January 18th, 2010 – i’m officially allowed to do business. Today was also my first day working on a 4 week contract for a famous german board game company. It’s an iPhone App the idea for which came from the 51 Japanese Characters App and so is basically a lot of rework for me to put it back together in a new way for a different audience.
I also started implementing the Pomodoro Technique. Today i completed 7 pomodoros. It felt good to completely focus on my work for 25 minutes at a time.
I’m not following it by the book though. I have my task list set up in Acunote and the time estimates are in Pomodoros (25-minute blocks of uninterrupted work). I just do a pomodoro, and then as an exercise to actually pause after a pomodoro, i update the task i was working on and reduce the remaining estimate.
From that i learned today that the tasks i had created were in many cases:
- ambiguous (even though i created them!)
- contained more than one task because i thought they go together but should have been seperated (lazy project planning)
- recorded twice (one task was just a subtask of another, bigger task)
- not recorded at all (but subsequently added)
But i also realized that working on a single task wasn’t really possible, at least not today. I was working on many different smaller things to get towards the goal. I make a point of noting everything down and keeping an eye on the overall Pomodoro counter in the project plan. I get paid for so many hours so i intend to not overshoot and work more hours. I still have my own idea to ponder about for which i want to reserve some free time every day.
The Pomodoros had one great effect: when the timer was nearing the end i consciously thought about what i can still do and what i need to do to make the most of the remaining time. It turned out that instead of spending way too much tweaking the position of dummy art i turned to something more productive instead. This is absolutely great to catch yourself not wasting time on!
As a side note: today the registration for Juuso’s Gameproducer.net Insiders forum opened up again and i immediately took the chance and registered for it. What better way to start my first business day than being the first of the new bunch of insiders at Gameproducer.net! 
And i came across a great presentation called “Evangelizing Yourself” that has some very important advice in it. It starts out a little slow at first but keep watching through it (or skip some slides).
Gaming Horror - stay a while, stayyy forever!
Thanks so much for embedding my presentation in your post! I’m really glad you got something out of it (even if you felt it was slow to start). It was my first ever public presentation, and has taken on a life of its own. Many thanks!
Hi Whitney, thanks for stopping by!
I think it’s a great presentation and deserves the attention. The reason i thought it started slow is because of your introduction, i know it’s important for the context but maybe not that important for viewers or at least i didn’t know why it’s important at the beginning.
One good thing is that you uplifted Twitter so much. I’ve neglected that because it seemed so stupid to just put out messages on there. I have maybe 80 followers, most of which i don’t even know personally. So it felt weird but your presentation encouraged me to let them know what i have to say – i should think they follow me for a reason.