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[Baffler]

Never thought I'd post down here, but I need some pointers. I've got a project going, an RPG built on a minecraft map. The plan being to do everything from scratch, from the terrain to the flora to the cities to the dungeons, with its own lore and side stuff to do. I used to be working with a very good friend of mine, but he shipped off for the Air Force in the beginning of May and I haven't heard from him since. I haven't given up on the thing, but I'm having trouble bringing myself to actually do anything with it. So, bay12, I need advice. How do you settle down on a long-term project without it becoming a chore?

[Meph]

Make it smaller chunks, do one at a time. Looking at a very large list of items can be overwhelming.

Make a schedule and check it off after you done it. Same thing people do for exercise. "Monday: 1hour coding: Check". "Tuesday: 1hour coding: Check". That way you see your progress and you get into a routine, in which it will feel normal to do a specific amount of time every day.

Get some feedback by other people. Positive reinforcements always help keeping one motivated.

[Vector]

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[Retropunch]

Take all the tasks you need to do and divide them into tiny chunks which are easily done. So something like 5-6 minutes long - in yours it might be hollowing out two rooms, or planting a row of trees. Then from this list do at least one every day. No excuses other than death or the DF2014 release.

You'll feel like you're accomplishing something, and although it might go really slowly, actually moving forward (however slowly) will motivate you even more. Similarly, the planning and 'chunking' of the plan will get you more excited and motivated, and you'll often feel motivated to do more than one chunk per day.

[Jopax]

Depending on what you respond to best you could make a nice progress chart of sorts. Either graph it, write up stuff on post it notes and stick them on a wall every time you finish one, anything to track your progress easily and visually.

At this point, you're doing it purely for the love of doing it, while that can be powerful motivation, when tackling something huge seeing tangible progress becomes very hard. So abstract that shit in some way so that you can look at what you've acomplished whenever you feel like giving up.

Then, hopefully, your OCD kicks in past the halfway point and you need to finish it just to fill out that damn wall with post it notes