School, job, friends, projects, gaming, and modding!!! There is just so much to do, so little time!

This is a question for all the people who make mods, and especially for those who are more accredited modders, like Wrinklyninja. I am currently working on two mods, one in a more active state then the other, but nonetheless 2 mods I MUST focus my attention on.
I know some of you modders have over 4 complete mods each having their own extensive list of things you need to keep up with, especially Arthmoor (who's a great guy, I must say). I can't even imagine how you are able to keep your attention on all the mods and still be able to create others! Let alone, do the necessary life functions.

I am trying to focus on my mod, Camp Simplicity, and another (much larger) mod that will remain in secret for a LOOOOONG time, and both require extensive work. Even Camp Simplicity, one of the most SIMPLE mods that exist on the mod market requires quite abit of attentions. Let's not forget I plan on making one last extension to it which requires a lot of extra focus, while my other mod requires me to get familiar with not just the lore in The Elder Scrolls, but also a whole new set of Lore (which, just a little bit of trivia, was not my Lore that I made with the mod. This mod I am working on is a dead mod that I got permission to pick up where it was left off). Besides figuring out lore, I have to work my stories around it and try my best to focus on making sure there is no contradiction because I know some lore savvy people get REALLY pissed when a modder makes a mistake in the lore. *phew* that is a lot...but that is not everything! I still have my studies to attend to! I am in college, and I cannot for the life of me focus on school, and modding. I have projects that must be complete for class! Next to that I have a small job...while it doesn't even take up the number of days that even a PART TIME job does, it does take up some days which just means more time taken up, so now I have to focus on modding, studies, and a job! Let's not forget a few other important things: Friends, personal projects (not mod related), and gaming! I haven't set foot in Oblivion in awhile because I..well..partly because I get bored, but the other times is because I feel like I should be working not putzing around.

So, I am just curious modders, how do you manage your time to make it all work?

Well this is one comment from one guy....

..and personally I see no magic in it. When I get a lot of done, I really put time in it. I tend to get kinda obsessed to get something finished, and inevitably everything else suffers. When I know I have to focus on more important things in life, I tend to get nothing done modding wise, cause one hour every now and then, tired, just doesn′t cut it for me, I need the flow and feeling of achieving the next milepost.

For me at least, seems there′s no easy way to do it, unless it′s some nice and easy little plugin I just get an idea for and wrote in a single night. Then it′s one of those rare occasions where sufficient amount of free time, motivation and idea just happen to meet, but those are rare occasions and even then they may end up unreleased cause there′s no readme, or enough playtesting, and the moments gone, it′s been a week and I have more important projects to work on. :shrug:

back in the days of high school, when i had time, i had messed up priorities. i got an hour or so of modding done every day, before homework, food, other entertainment, and friends. i did (and still do) planing and studying on my off time, like between classes or on the loo. during college i modded on my days off and on weekend, and whenever i had any extra time and energy. now that i'm out i mod whenever i feel like it, including 3am.

mods are about fun. they aren't some serious work busyness, and no one will kill you if you don't work on your totally secret project for a day.

well we all have those motives to "make" us work - no matter how much we hate it. It is hard for me to get a motive to work without a time frame or other pressures. There was a time when I thought no time frame or other pressures could make things easier, but no. I have personal experiance where that was not the case, and actually lead to worst results in my workflow. Though modding is about fun, I must make myself feel obligated in whatever way possible that my Mod must be released ASAP but not so soon that it will be under tested and buggy.
So on those days where I do little to no work on mods (or anything else I felt the same obligation towards) I feel terrible to go to bed, often times leading to sleep deprivation (not quite as intense when it comes to mods). nonetheless there is a challenge for me to balance out my time throughout the course of a week so that I can get all that is necessary + done.

Seems like you need to a break from modding ntom. Your mod must not be released ASAP. Release it when you feel you want to release it. If you announced a release date, you won't be punished for not meeting it. You are modding, you are not working.

And if you feel like you are working, that can be pretty bad as well. Like mentioned above, modding should be about fun, a hobby. Like painting or playing an instrument.

I've been through that route when I started modding in Morrowind. And kept that way of doing things until I moved on to Oblivion, where I became more organized.

So, how I handle things is that modding is my last priority. It's an hobby afterall. I mod when I want to, and if I take a break, however long it is, I take it. Sometimes I can go weeks on break. (It's also a good thing, because when you come back from your break, it makes you observe the work you've done from another angle.)


