How makers stay productive

I have, yes. I have developed several:

1. I check Twitter too often now. I find myself entering the app to refresh notifications or to reply to support requests a little too often, more than I'd like.
2. I use my phone a little too much now. Answering support requests, etc.
3. My sleep quality has been severely affected. This is something i'm working on fixing.
4. I burn out more often. This is more of a consequence from my style of work rather than making. I work too hard for a week or two then go burn out. I call it "overdrive mode".
5. Sleeping next to my phone.
6. Not feeling generally healthy. I know I'm not healthy, and there's steps I need to take. It's just hard to do because I have little time between the stress of my projects and school.
7. Dropping projects left and right. I have found that it's hard for me to concentrate on more than one project at once. Starting projects after Makerlog has been extremely difficult.

So many bad habits. 1 - Too much social media. 2 - Hard time to become a finisher. Too many projects dropped at 80% to 90% dev range. 3 - Lack of exercise 4 - Some stress related with big updates and hard time and trust other people.

How I plan to overcome this: 1 - Reduce the temptations of social media and block them. 2 - Ship projects consistently from start to finish. This is a habit 3 - I rent a condo in a building with a gym. So no excuses. Usually, exercise 3 times a week. 4 - This one is hard. Especially if you work with non-professional people you can feel like a father taking of kids. I notice doing things immediately and creating systems reduce stress.

I'm not developing any bad habits but rather neglecting my good habits that I developed over the years :D While I now work alone and could take time off to relax and enjoy the freedom of planning my own time, instead I work too much on my side project and forget to do important things like yoga and meditation to keep my stress levels in check.

One thing that really helps me to keep focus and make sure I work on the right things is doing a weekly review with myself. I do this on fridays. I go over what I did, what I liked and disliked in the past week. And I plan the next week. I even schedule time in my agenda for fun things and all the tasks I like to complete.

I'm very competitive. I already knew I was good at coding before stumbling upon the maker community. Being exposed to open stats, real revenues, live streams of people working their ass of just to get a sloppy product out on Product Hunt without giving up really opened my eyes to a whole new challenge.

The biggest bad habit I've developed from this is that I no longer know the balance between relaxing and working. I'm addicted to time, and I feel like the only cure is for me to feel satisfied with the products I make. It's not an easy thing, but I'm getting closer every day 💪

But even with this in mind, I don't regret a thing. It's a reality check and I really needed one.

I don't think it's necessarily a wrong way of life to keep building stuff for a living?

I do feel that it is a cop out to resort to consumption only without trying to build your own. Sure, it may take time to build something of significant complexity and impact, but from having done this for the last decade for AR apps - the caliber I was building at in 2010 does not compare to now. It's a craft and it takes time - years to really be a master at it.

I’m more addicted to social media than I have ever been in the past. I’m constantly checking my notifications on Twitter for support requests and feature requests. I browse search looking for reviews and potential customers…

I’ll stay up until 5am or later sometimes coding. I’ll feel like a failure when I can’t fix a bug and will let it effect my whole mood.