I’d be lying to you if I said I had a work life balance. Work life balance is difficult to achieve. As a game developer, you never know what bugs will sneak up on you that you have to sit down and correct. Maybe a deadline was set to a date too impossible. Maybe the game broke somehow.
This particular topic has been calling to me throughout the week. I needed to think about work life balance quite a bit to decide which path I want to go down. Its admittedly hard to even write up what’s on my mind regarding this topic, due to the lack of that work life balance.
The past couple of months have been anything but. I moved to two different states on two opposite ends of the country two weeks apart. In that time, I started a new role in a new studio with lots of responsibilities. On top of that, communications with a moving service, moving boxes, driving across country.. work life balance? Whats that?
Its either been one or the other. Work 100% or Life 100%. Luckily, things are settling down soon.
I do strongly believe that work life balance is essential and important. If you are a game developer, you have heard of or are familiar with crunch. For those that may not know, its an industry term for “a period of time where you overwork yourself to meet deadlines on time”. Its normal in the industry (normal enough to have a word for it), and is something that game developers are fighting against more and more.
Crunch should be avoided at all costs. The health of your developers, and the health of yourself, is top priority.
An example I can think of here is Game Jams. Its commonly believed that in order to win a game jam you and your team need to overwork yourselves to meet deadlines and to finish you game. During both RDC game jams I have been a part of, the developers I teamed up with and I took time to get a full nights rest, took time away to eat, and we still walked away with victories in both. Your team is everything, collaborating together and coming to a decision on which direction to go early on and building on the idea is important. But want to know what’s more important? You. Sleep. Health.
You need to be functioning at your best in order to be your best. Your health should not be sacrificed for a deadline.
So, try not to stress. Deadlines are important to stay on track, but if its a choice between your health vs your project, choose your health as often as you can. Push back that deadline and delegate tasks among your team to get things done.
That being said, I am experimenting around with different methods on how to achieve a solid work life balance. On weekends, I do not work unless absolutely necessary. This rule is becoming stricter and stricter to me. You should be taking those days off to breathe. Try to spend quite a bit of time away from the computer or outside. Travel if you can. Go on a hike. Go walk around the neighborhood. Ask people what they do and why they do it. Start a conversation. Read up on a topic or try a new hobby. The older you get, the crazier your schedule can be. Once you have your own place, a ton of responsibilities comes with that. And when you may eventually have kids, oh forget it. I applaud and admire the parents that manage to stay sane and calm through their child’s toddler years. Yall deserve a gold medal!
I think the secret here is scheduling and sticking to it. You don’t need to schedule your life outside of work, but anything within those work hours you probably should. This isn’t only to ensure that you know what you’re doing each day, but you will also know if a deadline is realistic or not based off of that scheduling. Make sure when shooting for a goal/deadline that you give yourself a little bit of time to breathe too. Crunch is usually caused by whoever is creating those deadlines for you. Take your health, your speed, and what you know about yourself into consideration. You are not a computer, you are a living being with emotion, fears and dreams. Keep that in mind when making deadlines for yourself, or your team members. What can they/you honestly tackle in the amount of time allotted? I would be interested to hear what you guys think on this topic too. How do you achieve a work life balance?
On the personal side of things, this past week has been okay! Things have been coming along. We’ve slowly but surely been unpacking a few boxes a day. My partner, Matthew, decided it would be a neat idea to get a projector. Its this cute one, its yellow and white and almost looked like part of a star wars droid. Its actually pretty great, its a small portable TV you can take anywhere. You can even drive your cat, literally, up a wall with it.
We’ve also acquired a book on making Bento, and got a Bento Box! Hoping to explore that sort of thing soon.
Texas has been…. meh? Its only been a few weeks but it feels like a few months. We’re heavily considering to move to a place we both feel much happier in.
I don’t want to say that Texas hasn’t met our expectations, it certainly has. That’s actually part of the problem though. We expected Texas to be a certain way and, in most cases, we were right. I was hoping for more of a social life out here and there hasn’t been much of that, which is a bit of a bummer to say the least. In order to get to places, its Texas, you need a car, which is something I dont have. Uber is okay but, I dont know. There’s that sense of freedom that comes with driving, you know?? The idea that you can just jump into your car and go places. We’re lacking that car to have those adventures, so its been a lot of sitting inside or waiting for things to change.
We’ve thought about doing some spontaneous activities to make things a bit more exciting, which, we have from time to time but.. we’re both just.. not happy here? It doesn’t feel like home. So, who knows what adventures this last bit of the year will contain.
I want to visit NASA before I leave Texas though. I LOVE space. I love the idea that we are going to space and that we’re focused on that again. We need more of that. Im going to add some of my favorite images of space-related things below.
The idea that we ARE going back to the moon is so exciting! Its a step towards becoming a multiplanetary species, what an incredible achievement.
I can only hope to see these views right outside my window one day. To be able to leap across the surface of the moon, to go to outer space.
This is a topic that was recommended to me by a follower on twitter. If you’d like to hear my thoughts on a particular topic, or would like to suggest topics in any regard, feel free to give me a follow here. Thanks!
