Putting together your first crowdfunding campaign is no easy feat. Between artworking, trademarking, marketing (lots of marketing), planning, networking and a whole host of other indie development competition, you better be ready to give up the vast majority of your spare time. If you then sprinkle on top of that buying a house, organising a hen do, a butt tonne of actual, real life, earning the pennies work and some good ol' anxiety then you have the perfect sh*t storm to burn out spectacularly.
And that's exactly what I did, about a week ago. A feeling of total zombification where literal spilt milk could cause a breakdown of epic proportions. There's nothing worse than having a to do list the size of a mountain and zero energy levels. This isn't the first time I've got to this stage either. I've always taken it upon myself to fill my life with projects and goals and then push towards them til the point of exhaustion. But with every eventual melt down I've got a little better at pacing myself along the way and this occasion is no exception.
So here's a few tips on ways to not burn our spectacularly:
- Be realistic and flexible - You need to be completely honest with yourself about what you can achieve in a certain time. If you do under estimate something, learn from it and change your dates. Give yourself breathing room. Breathing is fun and stops you from dying (true fact).
- Life gets in the way - If you're working on something in your free time there will be unavoidable distractions. Keep date based deadlines to a minimum in case a big ol' life event rears it's head and breathes fire all over them. Dragons can also get in the way (true fact).
- Take breaks - Don't let the whole thing become something you resent. Make sure you're taking time away from your project at regular intervals. Your work will be better for it and so will you.
- Find a little help from your friends - The support of the people around you goes a long way.
With that last point in mind I've put together this graphic to help push me up my mountainous to do list. It's my little way of saying: "I'm rather tired but I'm this far through this thing and I think that's good right?" If you see it and give it a nod in whatever way your social media of choice entails you'll have all my kindest gratitude.
This is Spanjj, quite tired survivor of the Gobblin' Goblins project, signing off.
