   Biting of more than I can chew
  I have a problem with biting off more than I can chew when it comes to projects. I will come up with these really great ideas only to find out a bit too late in the development process that the project is way out of my set of skills. This is causing me to be rather unproductive and is becoming a serious problem. Can someone please give me advice on how to handle this habit?
  Maybe you worry that if you toss ideas, you'll forget about them or lose them. Just write them down for future reference - that is, later projects - and avoid inflating your projects. Never think of your projects as your magnum opus.   ;  Sounds like two issues:#1 - You don't know your limits.#2 - You are losing your interest.Learning what you can and cannot do is a good thing.  You cannot expand your limits if you haven't found them yet.Discovering that you were too ambitious can be frustrating, but treat it as a learning experience.  You have learned that some things are beyond your current skill level.What are you going to do with that knowledge?You might treat it like a bad grade on an assignment.  You can choose to work harder.  You can choose to work differently.  You can choose to work on a completely different area.  You can focus on correcting your mistakes.  You can pretend that nothing happened.  And of course, you can choose to give up.As for losing interest, that can be symptoms of other issues.When I lose my passion for programming I try to do other activities for a while.  I find something that does spark my interest.  And then later, when my passions return to programming, I follow them.If you lose interest, it might be because you need a break.  Go do another activity that you enjoy.If you have lost interest in programming generally, it may be time to change your goals away from game programming.  Perhaps not permanently, but certainly for an extended time, if your loss of interest is that extreme.  There are many other fields out there, go dabble in a few.If you have no other passions, and there is nothing that you want to do (hint: vegging around the house playing games and chatting online is not really "doing something") then you probably ought to get some help.   ;Quote:Original post by frobIf you have no other passions, and there is nothing that you want to do (hint: vegging around the house playing games and chatting online is not really "doing something") then you probably ought to get some help.I would call that a side-effect of depressed-ragequitting-project syndrome...though I have been busy with college work, so it doesn't happen so much anymore.I've been playing around with the idea of small experiments, just playing around with a physics engine or something.Another problem I seem to have is not knowing where to start in a learning process. I tried at one point to learn the Java API... seeing a huge list of methods in alphabetical order, which isn't exactly helpful for someone who doesn't know what he is looking for.   ;  While I generally hate the concept, it sounds as if you lack goals. Don't just play around with something, don't look through API without knowing what you want to do. Pick something that you expect will take about 3 hours to code and work towards getting it done. Keep repeating that, so that you can reliably estimate how long something is going to take as well as staying focused on getting it done.   ;Quote:Original post by TelastynWhile I generally hate the concept, it sounds as if you lack goals. That makes sense. I suppose I tend to tackle areas that I am unfamiliar with in their entirety, without knowing what I want to do. So perhaps the problems are one in the same?All right, thanks for the help!