My Game Design Regimen-What's yours? Thread

On June 30^th, 2013, after 2 months of thinking about it, and writing notes, I began functional development of my current game, It Never Ends. Early on, I committed to updating my progress on my site every week, and creating a demo every two weeks. I've kept that promise to myself.

I did this to keep me motivated. In my mind, I'm producing demos for an audience, even though I know that the audience, at least at the moment, consists of only two or three people. I feel like it keeps me on track.

Like many of you, I work a full week, but I'm managing to spend 10-15 quality hours a week on my game. Each week, I take stock of what I've done, and set new goals for the next week.

So, this has been working for me. What's your regimen like?

My regimen is similar but I have school and a job that eats most of my time up. I try to get a few goals accomplished per week and hopefully set new ones for the next week.

Scheduling time is important. At first, game development time was limited to whenever I was finished with work. This didn't work too well, because I find that game creation requires me to be fully alert. Now I devote several good hours over the weekend, which is more productive, and less stressful.

I find that setting reasonable goals is also crucial. If I set an unrealistic goal that is supposed to get done by next week, it's only setting me up for failure. Sure, I'm not accountable to anyone but myself, but if I don't set deadlines, and honor them, I think I'll start to make excuses, and the project won't get done.