How I stay motivated

one of the most common questions i get is how do you stay motivated in your own work in your own personal projects your own passion projects or your own art and my honest answer is depending on motivation by itself is terrible and if things don't go well it can actually be destructive and in this video i'd like to talk about better solutions and how you can stay motivated in your own work [Music] hey guys this is today i'd like to talk about motivation and why depending on it only or solely is actually quite problematic so here's the thing about motivation for me motivation is quite fickle meaning it changes constantly whether it's frequent occasionally or rarely but in most cases for me it's constantly changing there will be times where i feel really motivated and i'm super productive with my own work like times where i'm going full sprint and making good work out of it and then there'll be another day where i just feel so demotivated i feel so down where i'm just not working at all and eventually i procrastinate there are people out there who say they need motivation to be productive saying things like i just need a little push i just need motivation to do this and that to me those are just excuses and i'm not going to lie here at all all the personal projects i've done from short films to this tutorial course to a youtube channel most of the time i would say 75 of it i was completely demotivated i just wanted to stop and i didn't want to go on because the process of working on it was already grueling it was so taxing it was tiring but i had to find other methods for me to stay productive such as getting into the flow state keeping to schedule maintaining a habit having some sort of pressure outside i'll get to that soon by the way i want to talk about four popular sources of motivation that artists love to bring up and my own personal opinions about them first there's motivation by inspiration you saw something that's really inspiring it influenced you and now you want to go make something because that piece of media or piece of work inspired you to do so but sometimes over time when i'm away from that medium that feeling starts to die out and i'm someone that gets inspired by a lot of different things too so that can also be overwhelming this piece of work that you started because you were inspired by something now is being compromised because of so many different inspirations and if you're not careful you're going to lose the core purpose of why you're doing your project what i would recommend is to be more decisive about your projects while you're setting off to do that and just stick with it but at the end of the day even if your motivation is only one or a few sources that feeling can die out over time especially when you're working on a project that requires so much of your time remember this is long term then there's motivation by fear and pressure this was me during my whole twenties originally coming from my school days to my work days it's the fear of failure if i don't accomplish this something bad will happen i'll fail if i don't do this i won't make money i need to finish this before i die that's a common one i hear with a lot of ambitious people i personally think adding a bit of pressure is a good motivator such as having a deadline or stop loss order for your project when this time is up you just finish working on it but honestly that's as far as i would go in terms of fear and pressure if you constantly keep using fear and pressure as a motivator it's actually going to affect your mental health for the future you start becoming more paranoid more anxious because you can't really get out of that fear mindset too much fear as a motivator or too much pressure as a motivator actually affects your blood pressure it can affect your metabolism things that are quite detrimental to your physical health in a way you just can't get out of work mode and now it starts to sound more like fear rather than motivation you're only doing something because you're scared of failure and that might also affect your mindset and whether to pursue future projects then there's motivation by reward if i do this i will get paid if i do this i will get something in return now for this case i won't count commissions or actual jobs because you're getting paid to do something that you're professionally paid for but let's say you're working on a personal project right so let's say you're working on a pitch project you're working on a comic and you're thinking once you finish this you're going to get a lot of clout you're going to get a lot of following you're going to get some deals left and right you're going to be featured but what happens when you don't get the reward that you were kind of expecting all that motivation about getting that certain reward that you want starts to feel like a waste of time it was a complete lie and this is definitely something i felt recently where i would finish all these pitch projects all these trailers all these short projects and then all the rewards i was expecting out of it never really happened and of course it made me more doubtful of starting newer projects there are other rewards i can think of that are more beneficial but i'll get to that later on in this video then there's motivation by competition now i do believe that there are people who are healthy enough to see competition as a good form of motivation in a way i'm quite competitive so when i do see someone that is doing some really good work i want to challenge myself that i can keep up back in the past when i was younger it was more like i need to be better than this other person another thing with younger artists is that when they see someone that's younger than them and that's way way way better than them they get overwhelmed and they get heavily demotivated it's unattainable for them it's unreachable and therefore they just procrastinate or just stop and it's a common question or common concern that i see a lot on social media a lot of younger artists asking how do you deal with anxiety when you find out there's someone that's younger than you and much better than you and getting all these amazing offers the only advice i can tell you is always assume there's someone that's much younger and much better than you all the time second you can't compare yourself to another person when they kind of lived a totally different mindset and life from you either they worked really hard on something or whether they had a different life circumstance that allowed them to do this third is really just to focus on your own personal growth you shouldn't really compare yourself to other people now there's another source of motivation that i totally forgot during editing this video but that is motivation by encouragement this is when you have a community or friends actually support and encourage you basically you're getting positive input and therefore it makes you feel more reassured to go on i personally think that encouragement is a good thing to have and it's good to surround yourself with positive and supportive people and sometimes when i have friends that tell me what i'm doing is very inspiring to them it raises my self-esteem i feel really good and i feel pretty productive but then there are more days where i'm not getting any encouragement at all because