A little post from Neil Shuck at the Meeples blog has had me thinking recently. Neil was talking about motivation to paint, but I guess it goes for any hobby project.

Another delivery of miniatures arrives for my lead pile
It’s accepted that we’ve all got a Lead Mountain we struggle against (vainly?). Painting is pretty labour-intensive, shopping is quick and easy so it’s not hard to see where the backlog comes from. And when we put down the paintbrush and do other things we often find ourselves reading books or other gamers’ blogs and getting inspired to jump into yet another game in another period (in another scale!).
Getting Organised
The guts of what Neil was talking about in his post was breaking a big scary, unassailable task down into bite-sized chunks, and building in a system of rewarding yourself as you complete each chunk. For Neil that meant painting small numbers of figures in a batch, so that he ended up getting the buzz of finishing them regularly. I think even for big projects you can do that, but it involves getting organised.
I use an online tool called Trello. It’s a workflow tracking tool designed for teams to manage their workloads. I use it at work and for studying, and find it works really well for keeping my hobby stuff organised too.
I started out creating a board each for my miniatures and terrain projects. Each board tracks my progress from buying to finishing a job. So a miniature job will start “on the shelf”, then jump from list to list as it gets worked on. On each individual card you can list the individual jobs (base coat, details, highlights, etc) and check them off as you go. The whole reason I do this is to make myself feel like I’m constantly making progress and achieving something. Checking that little box feels good. One step closer to conquering Lead Mountain!
What I realised after a while was that I actually needed a THIRD board, which ranked sorted everything not by how close to completion it was, but by how urgent it was. This is for a couple of reasons:
- Things sometimes jump to the top of the priority queue, and need to leapfrog ahead of stuff that’s actually closer to being finished. How many half-finished jobs do we all have that have been usurped by some young upstart?
- I had projects that I needed to lump together miniatures and terrain.
Doing it this way also allows me to see how certain projects are going overall. I might need to do sort miniatures, terrain, write lists and/or playtest things. For me being able to visualise all this and break it down into bite-size chunks and prioritise them really helps me feel like I’ve got everything under control and will actually achieve it. I find nothing as motivation-destroying as the feeling like the job has got away from me.
Another thing that being able to visualise everything helps me to do is stop taking on new projects. If I look at everything in front of me and it looks like it’s not going to be finished for months or years, it’s easier to be disciplined about taking on new stuff. I know that if I collect something new it’ll affect my current projects, and I’ll have to pick one to shunt down the priority list. Doing that in a visual way instead of just in my head makes me think twice about it.

Productivity: it’s about being the tortoise AND the boy. Pic chosen because I’m such a slow painter, by the way.
Mind Hacks
Essentially it’s just about playing little mind games with yourself. For some reason I really enjoy putting photos of my projects onto the Trello cards, it makes moving them around connect to the physical object more and makes it more satisfying when I tick off tasks or move the card from one pile to another.
Another thing I find myself doing is avoiding long dull jobs that might be a high priority (painting loads of infantry) and instead wanting to do short fun jobs (converting something, assembling a tank, painting an unusual miniature). So I often pair up a dull job with a fun one and do both simultaneously. I don’t allow myself to complete the fun job until the dull one is done as well.
How do you do it?
My system isn’t right for everybody, it’s just the right one for me right now. The actual tools you use for tracking your work could be anything, but I think at the heart of it my system is about:
- Break big jobs down into lots of little steps so that you get to feel like you’re constantly making progress.
- Visualise your progress. Use photos, colours, lists that you can check off.
- Group tasks into projects.
- Make it fun, you know what you like so build in rewards that will keep you motivated.
Got any tips that work for you? Drop a line in the comments below and let us know how you do it.
10 Responses to The Battle of Lead Mountain
Nick says:
Wow – I JUST started using trello for both painting and developing a set of rules that I’ve been working on. I like the idea of a priority board and I’m going to start tracking miniature from acquisition (how many of us have figured we’ve forgotten about!) to final finish. Another tip – make it a public board to be held accountable!
Neal says:
I was starting to setup Trello for this also, but… got side-tracked… 🙂
Neal says:
Honestly, I think I remember getting bogged down in all of the options on how to organize the projects… 🙂
George says:
I don’t buy anything I don’t need and generally finish one project before starting another, my lead mountain is around 30 unwanted figures. I do however need to stop new projects.
Andy says:
I don’t buy anything I don’t need either, George. I just need lots of things! Currently collecting for WW2, dark ages, FIW and feudal Japan, and some fool just started a Kickstarter with lots of nice pirates!
JOHN BOND says:
I agree Andy, I don t use a computer program but I use a note book and record what I need to do for the following day,ideas for modelling /set tasks needed to be completed the following day etc.
As you mentioned slugging it out on one painting project can be tough mentally but working on different small projects is more productive.
I also set one theater of war I what to complete before moving onto another but in the meantime I am recording in my note book ideas for models,terrain , models needed to purchase etc for another theater of war so I will be ready.
cheers.
Andy says:
To be honest you could do pretty much everything Trello does with a notice board and some drawing pins.
But yes, you’ve grasped the point I was hoping to get across that it’s not necessarily about the tools, it’s about figuring out what kind of motivational poke your own brain responds to.
Neal says:
My most effective motivational poke is to actually play in some games. A convention usually gets me going. 🙂
I haven’t really played much since August 2015… That should tell you how my projects are going too… 🙂
Matt says:
That looks like exactly the sort of thing I need! Anything to keep the butterfly on track. However, is there a danger of spending all your time “planning” rather than actually doing? ;o)
Andy says:
Haha, possibly Matt! The other risk is that once you can see everything you’ve got to do in front of your face you might run screaming.