Getting inspired to do the hobby (Part I of III)

Staring at a wall of unpainted miniatures that could rival the store shelves in a small friendly local game store can be a daunting if not sobering experience for any one in the GW hobby. Three years ago whilst I was still in the midst of Graduate School I was a cross roads with the Warhammer hobby. I was about to attend Adepticon for the first time and I was constantly reminded of the veritable mountain of unpainted Grey Knight models. Every single time I looked at the heap of models I would get discouraged and bow out of any additional hobby progress for the evening. This was despite me desperately wanting to have an army ready for the convention to play friendly games with.

Having models sitting unpainted on sprues or in boxes laying around the house is never a good thing and can greatly lead to burn out of the hobby as a whole.

So why am I writing about this now? I want to share different ways that I have been inspired to do hobby in the past in the hope that it helps someone else that finds themselves in a similar situation- starting to burn out.

Step I.

 Create a List & Establish Goals

From my experience, one of the biggest contributors to hobby burn out is a lack of direction. If you have a pile of miniatures to paint and zero direction it is easy to give up and opt out of making any headway. Many long-time players have a sizable collection of unpainted models and unfinished projects languishing in boxes and bins. Sitting down and creating a list of what you want to start and what is currently in different stages of progress is a huge step towards completing your eventual goals.

List Creation- This is where you figure out what exactly you want to paint or accomplish for your hobby. This could be completing a set army in a finite period of time for a tournament, or creating a showpiece model for a growing collection. What ever it is, write it down along with all of your hobby commitments and future goals.

Writing out a list may seem arbitrary at first, but having something on paper will help you to figure out priorities and better organize your hobby time as a whole. Paper and pencil work out great for this, but you can also use a variety of computer programs such as Microsoft Excel to create your list.

A few local players have started to use KabanFlow to help them better organize their hobby lists as well (https://kanbanflow.com/). This is a neat free to use program that allows you to slide finished projects, started/ in progress projects and not-yet started projects around a multi-column system.

Establish Goals- Once you have a list of models that you want to complete, it is generally a good idea to put some thought into the end game or what you want to have accomplished at the end. Generally with this stage you have to quantify and order your hobby list, prioritizing different projects by importance, ease of completion, etc...

When you are establishing your goals it is also a great idea to also create rewards for achieving those goals. This could be working on a different project, or buying more models, etc...etc...etc... Giving yourself an additional motivation to get through your now listed project is a great idea and can help you to achieve more and keep the momentum going.

I will be posting additional steps for improving hobby inspiration in the coming days/ week as well as some examples from local players within the Albany Exterminatus community. These examples will showcase the different ways that folks are pushing themselves to accomplish different projects within the Warhammer 40,000 hobby.