Nobody warns you about the dip that comes after a big push. For weeks we were chasing deadlines, and now the deadlines have been met, and the team energy has gone a bit soft around the edges. Not bad, just flat. Like the feeling when a loud song ends and the room is suddenly very quiet.
So this week we did something unglamorous on purpose: we tidied up.
It started with a joke in the group chat about how long it had been since anyone checked that our backups actually worked. Nobody laughed, because nobody knew. We spent a morning finding out. They did work, mostly, which is the kind of answer that's both a relief and a mild telling-off.
From there it snowballed. We renamed folders that had been called things like "final_v2_REAL" for months. We wrote down how to build the project from scratch, step by step, so that it doesn't live only in one person's head. We cleared out a pile of half-finished experiments that were making everything harder to find. Someone deleted forty-one files and announced the number to the call like a fisherman.
I'll admit I expected to feel like we were procrastinating. We're in a waiting period, and tidying is the classic thing you do to avoid the real work. But the real work, right now, is mostly other people's replies. This is the only kind of progress that's actually ours to make.
What surprised me was the mood. Small, finishable jobs have a way of putting a team back on its feet. Everyone got to close something. Nobody had to be brilliant. We ended the week with a project that's easier to open, easier to hand to a stranger, and easier to trust.
There's a practical angle too. If a publisher ever asks for a build on short notice, we'd like to be the studio that can produce one without a frantic afternoon of digging. Being organised isn't exciting, but it's one of the few things a tiny team can control.
I won't pretend the flatness has gone entirely. But it's a bit warmer than it was on Monday, and the folders make sense now. I'll take that.
— Thiago, quietly proud of a very clean directory
Posted by Thiago Moreira · October 29, 2026
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