作者：Pascal Bestebroer

这是我计划刊登的关于游戏开发的“其它面”系列文章中的第一篇。即不只是关于“技术开发者”或“关于截图”之类的内容，还有一些幕后的东西。我发现我的许多粉丝和网友都有想成为全职独立开发者的念头，并且经常有人问我有关本文将涉及的这些内容的问题。

开始一天的生活

虽然对我来说是再平常不过的事，但是经常有人问我我一天都在做些什么，这的确是个不错的问题！

通常我是7点到8点半之间起床。我已经好多年都不使用闹钟了，这也是自己当老板的一大好处。幸运的是我的妻子Aline因为在经营自己的商店所以她也不怎么需要设闹钟。有一天他设了8点15的闹钟，但因为我们很少睡到更晚所以在闹钟响起前我们都已经醒来了。

通常情况下我会在起床前浏览一些社交网站，论坛和新闻内容。所以在9点半以前我通常都还是在床上。我没有吃早餐的习惯，我不喜欢在早晨的时候吃东西，我会在早上11点到12点之间吃顿简单的午餐。

对于我来说遵循这些时间安排非常重要，我认为如果你没有一个严格的时间表你的脑子便会一团乱并且你也会失去职业伦理。如此你最终将会陷入古怪的工作循环中，不清楚自己上次休息时间是什么时候，可能会失去工作的动力，甚至你无时无刻都会感到疲倦。或许也有人能够适应这样的方法，但我更喜欢在特定时间中做特定的事以保持我的工作节奏。同时我也不会穿着睡衣工作。这样的着装是我在休息的时候才会穿上的。

办公室

blog_desktop(from gamasutra)

我没有办公室！我是在我们家的“用餐”区的大餐桌上工作（有10个位置可以选择！），这里还摆着收音机，我也会使用Spotfy去播放音乐。我们还没有小孩，所以没有太多分散精力的事，如果你问Aline，她可能会说整个家里最让人分心的就是我了，因为我会听着收音机唱歌并且会发出许多搞怪的声音。

我们养了5只猫，但其实它们大多数时间都在睡觉，所以也不会让我分心。关于硬件，我只用Macbook（我不用鼠标，有时候会使用手柄或手机/平板电脑进行测试）。

工作时间

随着时间的发展，我的工作时间也发生了一些变化。2004年当我刚创建Orangepixel时，我花了许多时间在工作上。创业总是需要投入许多。

而现在我的工作时间已经正常化了，虽然有时候还是会加下班，但并不是为了赶工而是因为我的大脑中有太多想法。不过这种情况还是很少的，我也仍会在午夜时分上床睡觉。因为Aline在经营一家商店，所以她的工作时间是周二至周六，所以我们的周末时间会有点不同。我的工作周是从周二早上开始并在周五下午结束，但我一般会在周六和周日做些内容修改，并在这些时间看电影或电视节目。

我通常是从早上9点半工作到下午4点半（然后我会散步或骑车到Aline的店，她通常下午5点半关门）。晚饭后我会浏览所有消息，80%的情况下我不会在夜晚工作，除非突然有灵感。在夏天的时候我会做些改变，即我会进行更多的户外运动，并且我发现夏天的工作时间最好不要超过4个小时。

同样地在夏天我也会把自己的工作区域移到屋顶的阳台并沐浴着阳光工作。我不认为加班是任何工作的解决方法，我同样也不认为个体户就该加班，不过所有工作情况都不同，最关键的还是取决于你自己。

我之所以开始作为独立开发者是为了主导自己的生活，即自己决定该做什么何时做什么以及为什么要做这些事。这便是我一直所追求的自由，没有人能够推动我去做某事。

分心

在工作的时候我会尽所能不被其它事所分心。我会关掉Feedly（新闻阅读器）直到一天的工作完成后再打开。我会将浏览Twitter以及其它独立开发平台作为一种有益的分心内容，我将这当成是与正常职场员工间所进行的办公室交流相似的方法。

我所遇到的来自现实世界的分心事物并没有很多，如今我身边的大多数人都能理解我的工作并且会尽量不在我身边晃荡。我会即时浏览所有邮件，有时候会直接回复对方（游戏邦注：如果我认为有回复的必要的话）或等到没有创意灵感而需要休息的时候再回复。

最后

而所有的一切中最关键的是：这种方法是适合我自己的，而不一定适合所有其他人。这是我在过去12年独立工作中所不断磨合的工作方式。一开始我会工作较长时间，而现在我的更大关注点是要变成一个尽可能放松，不要有太大压力的人。

不管怎样我都希望这能够帮助你们更好地进行工作。如果你是独立工作者，那么原则总是很重要，加班也不一定是最有效的，或许那只会浪费你的宝贵时间。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How to fill your days as full time indie

by Pascal Bestebroer

This is the first one of a series of articles I plan on posting about “the other side” of game development. Not just the “technical developer” things or the “look at my screenshots” awesomeness but more the behind the scenes stuff. I noticed that a large portion of my followers and online friends are aspiring to be full time indie devs at some point and I often get questions related to the things I hope to cover in these blog posts.

