Celebrating the victories - developer motivation

Happy winter season to you fellow board game developers,

Today I want to share another angle on board game development with you. 
This time it's going to be about motivation and keeping your goal within sight.

I often find myself in a whirlwind of to-dos and problem solving related to my projects. Always having something on my mind and concerned about new obstacles ahead. 

In those moments it can be a relief to zoom out and have a look at my victories - celebrating them, giving me energy to push on :)

And I'm not necessarily talking about amount of sold games, or a certain Kickstarter stretch goal, I'm talking about all kind of goals and achievements throughout your development (big and small). Let me illustrate...

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Goals on board game development
Set goals for yourself - goals that are within reach when you continue focusing on the development. Remember to cut big goals into smaller ones, and don't force yourself to think in major blockbuster goals...
Keep your goals essential to the development, examples could be..

• Finish the rule book.
  
• Find and hire a sculptor/3D artist for figures.
  
• Get X amount of views on your website or the game site on BGG. 
  
• Get your first play test with strangers going.
• Attend to a conference with your prototype. 

As a rule - use SMART goals when you write your goals down. 

• S = Specific
  
• M = Measurable
  
• A = Attainable
  
• R = Relevant
  
• T = Timely

PS: There are many variants of the "SMART goals", but the main focus is to make sure you can achieve them :)

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Unforeseen victories
Here are some of my favorite victories - the unforeseen events. I'm talking about both minor and major goals you achieve through others, for example...

• A journalist includes one of your photos in an article about board games.
  
• An enthusiastic gamer nominates your game in a competition. 
  
• People favorite your prototype pictures. 
  
• People write and ask if they can get their hands on a copy now. 

I know goals of this size is hard to plan on and you shouldn't, it's not the point. This is the ones you should celebrate as they happen, and of course remind yourself of them all the time - these are the victories worth all the trouble :) 

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Private and professional goals
I would always recommend you to have both private and professional goals, specially because you won't always be given the opportunity to only focus on 1-2 goals, so having a few more goals spread out on your various activities will help you move forward and feel the momentum. This could be goals as...

• Completing some kind of race/sport.
  
• Finish your board game table setup in your guest room (incl. a bar ;)
  
• A promotion at your primary work (I'm assuming you can't live of board game development just yet - but if you can, awesome!).
• Get a monthly board game evening going with your friends.

Remember to have some kind of reward written down, that you'll grant yourself if you reach these goals. I have small rewards for each achievement (e.g. buying a new board game, a book on Crowd funding or similar).

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Collect them all - and remind yourself!
I can't stress enough how important it is to celebrate these victories, and therefore to collect them - so you can remind yourself of why you're doing this. 
I usually take screenshots of the happenings, download articles or in other ways save the achievements on my computer in a designated folder. 

Once in a while - I have to visit this folder, to get a boost for the next few hours of rule book writing or unit stat changing. 
Maybe this idea can also help you? :) ..... Happy gaming! 

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