Big project motivation
Myself and my wife have been working on a massive terrain project and if everything goes according to plan, next week we will be finished. So we have been working on this bit by bit for months how do we keep our motivation up?
Just do it!
There is a reason a whole brand took this as a there moto. Athletes, a very memeable actor and motivational speakers from the scum bag ones to the successful all use it. You make a decision and you stick by it. I know that doesn’t really help if you are having trouble finding the motivation but until you can make that decision, until you can just decide, okay, I am going to do it. You will struggle regardless.
Small Steps
Take small steps where you can. We discuss what we are going to do next week and then I try and do small steps throughout the week. First I wash them while they are still on the sprue and leave them out to dry. Then when it is time to have dinner, watch a show, or whatever else it is I carve out a bit of time to cut things off sprues… but I also leave things on sprues as much as I can so that I can paint them easily. Now mine is an interlocking terrain project so some steps I do won’t be applicable to you like leaving anything on the sprue. However, you can carve out that little bit of time here and there.
Big Push
We set aside one day to do these things but in reality its just a few hours because we have a lot to do each day… However, we put that time aside. Use that actual time put aside as our big push we have exactly enough to finish on that day, know what we want to accomplish and we don’t stop until we accomplish that task. Once we do…
Reward Yourself
You know how to reward yourself best, a cold beer, it could be time with the mister or misses, it could be showing off your project to someone. Whatever it is. JUST DO IT (heh see what I did there?). So for us we like to assemble all the tiles together for one big shot so we can actually see what we are making rather than just feeling like you have just done a whole lot of tiles, you see what is at the top instead of a box of tiles.
That’s it!
Commit, small accomplishable goals, broken down into even smaller accomplishable goals, do a big push and then reward yourself at the end of each big push and all of a sudden you have really beautiful-looking terrain all done up. Or whatever it is that your goal is… the thing is you can’t give up!
Giving up is what makes things hard, it isn’t going for it, it is giving up and starting again.
There is a reason why my motto is KEEP those brushes wet. Because it implies you are already doing it and you KEEP going, you always have to move forward if you slow down, life will drag you down and beat you relentlessly. Trust me the enemy isn’t at the gates anymore they are all around you and sometimes ‘friends’ and sometimes they are family, they sometimes won’t even know they are tearing you down… and some will. Some people don’t want to see you successful. So you know what you do?