The past year or two, I’ve been in a pretty consistent productive flow. I made a lot of board games. And even some video games, now that I’ve found hardware that allows me to make them again. I’ve written tons of books, most of them not even published/announced on this blog yet. I’ve entered several (writing/game) competitions and am finally getting near those top spots.
This is nice, of course. It’s especially nice because it hasn’t been at the cost of losing something else. I’ve been able to take breaks when needed, get more than enough exercise, give myself some freedom to wander and be lost from time to time.
Until now.
I reached a point where I’d almost finished everything slated to be released in 2025. And yes, we’re not even done with 2024 yet. I’m so far ahead of schedule that I’m basically pulling things from 2026 back into 2025, just because it feels silly to work on a book that might not release until … checks notes … Summer 2027.
As the year drew to a close, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to take a step back and reflect. I was growing “bored” of doing the same thing over and over. Yes, the development of many of my projects was rather “smooth”, but only because I wasn’t taking big risks anymore and was stuck in the same workflow. I was still making good things, but I wanted to make new things.
As I 100% finished some more projects, these thoughts gnawed at me. I really didn’t know what to do. Continue on the safe path of “writing similar stories” and “making little card games all the time”? Or use this opportunity to challenge myself again and jump to something new?
Well, if you’ve seen any of my work or articles on this blog, you know I just had to choose the second option. I decided I’d finish everything for 2025 (preferably before the end of 2024), and then take a breather for a few weeks to find a new direction.
This basically gives me a head start of about a year to try other stuff. To be allowed to fumble around as I learn new skills or challenge myself (creatively) in completely new ways. Because that’s the paradox of being hyperactive: if it’s not really challenging, then I am bored. But if it’s too challenging, then I get overwhelmed and don’t know what to do.
And, well, I’ve already been trying to do this for the final few months of 2024. During the week, I finished my main projects for 2025.
Friday to Sunday, I’d try something completely different. I’d try to look ahead and plan something wild and fresh for 2026. This has yielded some great ideas that truly challenge me and will produce something new and exciting, and some progress has been made on them of course.
But not a lot.
Most of the weeks, Friday and Saturday were a huge struggle, and Sunday I’d just decide to take the day off. Everything I tried was hard, those experimental ideas/projects were filled with too many hurdles and open questions, and it just wears you down.
I basically ruined that flow I was in, because I decided I wasn’t content with doing another “tiny little card game” or another “(very) short story for a contest”. Is this good? Is this bad? Well, I don’t think it’s either of those, it’s simply the decision I will always make. So I have to try and make the best of my brain that is hypercreative and easily bored.
This continued for a while. Now it’s nearly the end of 2024 and I finally realized some kind of “solution”.
To stay motivated and in a flow, you just need a win from time to time.
The reason I was in a good flow before, was because I was getting win after win. I’d become so fast and confident with my workflows and processes, that I could finish a book in two weeks, or finish a small board game (which is good and looks professional) in mere days. Constant wins. Any losses suffered, any delays or challenges there, were gobbled up by me as if they were nothing. Because I had the wins all the time.
When I started challenging myself with completely new workflows and approaches, this stopped. I’d spend a few days struggling to get through a thousand issues or problems with an idea. At no point did I end up with something concrete, and I certainly didn’t end up with a finished product.
Let me give an example.
I found a good idea for video games. A series of tiny games with a completely new paradigm when it comes to gaming and how to approach it. To make this efficient and least painful, I want to have a shared library used by all the games (because 50% of their code would be the same). I only need to create this once, then I can build all the tiny games on top of that.
I’d estimated that I’d finish the first game around Halloween. That became my soft deadline: get a Halloween-themed barebones game to test the idea.
Well … it never came to that. For 2 months, I’d struggle to code that shared system on Fridays and Saturdays. I was making progress, yes, but it was slow. Because it was so new and challenging, I regularly had to redo the entire system I wrote last week. Because in the mean time, after a good night’s sleep, I realized all the ways I was being stupid and how my solutions wouldn’t scale to multiple games.
