Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Maintaining Motivation


If you read blogs on the hobby of war gaming you are probably keenly interested in some aspect of it. Whether it is painting, playing, background fluff, conversions, etc. etc. there is something that grabs you most of all. The issue is for a lot of people maintaining motivation to do it all. It is definitely a point of contention for me, and I have blogging to add onto it (which I have been slack of of late).

 
For me I love building and converting, I love the fluff, and I really like to game. But to truly reap the rewards of all that, I have to get my army painted. This is where I fall. I enjoy it, and I am a perfectionist when I do it, but it takes me forever and it can get old fast, so I just walk away, and this compromises my hobby efforts as a whole.

How, when this is my list of projects, do I keep going???

Painting my Blood Angels Army (~2 companies worth)
Airbrushing Vehicles
Finish my Thunderbolt
Paint my Imperial Knight
Paint Napoleonic French Line Infantry 
Building a Hobby Table
Building/Painting Terrain
Paint my Blood Bowl Team
Paint my Necromunda Gang
Blogging
Developing BFG-R vessels
40+ Imperial Navy Vessels
30+ Chaos Vessels
Convert DE/Tyranid Vessels
Convert a Necromunda Gang

This is on top of being in the Navy, being a Husband and a Father and trying to get time with my family, maintaining my house, my car, my finances etc. etc.

Well of late I have tried to do several things


1- More attainable goals. 1-2 Marines a week is more doable for me than a squad. And then when I can't get it done, I just leave it for the next week. It is still a goal to be achieved, whether I did it or not. 


2- To do list- I put my little attainable goals on a to do list. This I make ambitious. I know it is counter intuitive to what I just said, but the little goals are something I can knock out in an afternoon, but the to do list is full of these for the week, so I try and have as many little things that I can accomplish as often as possible and overall I get more done this way. I know I am not likely to get everything done, but if I get half of it done as a direct result of the list, then I have at least made progress.

3- When you are bored with what you were doing, do something else. So instead of just brutally crushing through assault marine after assault marine, because it is overall more beneficial to accomplishing my list of projects and getting an army on the table, I have recently just been picking up random models I want to paint and painting them. It actually keeps me more excited and more focused for longer periods of time. They may not play into the immediate picture of finishing that assault squad, it plays into the grander picture of finishing my blood angels.

4- Rewards- Hey if I finish these 2 tactical marines, I will paint that techmarine. If there is something I am eager to work on, I can dangle that in front of my face like a carrot. Now the danger here is to let this interfere with number 3. If the criteria for your reward is just to unsavory to make it worth it, just default to number 3.


5- Deceive yourself- What? Well you see how many projects I have. I used to have all those marines on my desk waiting to be painted. It was so depressing to me. So what did I do? I put them all away. Now I only have like 15 marines out, and it doesn't keep me away from my hobby desk. I can pick one up and work on it and tell myself "I accomplished something" without being reminded that there is a mountain of work still to be done.

I hope these tricks can help you on finishing your projects as well. How do you maintain motivation yourself?