So, relax, take your time. If you feel it's looking too much like having a job, take a break. A couple of days, weeks, months, no matter! We'll still be there when you take over again. :goodjob:

Skycaptain pretty much said it all. There are goals that must be accomplished now, and they often keep me up until dawn; these are usually scripting problems, or working out a way to balance several numbers against each other. There are long repetetive processes, generally consisting of making the same change to (or simply creating) dozens of items/creatures/spells/whatever; these consume all available time, but at least I can usually force myself to take a break to eat/sleep/etc.

And... well, there's pretty much nothing else. Everything about creating a mod is either frustrating or tedious, until it's actually accomplished, at which point it's exhilarating. That's why I can't wait to get them done. I suppose if there's one place that proper time management can be inserted, it would be drawing lines around these tasks and simply not starting them when you know there's something else you have to do.

thanks Cliffworms and Tejon. I am...lazy, for lack of a better word. I will procrastinate until the earth dies if I can get the chance - thus is why I said I feel I need those due dates (because even still I procrastinate until the last few days). And I can go a few days without modding, or even possibly a week, but its by the end of that week I am all frustrated with myself...it might be because I have come to realization I had this inability to complete things, and so I want to prove myself wrong on that...which I suppose I did with Camp Simplicity, but that is only one thing completed of numerous things I just dropped midway.

i feel like if you're having trouble with procrastination you should really reconsider whether you really want to make the mod. if you're having to force yourself to do something you're probably not really enjoying it, and if you're not enjoying it there is no point in doing it.

You might be surprised at how many of us mod in bursts. Time spent on family, friends, work, school, being a couch potato, whatever takes up more of most peoples' actual time.

In my case, school was 20 years ago so that's not even an issue

Family and friends are the bulk of things for me right now, along with being somewhat active on political issues. However when I do sit down and inspiration strikes I tend to get a lot done. You might also notice that not everything I'm involved with is all my own personal effort. I've taken over at least as many abandoned projects as I have built on my own, and usually my own stuff isn't anywhere near as big or as sweeping.

That said, if you don't mind a bit of honest assessment, it sounds like you really need to step back and take stock. Your opening post sounds an awful lot like you're spending way too much time on modding and not nearly enough time on other things that are way more important. It might do you some good to drop everything for a month and get the rest of your life back into shape. I'm pretty sure the OB community will still be around after you've done that.

Thanks Arthmoor. Right now things aren't entirely at an unmanagable state, but, with the rate it is going, it will be. My college is a summer session, so my session just began. I am sure as the days progress my work load from it will increase.
I honestly I am getting that feeling that I usually get when I haven't done any work on a mod. I really haven't done much work on the actual .esp itself. Nonetheless, I suppose I will take a break, but I don't think it will be a month long.

Some of my own thoughts about modding:

1. If you're not enjoying it, you're not doing it right (or at the right time). Modding is supposed to be fun, if it isn't, don't do it. I had this problem for years with writing. I used to force myself to sit at my desk and write for hours but I hated most of the time I spent doing it. I thought I wanted to be a writer. Turns out, I wanted to be a modder, I just hadn't heard of it yet.

2. If you normally enjoy it, but you hate it at the moment, you're not doing things in the right order. Figure out what part of modding it is that you really want to do and do that. Forget about the promises you made to all of those people waiting for you to complete the mod you foolishly announced a few weeks ago. You don't owe those freeloaders squat.

3. If giving yourself a deadline helps you feel focused and organized, go for it. Personally, I think self-imposed deadlines are a form of personal hell, so I don't go there. In any case, don't burn yourself out on some self-imposed task just because you have a 'deadline'. The quality of your work will suffer. Release the mod when you're ready to release it. No one can tell you when that is, because no one knows but you. May be that you've done all you can for a mod, even though it's not 'finished'. Release it any way. Maybe someone will pick it up and finish it for you. Happens all the time.

4. If you want to make improvements to a mod you have already released, keep a file for the mod and just jot down a to do list and update it whenever you get a new idea. Then, when you're ready to pick it up again (because you want to, not because you feel you have to) you'll have someplace to start. I have a 'to do' file (like a readme) for each project so I can keep track of all the random thoughts I have about a mod after I've released it. If you're working on a large mod (as you hinted you might be), consider starting a private wiki for it. I have a private wiki at wikidot for Balzu that has dozens of pages of notes. I honestly don't know how I'd keep it all organized without the wiki.

