"How the hell do you stay so productive? (No, I'm not joking. Help a dude out.)"
Asked by impressivelypredictable
I’m definitely not as productive as I’d like to be, but probably the most effective thing for me is just trying to open my sketchbook or photoshop and make myself do “just one or two” before bed or going to work. Once I start working it’s easier to keep working, so starting is the hardest part for me. Insisting I do it before a certain time makes sure I don’t wander off and start vacuuming or reading instead.
When laziness (rather than being too tired or busy or something where no amount of motivation helps) is the issue, I go browse a few threads on http://conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=41 or some art blogs I like until I feel kind of bad and give in to doing just one small thing to assuage my guilt (and from there hopefully I keep working once I’ve started).
When I have the ability to get into patterns of consistently doing at least a small amount of work a day, I find it a lot easier to keep up. I’ll get afraid to break the combo. It’s not always possible to do something all the time though, and then I have to try twice as hard to not find excuses or better things to do after that.
I think I’m also a lot more productive when I can show it to other people. I did a bunch of perspective doodles at work of the cubicles, but since they were on the back of documents with either personal identifying information or internal stuff I had to shred them when I was done. I didn’t really do many more after that, it felt like I couldn’t revisit them or document that I’d even done them, which made me feel like they might have been a waste of time - even though I logically know that’s not true! When I post stuff on tumblr or CA.org it make me feel both more accountable for how little I did, and serves as proof of how much I did. That’s really motivating for me.
