Painting Warhammer is a lot of work. Let’s face it: you have to build the thing, then paint the thing. And that can take a lot of time and energy. Sometimes I find this overwhelming. It’s really hard. It’s easy for me to lose my Warhammer motivation and it’s difficult to find it again.
Last week I really wanted to paint something. I had a free evening after work and my wife was looking after the baby. I had the time, I had the space. But I didn’t have the motivation to get started. After much tribulation, I cleared my desk. I set my paint station in order. That alone really made me want to put brush to hand and get painting!
So what do I do when I lose my hobby mojo? In this article I’ll try to explain my method. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to implement! I call it the Paint The Boot method.
Motivation is a lie
The first thing to understand and keep in mind is that motivation is a trap. Motivation is a fickle lady. See, you can’t really rely on it when you need it, because it’s not always there.
It’s an emotion that tends to always run away the moment you have time to hobby! It happens to me all the time. Picture this.
It’s a Sunday afternoon, I’m free from chores and I can do whatever I want. Result? I just watch TV all afternoon. When evening comes around, I’m frustrated. I haven’t done anything meaningful with the time I was given. Yes, well said Gandalf. I was waiting for motivation to arrive and do some hobbying, but it never showed up.
How to keep your Warhammer motivation up?
The secret here is that you can create motivation yourself instead. No need to wait around – just go and do it. The phrase that I really like to remind myself is this one:
Activation comes before motivation.
That’s right, you have to kick yourself into gear first, then motivation will arrive!
My trick for this is to limit my expectation to only do one very small thing. I call this the “Paint The Boot” method.
The “Paint The Boot” method and how it can help your Warhammer motivation
The name of the method should already tell you all that you need to know. Just Paint The Boot!
By setting my expectations low, I can just focus on one small thing which is really easy to achieve. This way I’ll get my dopamine hit as soon as I finish painting the thing I set to paint. This kickstarts the motivation I need to carry on!
For me, this looks like painting one boot on one miniature. I sit myself to the desk, then force myself to paint this one boot. After that’s done, I want to go ahead and paint the other boot. Then I’ll finish the trousers. And so on…
And just like that my 10 minutes painting session becomes a 2-hours one!
Just Paint The Boot – bring back your Warhammer motivation
So remember, the key here is to nudge yourself to begin with. This will create a landslide motivation loop that will keep you going without even realising it! You even finish your entire army this way.
What about you? Do you agree with my Paint The Boot method? Maybe you have another way to overcome the lack of hobby motivation? Let me know in the comments! Until next time
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