When you start a new game, the first thing you usually do is thinking a lot about whole game's organization, write a lot of code, but it doesn't give any visible results. You can't play your game yet, all you have is just lines of code. And this is what usually demotivates me.

I like to think about my projects for several days WITHOUT any coding, keeping an idea in my mind while doing some regular stuff. And then, after a few days, when I'm in a right mood, do "excessive programming" for a couple of hours (or more).

When I have a lot of energy and passion because of learning, programming and creating my own projects - I can spend many many hours each day. Unfortunately we are only humans, and the day, when our body would say "I need a break" and "I don't want to do it, please, do something else" would come. It is signal which we can't ignore - it says, that something is terribly wrong.

I believe that our motivation is resultant of our healthy lifestyle, clear vision of our targets, making small ( remember SMALL, but well-judged ) steps every day. There is one more in our passion - the most difficult to accomplish: look out for overwhelming problems. However there is a lot of unpleasure stuff we have to learn/make. I believe that key to success is good plan for those steps - split it to small problems, and for each give You some time and space.

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Carry a notebook with you. No seriously. All the time, everywhere. Make sure at most it's a run to your car to get your notebook. Life is demanding, and you can't always be at a computer. Its not healthy to always be at a computer. But make sure you have a way of writing down ideas you have as soon as they come to you. I have a notebook filled up with personal monologues about the theories behind my game's design, why I chose certain features, the backbones, the structures, the thing my artist needs to do his job. Writing it down will not only help you remember, but it will also give you a better method of processing your ideas instead of just thinking of it once, and trying to program later.

That's a good tip. I started carrying a pocket-sized sketchbook with me a few months back, initially with the intent of practicing drawing to avoid losing the skills I picked up in architecture school. I ended up mostly just writing in it as you described (there's an illustration page here and there, too). It increased my productivity greatly; I remember my ideas more easily if I write them down, and if I don't remember, I can just read them again. I tend to adhere to goals I set for myself better if I write them down, too.

Anyway, thanks for posting this topic, as I'm currently experiencing a total loss of motivation myself and finding these answers useful. Got my XNA-based 2D tile platformer's collision detection working, it's loading and displaying levels correctly, and now I guess I'm bored with it; no desire to work on it at all. I think I'll take a break from this project and read Frank Luna's 3D Game Programming with DirectX11 and Ian Millington's Game Physics Engine Development, which have been sitting on my desk for weeks, taunting me with their fancy math and much-coveted third dimension. There's also the matter of coming up with assets for the 2D game. By the time I'm done with all that, hopefully my interest will have... recharged.