1 hour ago, grumpyOldDude said:

You have to do something very different, something that takes your mind off coding completely. When you get back to coding from your non-coding activities, your mind/brain is completely fresh

Some real solid advice here.

You notice it a lot on solo games. One day your coding and avoiding the art, the next day you avoid code like a plague only to find yourself doing math for fun. Two days later your avoiding the math you need and working on the sound, only to go back to the art.

That is the great thing about solo or small teams, you can't make a large game but you have more options on what to do each day.

9 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

It must be a real activity, i e sleeping, eating, driving don't count

One stipulation here though, but a personal one: There are very few things, if any at all, that clear my mind better than going out on the freeway (even a lame ass Dutch one) with some Motörhead dictating my miles an hour.

If this option appeals to you you or anyone, let me leave you with one tip: Bring music you know the lyrics to.

I make games for fun. I also work, have kids and other hobbies.

I find that unlike my bachelor years, where I could pull many all nighters, now I can only pull off short bursts of work here and there. I find that when one only has short work intervals, it is imperative to get right to work instead of procrastinating.

To facilitate this, I have started "managing" my hobby projects by creating a prioritised task list. The first thing I do before I sit down, is read the list. The last thing I do before I get up from a session is: go over and update the list. That way I can context switch in and out of my hobby sessions really fast. This makes every session, no matter how short, very productive.

I have found that before doing this, my short sessions were spent remembering what I should be doing instead of actually doing it.

Another thing I have started doing is:  I purposefully insert compilation errors in my code to make sure it "screams" at me the next time I have time to sit and work on my project. For example: I write some comments without a "//" thus reminding me what I was doing and *where* I was doing it. This is very effective if you need to resume work 2 weeks after you last touched it.

So while I have lost control over the qunatity of "hobby" time that is available to me, I have discovered how to raise it's quality.