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Prathyush
Prathyush

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Getting Mentally and Physically Ready for a Long Term Project

Before I get cranking for the day, I want to mention a few things to make myself aware of the psychological/physiological implications of this undertaking.

Most of my products as Marc Ignac showed in an illustration yesterday have ended up in the debugger's valley and rarely manage to crawl out of this pit to deliver long term value.

Hype Cycle

So I want to begin by sharing some preparatory resources that I want to mention here to keep me committed to this:

1/ Help your future self by managing what’s on your plate. Each day you procrastinate is extending the load a bit more, potentially causing your future self to abandon the project seeing the mess you have made.

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2/ There’s going to be a lot of work than you have anticipated and only by working your due can you arrive at a polished product that will be valuable to the community. But you got to do the due.

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Also, to be sober about this, most of these things are fractal/recursive as detailed in Hofstadter’s law. Also, there’s a good chance that the 99 rule applies here: last 10% of the work taking 90% of the time.

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3/ Less Talk. More Rock. You need to be replenished enough mentally and physically to do this long grind. This is a really good post by Superbrothers who made one of the most swagass game out there called Sword and Sworcery.

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The time you allot for the project shouldn't narrow enough just to finish the stuff on time, but wide enough to accommodate time to refresh yourself physically and grant you a clear mental space. Regular exercise and a lot of sleep is highly recommended to prevent pernicious psychological crash and burnout.

Devotion and commitment will be their own reward in this. Discipline and responsibility I have noticed act as a structure to direct the focus towards the goal. One should also be vigilant that the structure doesn't becoming a stricture but leaves enough room for creative exploration and rejuvenation.

There would be challenges, agonies, breakthroughs, and delight along the way. But to arrive at all these, relentless commitment to the task at hand and a lot of uninterrupted free time is needed.

Now that I have put out a sort of mini-guide psychological nature of all this, it is time to get into the specifics of building the project. In the next post, I will write about just that.

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