This post was originally posted on my Orangepixel blog, and I’ll aim to do a post per week, at least for the next couple of weeks as I have some idea’s written out. Also, if you have any suggestions/ideas for a topic like this, let me know in the comments ! This first in the series is a pretty basic one: walking you through my work rhythm and ethics.

Start the day

It’s fairly normal to me, but random people often asked me what I do all day, and it’s a good question! So let’s see.

I’m usually awake anywhere between 7:00 and 8:30. I don’t use an alarm, and haven’t used one for many many years, which is one of the pro’s of being your own boss. Luckily Aline (the other half) is also in a position of not really having to set an alarm as she runs her own store. She does set one for 8:15 on some days in the week, but it’s extremely rare for us to not be awake before it buzzes anyway.

Often I’ll be doing social media, some forums and news feeds before I actually get out of bed. So it’s also very rare for me to be out of bed before 9:30 (and more rare to not be out of bed at 9:30). I don’t eat breakfast, never liked eating that early in the morning, and I eat a small lunch between 11am and 12am, so I go straight to work.

For me it’s really important to stick to these times, I believe that not having any strict schedule will mess up your head and work-ethic. You eventually end up working at weird hours, not knowing when you took your last break, not in the mood to work, feeling tired all the time, etc. It might work for others, but I prefer to have a few things on a set schedule to keep the rhythm in my work days. Also, I never, ever, work in my undies.. ! Outfits like that are for lazy days, and even on a lazy day I put on clothes like an adult

The office

I don’t have an office! yay! I work downstairs in the “dining” area of the house at a big kitchen table (10 chairs to choose from) and the radio or spotify filling the room with music. We don’t have kids, so there’s very little distraction happening and if you ask Aline, I’m probably the biggest distraction in the house as I sing along with the radio and do a lot of hyper-active silly voices (especially when I’m in the creative zone, and one of the reasons I don’t do streaming with webcams!).

We do have 5 cats roaming around but they are mostly sleeping all day anyway, so no distractions there either. As for hardware, just a Macbook (no mouse, sometimes a gamepad or a phone/tablet to test on) which works for me!

Workhours

The hours I put into work have changed over the years. When I just started Orangepixel, back in 2004, I worked a lot but I also had a different situation. I was single, I wasn’t in a great place, and I was much younger. Also, starting a business is a lot of work, simple as that.

These days I do work fairly normal hours tho, sometimes I “crunch”, not because a game has to be completed but because my brain is in “the zone” and I just have so much stuff that I want to add I end up working day and night and 7 days a week. This is fairly rare tho, and I still go to bed at midnight-ish. Due to Aline having a shop, she works Tuesday-Saturdays so we sort of shifted the weekend a bit. My work-week starts on Tuesday morning, and ends on Friday afternoon but usually I end up doing some tinkering and stuff on Saturday and Sunday while watching a movie or some tv shows.

I work from 9:30ish to 4:30ish pm (then I go out for a walk/ride to Aline’s store as she closes at 5pm). I read all my news feeds after dinner, and 80% of the days I don’t work in the evening anymore, unless the creativity calls for it! In the couple of summer weeks I do change all that up, as I take more outdoor walks and such, but I often find my creativity improves by only working 4 hours a day in those weeks.

Also, during the summer, I often relocate my work-space to the roof terrace and work in the sun – until my laptop fans start blowing, then I just enjoy the sun and stop the work. I don’t believe “crunch” is a solution for any job, but I also don’t think you can do “crunch” if you are self-employed because there is a very different feeling to all the work you do, it’s all personal.

The main reason I started being self-employed is to dictate my own life, I decide what I do, when I do, and why I do it. That’s the freedom I’ve always been searching for, so there is no point in forcing myself to work my ass off beyond what is healthy or required.

Distractions

During work I try to not get distracted too much. I always keep my Feedly (news reader) closed until the day is done. I do enjoy some twitter and lately the indiedev slack as a healthy distraction, as I look at that as more the office-chatter that normal people have when working from an office.

Real world distractions aren’t many, it took some years, but most people now understand I’m actually working and not just playing around on a computer all day. I usually read all emails that come in when they come in, and either answer them directly (if I think they are important or easy enough to reply to) or I leave it in my mailbox until a time where creativity isn’t going very well and I could use a break.

Finally

One big footnote on all this is that of course: this works for me, and might very well not work for anybody else. It’s also something that grew organically in those last 12 years of being self-employed. I worked more hours when I started, and my main focus these days is just being a relaxed guy most of the time, as little stress as possible.

That said, I do hope it helps some of you out there with maybe some tips or idea’s on how to get your work-flow going. Discipline is a requirement if you are self-employed, and crunch isn’t a romantic thing it’s really just crap and a waste of your time.(source:gamasutra)