Industry veterans Rick Davidson & Tim Ruswick* get together to chat about tips and tricks for productivity in longer projects.

It’s easy to get distracted from the things you’re supposed to be doing. There’s some great tips in this livecast on how to help avoid those distractions!

(*Rick has more than 14 years experience in the game dev industry, working on IP's that include Mario, Transformers, Captain America and Mortal Kombat. He's done it all, from Game Designer, Producer, Creative Director and Executive Producer to GameDev.tv's very own Instructor extraordinaire. Tim Ruswick is a successful YouTuber and indie dev, who's created more than 30 games in the last 5 years (wow!), and joined GameDev.tv as our marketing monster).

Listen to the whole chat here: https://youtu.be/aUNXl-hxwRA

Our 'AHA' moments

  • You will fail at first, but practice makes perfect
  • Game Jams are a great way to get started making your first game
  • We have a Game Jam starting on the 20th May!
  • Remove clutter from your workspace
  • Spend your money where you spend your time
  • If you get stuck on courses, go back and take the easy stuff again

When Is The GameDev.tv Game Jam? (6:22 - 9:06)

Firstly, we want to share our exciting announcement! We’ll be hosting a week-long Game Jam, with weekends on either side of it. Starting May 20th and ending May 30th. We’ll be streaming stuff, playing your games and hanging out with the community. This Game Jam will be a lot different than previous years and it’s completely free to enter. Visit https://itch.io/jam/gamedevtv-jam-2022 to register.

What makes this Game Jam even more amazing, is everybody who submits a game gets a FREE COURSE of their choosing! More details coming soon.

Tackling Bad Habits vs Good Habits (22:33 - 25:44)

Bad habits are easy to fall into and it’s often difficult to maintain good habits. Try and hide things that trigger bad habits, and make things that trigger good habits more accessible.

For example, good habits… put reminders in front of you. Such as a Yoga mat next to your workspace instead of rolled up in the corner, so each time you stand up you’ll be tempted to do a couple of stretches before walking out of the room.

Make bad habits, like watching YouTube, Netflix or playing video games, harder by putting both your controller and batteries in different rooms. - making this bad habit a lot harder to do!

Separate Work Browser with Non-Work Browser (51:50 - 53:34)

Browsers such as Google Chrome allow you to create multiple profiles. Try creating one profile for work and another for non-work and general browsing.

The work profile you can use to reply to work emails, school assignments or any other communication tools you use in your day to day work/school life, and the non-work profile can be used to browse social media, watch YouTube, Netflix and other activities you enjoy.

This should help with online distractions.

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Remember, we host live develogy livecasts every Tuesday at 10pm BST over on our Discord server. You can catch all the recordings, including this episode, in the Devology Livecast course - it's free to join and our YouTube Channel.

Until next time, happy dev'ing!