I've had my head down and focused on this project at work since April/May. I've been working long hours and most weekends throughout the summer. This project has had it's ups and downs.
For instance, I am managing three other programmers right now who are all smarter then me and can focus on one thing at a time and crank out great code. I am also coordinating with two other designers to put together the final details that are needed in the design and to be able to deliver photoshop templates for the client to use to make content assets in the future. Finally, I am working with a outside vendor to coordinate the set up of the hardware the virtual server environment and the installed code base and database for the four sites we are migrating. Again, people that are way smarter then I to handle these tasks are making these taks more manageable.
That is the ups. The downs? Well I hit burn out back in July. I am on auto-pilot here. It's taking me a little longer to make decisions for people and don't even get me started on how long it takes me to program a simple template or control. Again, one of the major ups is that I have three great programmers that can focus. Right now my mind is mush.
I feel that the project is coming together nicely. We need to have the programming part done by October 1st and have it installed on the hardware then. Right now it's worrying about the details, testing the data port from the old schema and 2000 database to the new schema and the 2005 database, again another smart programmer worked part-time throughout the summer to build us the most complex SQL package I every seen to be able to port the data to our new database.
As we are getting towards the end I keep thinking about the vacation time I haven't used yet. I can't wait to be able to take them. I am also excited to start another project. It's been so long since I last worked on another project it'll be nice.
Any tips on how to survive long projects that are actually short on deadline deliverables? What about burn-out? Any tips for pushing through till a vacation can be had?