Backstage Pass #17 (Patreon)

On this week’s edition of Backstage Pass, I’ll be talking about…

Motivation for working on my comic! And you may be asking, “Woo, didn’t you already do a Backstage Pass on something like this?” And the answer is… Yes, technically. But that particular sense of burnout has a different distinction than what I’ve felt while working on the most recent buffer for OBT, which is just simple lack of drive to get working. No burnout, no “I’ve tried everything and nothing works”, just… Not picking up the pen and getting down to it.

While lack of motivation is not usually the cause of hiatuses for me like burnout, it still complicates the comic-making process and causes me to waste time and run very close along deadlines.

My main way of combating this is to, very simply, make a realistic schedule throughout the day and stick to it. I list what tasks I would like to complete during the day, and do my best to fulfill what I can by sticking to my schedule. While these schedules are arbitrary and don’t technically need to be followed, they’re a nice way for me to focus on what work I need to get done to make sure I can succeed. A typical day looks like this:

To help keep myself on task, I also like to find a couple of different music mixes to turn on in the background so I focus on what needs to get done, rather than what song I want to play next. These are some of my favorite mixes to put on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUEnc4qeCsk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFZOwUfD5ds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVqQoJlFTnM

Once I’m in the zone, I do very well keeping on task until I reach a good stopping point! Which sometimes means I work well outside my schedule, but in those cases I reward myself with a longer break later.