Programming 30 Days 1 Hour
(also did quite a bit of game development and art)
I did it! I finished the experiment. Now what did I learn?
30 day experiments are a great idea! Im thankful I read the book Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff she has so many practical and helpful advice on really answering the big questions you have had for a long time.
I started on an intermediate experiment of 30 days as I have some experience with game development at this point. Ive been creating games on an off now for 2 years, and that gave me the courage to do more than the first recommended time period she recommends which is 10 days.
Now for a list of all the little helpful things I did and learned to do:
Start a journal, I decided to work on a small distraction journal, I just write in it Time and what I was feeling when I got distracted from my tasks. I also used it as a tool to observe my day to day feelings when it came to the project and the tasks I was working towards.
Even tho I set 1 hour to work on programming my project I did take time outside of that to ideate and play around with ideas and concepts in other times of the day. After all game dev is just as much idea generation as it is the programming itself.
Stopwatch! I decided to opt for a stopwatch method rather than a timer, for me something about seeing the stopwatch rise and the timer slowly reach your goal of one hour warms my heart.
Sprits, each hour feels like a sprint and I love the feeling of racing against the time you have set for yourself to finish one of the many tasks in front of you.
Be messy, I decided that I would just solve problems, I would not try to optimize my solutions. Ive always worked that way to an extent, and I still have much work to do when it comes to polish, but the mindset of just getting started even if messy is so helpful to learn and get things done.
Show it to someone, talk about it. Honestly even tho its likely no one will read this posting on substack has been a huge help in getting me to the finish line. It really feels like im sharing my progress with the world.
The magic of consistency, showing up everyday makes it feel like you truly are building towards something, so knowing that you will be touching the project very soon again is comforting and mind appeasing.
1 hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes. I find that 1 hour works so well with my life, it gives me enough time to make progress in my project, but it dosent encroach in my family time and other responsibilities. Find what works for you but do set an amount of time so you know what your marker is.
I learned so much about programming, game dev, and myself. I dont usually share the things I learn when it comes to programming, but its probably just cause im still learning so many things, Im sure im doing like 70% of things in an amateur way but I am still pushing forward and having fun
Experiment! Try to find answers to the questions you have, it will ease your mind, it will lower your anxiety as you will be taking action towards your desires. Man this has been such a fun journey and I am going to continue it. Ive decided to do another 30 days of programming with some game dev obviously mingled in there. I want to be a bit more visual in my journey so my goal will be to post more screenshots and video content on here.
Thanks for reading. Hope you go chase your dreams.