Game development is a very time and labor intensive task. There are so many different moving parts and details that need to be refined and polished. Inevitably this can end up taking quite a long time to do right. It is therefore understandable that many people would feel the urge to rush through their work, given how much they still need to do to complete a project.
However, rushing through game dev work very often will backfire. Rather than speeding things up, doing so will actually often just slow things down. Sure, in the short term rushing may seem to work fine, but in the medium and long term you will usually pay dearly for it. Sloppy work in game dev tends to create lots of compounding problems that will take a long time to fix, if indeed you ever manage to fix them at all.
This is true in all game dev disciplines, but is doubly so in computer programming. One of the most common mistakes made by new programmers when debugging is to try to just glance through the relevant code without taking the time to understand what it is doing line by line. Errors which seem impossible to locate when you are rushing are often easily found if you just take a deep breath, stay calm, and patiently read the code without making premature assumptions. This patient approach is usually actually much faster than rushing.
It pays to be patient. Admittedly, you do need to make sure you work efficiently, considering how vast the volume of work you likely need to do to complete the project is. However, it is best to do so in a steady-handed and calm way instead of in a rushed or sloppy way. Impatience, frustration, and anger tend to just make things harder. Control your emotions. Don’t let your emotions control you.
It is one of the great ironies of life that running away from our challenges tends to only make our lives even more difficult, yet running towards those same challenges instead, and overcoming them, allows us to live easy and peaceful lives with hardly a worry in the world. Think about what you are doing and never stop learning. One hour of patient study can save you from days of pain.
This game dev tip is an excerpt taken from a small book I wrote. You can find more information about the book here on my website.