all my friends have their own lives they're busy so they don't really have enough time for me or enough time to basically motivate me so if you're someone who solely depends on encouragement from other people what happens when you're not getting any positive input or feedback or encouragement from other people in most cases you're the one that's going to have to pick yourself up so if you're someone who has low esteem and constantly needs that positive input then you're going to be stuck in a rut here's the thing i don't believe in motivation at all let me rephrase that i don't believe in motivation that requires external factors and honestly there are ways to find motivation from within that allows you to stay productive while maintaining a healthy mindset and here's another thing that i'd like to ask you guys if you're not doing this for anyone outside if you're not reaping any rewards and if you know that it's entirely by yourself without any external factors without the pressure of what people will think of you what would you do and how would you stay motivated the first one i can bring up is motivation by self challenge whether it's challenging yourself to just finish a project or whether you're doing something to learn something new maybe you want to change things up maybe you're used to doing comedic things and maybe you want to do more serious and dramatic things you acknowledge that you want to do something that you've never really tapped into in the past if you know my work i animate cute cuddly things but there are times where i just want to do realistic harsh crazy things sometimes i want to do something that's more anime sometimes i want to do something that's more disney and one of the reasons why i start projects or pick up commission work is so that i challenge myself to things that i'm not yet super comfortable at but i know that i will learn or gain something out of it to me that experience of self-challenge is definitely worth the reward for me i want to prove myself that i too can do that then you can motivate yourself with self-incentives i think giving yourself rewards every time you hit a certain milestone in your project is worth looking into let's say you're working on an animated short film if you finish the storyboarding phase treat yourself to a nice dinner if you've finished all the rough animation stage maybe buy yourself something nice or maybe give yourself a week off if time allows it now there are reasons why this is a good thing one is that you already know what type of reward you're going to reward yourself after hitting a milestone two it allows you to appreciate the work that you've done and allows you to get off work mode by rewarding yourself third is that it teaches self value imagine you're a parent and a kid at the same time if your kid does something really well like cleaning their room or doing well in school you reward them but in this case you're putting value into yourself because you deserve it and you want to show an appreciation to yourself as i say learn to love yourself then there's motivation by solution and this is somewhat similar to my motivation by self-challenging yourself but this in a way allows you to find solutions that allows you to do the work without killing yourself or stressing yourself like crazy so let me give you a small scenario i'm going to do a short film and i know i'm going to painstakingly hand animate everything but if i were to approach it like okay maybe i could reuse some assets maybe the backgrounds i could do in 3d first and paint over in photoshop later maybe i could find ways to cheat things it sounds new it sounds exciting and not only will i learn something new out of it like learning how to be more creative in terms of problem solving but i'm also finding ways to do the craft that i really enjoy doing without burning myself out and basically making me hate it less i think for this to be a motivator you kind of have to swallow up your pride you can't always go things the hard way sometimes you need to find smarter solutions or and how other people would phrase it you'd cheat your way through but not steel that's a complete no-no last but not least find the fun in your work here's the thing that i noticed about myself but when i work on my own personal projects without having anyone else in the room or to you know to crack jokes with or to share ideas then it doesn't become fun and it feels like i'm in cabin fever or tunnel vision and nowadays i would just voice chat with some of my friends while sharing my screen and then from left and right we're sharing jokes we're talking we're just having a good time something i really enjoyed when working on student films during the midnights and early mornings was that before we went to sleep we would all go out to get breakfast and even though that's quite sad and depressing i still cherish it because we all had a good time going through the trenches together even though i consider myself to be quite an introverted person i think having a good small number of peers or friends are great to have around and having people support each other is a great thing maybe for your projects you just want to express some really funny jokes or maybe you just want to do something cool whatever it is you should always try to find the joy in your work even if that means by taking yourself not seriously at all and that of course can teach you things like humility but even so i talk about motivation that can be found from within something that's a more healthier approach to motivation you can't depend on those alone you have to find strategies and how you can stay productive and i made a video on this it's called how i stay productive and this is where i talk about things like using a tomato timer i'm working for 25 minutes straight with a 5 minute break and then 25 minutes straight and what this allows you to do is to get into that flow state meaning that you keep the momentum going there are other strategies i talk about like recording yourself making documentations out of it streaming online with friends or to the public and just maintaining a schedule and honestly you don't have to kill yourself over these things maybe you can just take one small step at a time maybe just do a few seconds of animation and then eventually do more and more and there will be times where you just do none of it or just do small pieces of it i think motivation is a great booster maybe early on in the production but you also have to train yourself to be more productive and to be disciplined at what you do rather than depend on motivation as you're saving grace like i said external factors of motivation is quite fickle and to put it bluntly quite disloyal internal sources of motivations are quite better because you're working with what you currently have right now but remember to stay productive you sort of have to build a habit and to move one step at a time anyways thanks for hearing me out bye interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2d animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 97,431

Keywords: Toniko Pantoja, Youtube, Animation, Tutorial, Advice, Lesson, Vlog, Adobe, Photoshop, Animate, Flash, After Effetcts, Premiere, Video, Film, Drawing, Tips, Gestures

Id: Ichv6yukxro

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021