean. This is not easy but its only the only way to get a project done if you're doing it an hour or so at a time over a long span of time.

[GSquadron]

It happens the whole time but as mattstyles mentioned, its the project.

This happened to me when I was bored about the project (be it a website or game). It is not you neither the coding, it is what you are doing with it that makes you sigh.

Most probably you have some boring project that does not suit you. Try to find what project you love doing, then you will see the big difference.

(if you have not noticed, this happens with relationships. One might seem boring, another one might seem great! It is the person that suits you)

[WombatTurkey]

On 1/12/2016 at 3:32 AM, ekeimaja said:

Now last 2 months my own freetime projects are completely frozen. I would like to develop them forward, but coding needs also right mindstate, "flow". Every time when I open project, I watch code 2 seconds, sigh, and then close the editor. Do you have this kind of situation ever, and how do you beat it and get that flow on again?

It depends what you're working on!! What kind of game are you making? I think it's your inner conscious telling you something is wrong, are you enjoying the game you're working on? Why are you making it? You only make something and feel motivated to do it if you like it. That's how I am anyways, that's why I don't do freelance work because half of them good be done by taking a jsfiddle snippet or by using google for 2 seconds.

[lightest]

Forget about the "right mindstate" thing. Of course the optimum would be to do things the way that works personally for you but sometimes "it is what it is". You start a project and there is a lot of enthusiasm and optimism. But then you encounter a whole shittone of issues that needs to be handled so you realise that it's actually not that quite simple thing to do.

I remember myself in a similar situation last summer when I was coding my first "game experiment" - a replica of dangerous dave. What helped me was a very simple thing - a biography of Elon Musk (by Ashlee Vance). The thing is when you read about that man's accomplishments and what kind of issues he and his teams actually had to solve you're like "man, my problems are just nothing! I'd better start working!". Also take a look at this

Another thing if you speak about "right mindstate" is that sometimes you have to start moving before it appears. There is a phrase "motion creates emotion", so just start to work on your thing. First a simple for loop, a couple of functions, then a complex algorithm maybe... I don't know, the point is - if there is no proper feeling you have to make it on your own. Use your will power.

Hope that thing would be usefull for you. I wish you all the best with your projects. But seriously... JUST DO IT!

Peace!

[SiriusCG]

You just do it. You can spend hours reading "motivation analysis" posts when the simple answer is, just do it. I've been a coder for a long, long time and I can tell you, the longer you work on the "why can't I just sit down and write code" the less motivated you become. It drags you down, it saps your creativity, it bogs down the brain. So, don't do it.

Here's some help based on what I've found useful over the years:

1. Set down a regular time to code, be it an hour, half-hour, whatever is convenient for you. If you can do it about the same time each day, cool.

2. I like to code when it's quiet. If you have a household of yard apes noisily running around perhaps you should find somewhere more quiet. Or get out of bed earlier ... before the mayhem starts. I get up habitually around 0500 and code for a few hours before the rest of the household wakes up.

3. Define the problem you want to work on for that session. Try and focus on one or two issues. Maybe you need to rewrite sprite movement code, or revamp your GUI, or whatever. Don't spread yourself so thin mentally that you can't accomplish even a single item.

4. Have a plan. Try and flesh out your project, even in the roughest concepts. Don't worry if you have to change something later on, it always happens anyway. Just think about the software in broad terms and work out the details in smaller chunks.

5. Start small. You're not going to write a multi-player networked RPG right off the bat for instance. Start small and let your skills develop. Big projects can create big feelings of personal failure when they don't come together. I can't tell you how many good potential coders I have seen lose interest over the years because their dreams way outstripped their skills early on. Just do small projects and work up.

One last thing, there is a trend in new programmers wanting to "monetize" their stuff quickly. If you're thinking this way, forget about it for the time being. Just enjoy writing and creating for now. If the money comes, it will come later on.

Cheers and good luck.