A few years ago I thrilled with motivation to create new things, to iterate on ideas and to move forward. My style included blind jumping into a project and just crashing on many...many problems. For example, I wanted to create a multiplayer shooter game, but that end up in a giant mess. The only outcome was experience.

Since I got my first contract job I really stop moving forward. And I found impossible to reinvent myself in some other side projects. Well, the only exception was game jam, where you had to create a game in 48 hours. Limited time, no worries and two free days of fun.

The reason I realised that was my friend. The days where I did a routine job, he jumped straight into a new problem and solved it. He is actually driven by that progress and that’s extremely precious.

Are we running at 100%? Do we even want to? What happened?

For me, the solution would be enhanced time management. Drop unproductive stuff like gaming. Little goals, plan ahead, cooperate with others on other project and track progress on anything. Plus I’m not a morning bird, so waking up early is actually really exhaustive and while I’ve got a sleep deficit, those management tasks are just unreachable.

Sometimes, there are those moments of pure love for programming, in which you are for any project, but these moments were under many conditions. For example, a healthy sleep cycle, no stress and in general just being happy. But who’s always happy. Who’s running always on 100%.

I guess the image of my friend is a bit foggy since I hear about his work only at his peak.

The whole depressing idea of getting a job and creating programs or games for somebody else with money being the main drive is just hurting self-reflection.

What do you think what should I do? How was your first job?