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I'm very inconsistent with motivation, primarily because of my job eating all my time and then giving me big chunks of time off (I'm a secondary school teacher).

What helps me "get stuff done"
1. Go in with a plan - if you know what colours you want, then you'll be quicker and more confident while painting.
2. Make a process - decide the best order to paint your stuff in.
3. Stick to a faction - I find I'm better and more productive if I hammer out an entire force, rather than jumping around. I do "palette cleanse" of individual models or small groups in between, and I've had success treating an entire board game's worth of models as an "army", but my greatest productivity is doing whole army projects.
4. Paint to a standard that you're happy with, but don't feel you have to push yourself on troopers - I can paint to a decent standard, but it's a lot of effort. However, I can paint to "good tabletop" with relatively little effort, and I enjoy painting that way a lot more than "pushing myself" every time. I think a fully painted army to "good tabletop" looks far better than a few scattered units at a higher standard. I know some will find their "comfortable standard" is higher than mine, but unclenching about this was a big help to me in enjoying painting more.

These days I've got a small kid and I get very limited time to work, so I'm extremely productive in the time I get. I've found I prefer painting models or reading to almost any other hobby now that my time is limited!

For me it's just momentum.
So I usually start with either A: something that I've been wanting to do, OR, B: Something that is literally easy to do.

So for example, I can do a quick drybrush of a piece to get me to sit down and start picking up a brush. That usually rolls into "hey I need to base paint these parts of these other minis", which in turn leads me to do more and more.

The other key factor is timing: if you are not into planning out your day, like me, then have whatever time you generally sit down to do your hobby stuff be either at the end of the day or at a part of the day where you have flexibility to continue to work if you want to. I hate having to stop when I'm on a roll.

You make your own fun. Momentum is definitely part of it, but it has to come from within. Self-criticism, honest self-assessment.

More an observation than a tip? But painting both Epic and 28mm scale Heresy Dark Angels, I found doing the dinky stuff first really encouraging.

For instance, I’ve painted 8 Epic scale Kratos, and have now rolled round to my 28mm Kratos. Doing it this way around? I know where I want my spot colours to be, and what ones I’m gonna use. Which has sped up the 28mm Kratos, as I find myself with greater confidence it is gonna look decent when I’m done.