Two months. Basically 8 weekends. And not a single win. I wasn’t done in time to publish a Halloween game. I merely had a very barebones product I tested with family on the day itself, but that was it.
This is obviously demotivating. When this pattern continues, you start to dread the weekend. You start to dread your “free time” and “let’s play and experiment”, because it’s harder and less rewarding than your main work.
All of this combined into my following conclusion.
From time to time, it’s absolutely necessary to do something you KNOW you can do well.
I’d approached this the wrong way. I’d finished all the projects that went well first BEFORE I jumped into harder challenges. Which seems reasonable on paper, of course. Finish what you started, don’t let projects fester, only jump onto a new idea once 100% done with the other projects. Of course you want to finish that book first before starting a new one.
In reality, however, I think a mix of this is better. Because now I’d somehow combined all the challenging work in one spot, instead of alternating a “loss” with a “win”.
When I realized this, I changed the approach again. I decided to already start on a few tiny projects for 2026 purely because I know I can do them. They’re small, they’re well within my current skill set, so I’m certain I will soon get a “win” on that project. Yes, it still feels silly to work so far ahead, but it works for me. I mix a project that is “all hard work without reward” at the moment with smaller projects that are all “easy work with quick rewards”.
It’s weird. My brain is always like “okay if we finish all these things, then I can finally take a month-long vacation or something”. But then I actually achieve this—I actually manage to be almost a year ahead of schedule—and I don’t actually fare well with taking a break or “playing around with experimental ideas”.
I just need that flow. I need the momentum. I need the balance between “I know how to do this” and “Oh interesting, how will I ever do this?”
And so I return to that lesson I’ve learned over and over the past few years. Sometimes it’s just really useful, or even crucial, to do something you know you can do. To not always challenge yourself or try to invent a new genre of games or do something “completely new” with each project. Just do something you know you can do, so you can get a win again and regain motivation for the harder projects.
For example, currently I’m planning to release another website. I know, I know, I swore a few years ago that I’d never go further than 5 websites. (TiamoPastoor, RodePanda, ElTroubadour, Pandaqi, SagaOfLife) I like minimalism, I like setting upper limits to keep yourself in check, and I know having more websites would just lead to me being overwhelmed.
But it’s such a good idea. It’s one of the best things that came out of my weeks of thinking “which completely new and challenging ideas of mine could I do?” I wouldn’t consider owning a sixth website if I didn’t fully believe it was the thing to do.
So, of course, my brain immediately went into full “let’s drop everything and make that!"-mode. But I am older now! And wiser! I tempered it a bit. I only worked on that idea some of the time, while getting regular “wins” from other projects. And yes, some of those are projects planned to release in 2026, because that was the earliest empty spot on my calendar.
After making this shift, I finally found that flow again. After a few months of really struggling and entering a negative spiral, things are back at their usual pace.
From time to time, humans just need a win. And if that means doing something “easy” on purpose, without any risk or creativity or potential for growth, so be it.
And yes, if that easy thing also fails, that’s obviously an unfortunate situation that ruins your motivation even more. This has happened to me once or twice in the past. I’m not immune to those thoughts of “I just wanted ot make a quick game this weekend, and now it’s turned into a terrible 4-week project, I GIVE UP!”
That just reinforces, though, the need to make the “wins” really easy to get. Don’t assume you’ll get your win on a project or activity that is still risky, or ambitious, or uncertain in many ways. To come back to my example: if I need a win, I might create a tiny card game based on an already existing idea, because every part of that is handled beautifully by my Pandaqi system and barely anything can go wrong or take longer than expected.
As usual, you’ll see all these experimental new projects in a year or two. Hopefully. If I go through with that new website, it will certainly be announced and be the highlight of all I’ve done.
For now, enjoy all the amazing things already finished and lined up to be released all through 2025 :)
Tiamo