Finish your projects

The 3% completion figure initially came from my estimate that only the outro was left to be done, which could feasibly be considered as around 3% of the overall game. However, I hadn't taken several factors into account:

- Releasing on platforms and setting up a Steam account.

- Marketing and creating promotional graphics.

- Bug fixes that were discovered by hardcore gamers, who we didn't have access to for testing a decade ago.

- After 10 years, some Unity plugins needed to be updated and adapted.

- Also important to consider is that I ultimately decided against a mobile version and had to rework the game for desktops.

These factors ended up extending the process much more than I initially thought, but the figure of 3% had stuck with me from the beginning, illustrating how finishing touches often require a lot more time and effort than we might initially anticipate.

I definitely agree on the regret front. I can't pinpoint the source of the regret, after all I still learned a lot along the way and spent my time working on something interesting, but somehow it's there. Just recently I picked up a project I had almost finished and then put aside for a year — mostly just to close that chapter up.

I think moderate consumption is a function of tolerance and the specific metabolism of the person combined. I remember reading a comment in HN, where the commenter had a genetic trait which slowed caffeine metabolism by 4 times. So, he had it inside his system 4 times longer, and caffeine had no positive effect on him. However, let's not digress.

I'm not a body hacker, and I don't like to mess with my body much, however I had limited time, this was once in a lifetime situation, so I had to put some regular hours to finish my Ph.D. corrections.

Also, it's worth noting that I'm an avid black tea drinker since 6 or so. I didn't change my tea consumption habits through my life.

First, I read about resetting caffeine resistance/dependence. The method is simple and clear: "Give up coffee for a week. You'll have headaches in day 3-4. Endure. You'll be fine". Then I started to consume coffee to the point where I felt productive, yet not tipsy. I have a Starbucks mug, it's "Tall" in Starbucks parlance. I started with two cups. One morning, one after lunch. As the resistance built up, I started to increase in a controlled manner, to the same line. Productive, but not tipsy. I was putting 10-12 Pomodoros a day (250+ minutes of truly deep work), and my mind was mushy and tired everyday at ~5PM. I never pushed my body beyond that point, because I needed that brain tomorrow. Left my desk and got rest.

I finished everything on time, left coffee for ~3 months, had the headache on day 4, alleviated with 2 sips of coffee that day.

As of today, I drink half a "Tall" every day, and feels enough. If it's too stressful, I also drink another half on the other half of the day, and these are my findings about my body.

Considering I'm not in "battle mode", I can really work well with half a mug of coffee/day.

Coffee shorts my hunger regulation and appetite, and makes me lean to sugar. That's not good. Considering my brain has less brakes and way higher idle than most people (per my doctor's words), this is double bad. So regulating coffee has a net positive effect on everything.

I can reliably build and reset coffee reliance/resistance now, since I know how my body reacts to caffeine.

I always think 10-12 hours ahead since it's caffeine's life in your body. Will I be awake 10 hours later, or will I be battling against caffeine to sleep? This is important for me.

Coffees with mild/mild-high caffeine concentrations works best for me. I don't like high-caffeine or ultra-caffeinated coffees. They make me tipsy causes heart palpitations and creates stress for no reason.

Black tea is a good aid for sustaining my focus. It improves focus, but doesn't create the same stress on my body. I can almost drink infinite amount of coffee until 2 hours before sleep, and it'll keep me collected and focused. What I live is it doesn't create an illusion of being not-tired by priming the body, so I can reliably feel how tired I am and plan accordingly.

Hope this helps, and please don't hesitate to ask for further specifics.

Absolutely!

Ever since I can recall, I've wanted to write a novel. After a few unsuccessful attempts, about a decade ago I started one and it turned out to be a very long process, especially the editing phase. At one point, I was on the verge of giving up because I was unsure of myself and naturally started having doubts, amidst my solitude. However, I couldn't bear the thought of the lingering regret of not finishing it and the cycle of starting new ones just to complete one. So I persisted, did everything, saw it through to the end, even though I've never really had the courage to show it to others (except a couple of friends and I published the first few pages) - I'm delighted that I did:

I know I've written a novel; I no longer have to start another just to prove to myself that I can finish one. My writing has tremendously improved and I believe if I decided to write another, it would be significantly better than the first one. So, in a way, I agree: if you're almost done, persisting to the end could be a good idea, even if it's just to free yourself from obsession.