Making plans to assist yourself with completing a lengthy task can be a challenge. I have been spending most of the morning, edging out plans for this game of mine, from start to finish and creating a timeline of sorts for its creation and completion. How long will it take and how much effort will it be, trying to account for all items, such as those of creating business stuff and working for some extra money by selling items on the Unity Asset Store. Also, how do I account for and accommodate those weeks that the plans don’t pan out? Well, I have this simple reward system idea I was going to start relying on next week. This basically has to do with expenses vs. work produced.
I have a fixed amount of money I can spend on this adventure, and when I distribute those over the time I hope to finish this in, I have a fixed amount for rent and fixed bills, then the rest is living expenses and misc money. The living expenses and misc money is what I am using as a carrot, but the punishment is to ensure that I can work longer then expected if some plans fall behind.
At the start of every week, I deal out fixed amount of points to the tasks I need to accomplish that week. The points on those tasks account for the expenses I have at my disposal the next. In an ideal world, if my plans are somewhat modest, they should keep me fed and warm for the rest of the project. So, when a week is over, I accumulate all the points on those items I finished and subtract the initial week points from it. If it is a negative number, it will subtract from my living expenses for the coming week, because it means that I am at risk of running over time with what I have planned. Forcing me to re-evaluate, prioritize and save money so that I can more easily stay on track with what I need to finish. But, if I do more one week than I planned for, it will not create a positive system where I get more money. It just means that I have more time to work on what I have and can allow myself to introduce something that otherwise would have been a low priority and not justifiable otherwise.
Making high level goals, prioritize, plan for hick-ups, days off and put time aside to maybe acquire extra living expenses.
My plan is right now about 10 months long, and if I work very hard and adjust as needed it should not need to be much longer than that. There is a 2 month buffer in there for setbacks and days off to water the social life and the people around me, but everything else is just work. 14 months in total is not that long of a time.
I have not been able to, or wanting to create some rough honest plan for what I am making, because the ideas had not been fully aired in a way that I knew exactly it was that I wanted to see. But that is all different now, so I am going to make myself aware of the cost and failures of what I am tackling, and push myself into improving and be attentive to all sides, not just asset creation and programming.
But now, I need to feed the beast and try to finish those few remaining items I was hoping to have working this week.
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