Keeping a cool head

I've been doing a lot of outside work in the past 2 weeks. Its become a pretty crazy obsession. I've become obsesed with trying to make a game. I'm finding it easy to become so obsessed that I continually fin the results of my work "not good enough" and get depressed about being an unsuccesful wanna-be game programmer. When this occurs, I start to "blindly" fix things. I hack my way through my own code writing dirty, dirty systems that don't even produce the right results. Its times like these that I need to fight myself on a poweful level and tell myself to STOP and create short plan and then stick to that. If I don't, well bad things happen to my product and to my self-esteem.

So far the side project I'm developing has some intersting mechanics that may work out. Right now the game's "tools" have no purpose because the enemy isn't performing his basic duties. Unless the threat is present, who gives a crap if you have a gun?