Write Code Every Day

There's a time and a place for both.

If you are a constant procrastinator, forming good habits, even on trivial stuff, reconnects you with why you need to do the work, and prepares you for getting started.

But after awhile, you find that you're just working, and need to produce. So it switches to deliverables.

My only life hack addition: instead of calling it a day, pick what you are going to set for your next completion goal before you quit. This was a Hemingway hack to make sure he could get up the next morning and start writing immediately. I've found that even the most informal mental commitment the day before solves the starting problem and ends up producing more positive streaks. It is great at overcoming (and preventing) any kind of "block".

> Did you work on Madden at EA (since you mention it in the intro)?

I did, though I didn't really touch gameplay. I was a UI programmer on Madden PC 2002 (Oh God that's over a decade ago now, what happened to time?) and I worked on the first version of Madden for the X360 doing mostly animation and tool pipeline stuff.

I'm not the best person to ask about it, but the part that blows my mind is that the "AI" for the game is deeply tied into the animation system. Madden has hundreds (thousands?) of individual player animations: runs, tackling, blocking, catching, you name it. The AI works roughly by searching for an animation that lines up with what it wants to do.

For example, if the ball is coming towards a receiver, it looks for a catch animation that will put his arms in about the right place and that stitches together well with the animation he's currently playing. If it finds one, then it transitions to that animation and makes the catch.

This means the producers who are building and tuning the gameplay do much of it by tweaking animation: changing timing, deciding to add more animations of certain types, etc.

As far as I know there is no holistic set of data or code that says, "this is the AI of Madden". Instead, it's just the sum of all of these animations.

While Resig's dedication is admirable, I'd caution against applying his advice too broadly. He is doing it because he has side projects that he wants to complete. There's no reason to force yourself to code every day for coding's sake.

I've been doing a lot of side-project hacking the past three months, as evidenced by my Github activity graph (https://github.com/zhemao), which, admittedly, is not as impressive as Resig's. However, this week, I finished up my latest side project and found myself at a loss for new ideas. At first, I did feel a bit guilty about not doing any coding, since it had been a long time since I had nothing to work on. But then I realized that there's more to productivity than a nice contribution graph and sometimes it's good to take a step back in order to think, reflect, and get inspiration.

I'm currently reading through Patterson and Hennessy's "Computer Organization and Design" to learn more about computer architecture. I'd also like to practice my saxophone some more, start learning how to draw, help a friend who is still in college find a job, and expand my social life a bit. My Github account will still be there when I am ready to get back into it.

You gotta think of your project as you think of a woman you are in love with, otherwise, there's no sex. I think there is a lot in common between love, advancing in a project and even picking a movie to watch - they all involve a kind of 'sexual' openness towards the subject.

I am totally facing the same issue which you faced about working only during weekends. Your idea of working everyday seems nice i will try giving it a go :)

Nice post!