5. Learn how to juggle your tasks. Work on difficult tasks when you have a lot of time and feel energized and confident. If you only have a little time, or you're feeling a little low or worn-out, do something easy (and usually boring and repetitive). That way you're always making progress and you never feel like you've wasted your time. If you try to do something hard and you're not in the right mood, you'll just end up banging your head against the wall trying to solve something that could easily be solved on another day when you're feeling a little brighter. If you feel jazzed and ambitious, spending all your time doing something simple and repetitive could end up making you feel like you've been wasting your time on trivial tasks when you could have gotten something serious accomplished. I often only have a half hour here or there to mod; I use this time to add trees and rocks to my worldspace, or tweak path nodes. If I have the whole day off, I'll try to implement some new feature that I know is going to be several hours of scripting at a minimum. I'm always working and always making progress and I always feel good about the work that I do because I've delegated my tasks appropriately.

6. If you can't do something yourself, ask someone for help, but don't expect any. A modder's free time is the only natural resource worth more than diamonds. If someone helps you out, count yourself lucky and take advantage of it. I never ask for help (unless it's a simple Q&A) because I know I don't have time to help anyone else and it hardly seems like a fair trade; but who knows, you might just get lucky. Personally, I'd rather spend my time learning how to do everything myself than managing a bunch of modders. Easier, by far, to herd cats.

7. Go easy on yourself. You're not putting anyone's life on the line when you mod. Nit-picking lorists are a little like the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Adoring_Fan; only in this case, TES are the arena champion. Don't take their fulminations too seriously.

I don't think modding is not fun. I enjoy it, really! I mean there are times I feel like (somehow magically) grabbing the construction set and hurling it across the room then beat it with a broken lawn chair, but on most occassion I enjoy seeing what I put into this program come up in a game...psutto game design, if you may. Another thing I have experianced recently is the magically amazing and painful job of scripting. What a pain in the ass to do, especially when you have limited knowledge of it like me. But I once it works how you want it to...I think it is amazing. My little mod to many is nothing but a tiny addition to the game, and is probably a very easy thing to pass up because there aren't "epic" battles, there is no story, there is not a whole lot of new content. But to me, it is a rather extensive mod, simply because I didn't just slap an island, a camp, and write some book down into the mod. I went through the whole learning process of scripting to make specific elements of it work properly. For example, I made a script that is real basic, but to me it was very advance: When player equips this item, this item will be removed but be replaced by 2 other objects. During my play through, I couldn't help but smile when I ran through and saw everything working exactly, or close to how I wanted it.

I do not exactly dislike modding. I love it, in fact. I will be glad to pick it up again some other time, but I think Arthmoor is right. I will not take a month off, but I will take a week to work out a schedule and focus on a personal project I started some odd years ago...I think we are coming up on 3 years....though only about half the of that time had me working on it, while other times were stress filled and..well essentially this. Back then I couldn't manage my time too well...but at that point I had 9 hour days of classes, fortunately now I have a total of 3 classes, and everyday except tuesdays never exceed 4 hours long in classes...in fact I think 2 of the other 4 days only have 2 hour long days...so I think I can manage this all into a workign schedule where things won't be super frustrating to manage everything. (While on the topic of super frustrating, does anyone know a way to get your neighbor to TURN THEIR FRIGGIN MUSIC DOWN!?!)

anyways, thanks everyone for the support. There are sometimes this community can be real...aggressive (even at times when it is not necessary), but this is a kind side. Thank you very much.

Excellent tips Magician.

Ntom, to turn your neighbor's music down:

1. Open the CS
2. Load "Annoying Neighbor's Room"
3. Find his "LoudMusicRef", make it Persistent
4. Write this script, assign it as a QuestScript

scn AnnoyingMusicRemoverScript  short NoMoreMusic  Begin GameModeIf NoMoreMusic == 0                 LoudMusicRef.Disable                  Set NoMoreMusic to 1 Endif  End

5- Save.
6- Enjoy!

Oh, see that is where my problem was, I was using an onactivate block. :facepalm: duh, its a begin on gamemode, what was I thinking?