Hey everyone,
I’ve been programming on and off for the past 5 years, usually with my dad. I can use Python, but I’m new to a game engine. Whenever I start making a game/learning something by myself, I usually start to lose motivation and eventually stop altogether. I have a very busy life, being a junior in high school. I want to go into computer science, and I’ve recently been very interested in making a video game with Godot. I want to enter a game jam. Does anyone have any tips for staying focused/not stopping if all the new information gets overwhelming? Or any tips where to start learning? Thanks! 
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Find a specific game or genre of game you wanna create and make a simple version of it. If you are doing step one level stuff. Find a course.
https://www.gdquest.com/ is by far the best and most popular. And for good reason.
Also, become obsessed with it. Learn every little detail and watch new content on it like it’s your favorite movie.
Also try to track you progress and set goals. I use a Trello board but you can just use a note taking app or simple text doc. It helps to track what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished.
Most importantly is have fun. If you aren’t enjoying it. Figure out why. It’s not a job yet. If you don’t like shaders. F’em. You’ll figure it out later!
Good luck!
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Start small. I cannot emphasize that enough. Your first game cannot be small enough. Take the most simple idea you can imagine for a game and make that. Like a magic eight ball, tic tac toe or rock, paper scissors.
Part of the difficulty of making a game in any engine is that you are trying to learn coding and the engine at the same time. With Godot, it is coding in general, the engine and gdscript.
Lol - so true. For me, using Godot every day is a complete pleasure and I have fun even with the most taxing of issues, because if Godot is anything, it is a wonderful fun way to enjoy game making in one of the most user friendly and stable environments I have ever seen.
(Rest assured though, coding can still be frustrating, difficult and confusing as it always is. But Godot takes the edge off of it and GDscript adds so many signposts and waypoints along the way that the journey is about as smooth as it is ever going to be.)
Good luck.
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@pauldrewett @noaht5.1999 Thank you so much! It’s all really great advice. I appreciate it! 
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This was a reply I wrote on another similar thread:
Firstly, every one is different. Just because something works for one person doesn’t mean its going to work for you. Listen to your peers and those with more experience, but just because they have more experience doesn’t mean their advice will work for you.
With that out the way, these are some things I’d suggest.
Keep building games, a.k.a learn by doing. Repetition will help you remember concepts and allow you to focus on new ideas and problems.
Build on top of your existing ideas and games. Focusing on one new feature or problem is easier than building something completely new each time. For example, if you built a simple platformer, try building a platformer that has large levels requiring you to learn how to dynamically load the correct parts of the level.
Don’t get discouraged, creating games is hard! There are many things involved in creating a polished game, design, programming, art, music, QA, etc , etc. These are different jobs (likely with some cross-over) in professional game studios. So don’t try and learn them all at once.
Teaching is one of the best ways to learn. This forum is a great place to start helping others for example. You don’t need to wait until you are an “expert” to start contributing.
I hope this helps a little and good luck with your journey!
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Schedule a time and keep to it. What’s your least busy day of the week? Example: Thursdays after school you do 2 hours.
You might also want to try the “2 minute rule” - if you suddenly have an idea for a thing that would be quick, you MUST do it if it’ll (maybe) take under 2 minutes. Often that’s a lie but the point is to get your started, tackling a small task right away - then keep going.
And the point of tutorials is to help you move the ball forward in your own project; don’t get stuck in tutorial/youtube loop.
Finally, a lot of what causes a feeling of being overwhelmed is the unfamiliarity of vocabulary. Go to sleep listening to something. The point isn’t really to ingest it but gradually absorb a feeling that what’s being said is vaguely familiar.
This is good advice.
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