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Recently i had an epiphany. I suck at staying with painting and finishing an army. I started Age of Sigmar not long ago and decided to go with the stormcast from the starter set.
Then i picked up the chhristmas box set as well. The battleforce. Started that. Then played some games.
Then a nice friend whom im not going to name (feltmonkey you know who you are lol) said we could have a go at Bloodbowl. Well now im making a norse team out of the sigmar bloodreavers.
Then my sister shows up with River horses The Labyrinth board game. Mmmm Love that film. Now i want to paint them up.
Oh what now.
Look at that. Its tha walking dead board game. Love me some zombies.
Oh look at that i play age of sigmar. Whats this AOS28 thingy. Me likes.
Those frostgrave soldiers would look good paintied up to fit in with the freeguild general i just bought.
Oh whats this project z got some awesome looking zombies let me at em.
Now my eyes twitching my bank is empty and i got a tide of grey staring (and moaning something about brains) at me.
So guys how bout you.
Please answer before I get distracted again.

Not so much distracted as I have spent 2 years being moare and moare. I have had to promise not to buy any moare stuff until i have assembled the stuff I have, forget buying.

I have almost finished a suitcase full of various boxes, a Betrayal at Calth and a Burning of Prospero.

I am about to start on Shield of Baal and still have another BaC to do as well as Sector Imperialis and the game with 2 Imperial Knights. Typing this I also remember I have a complete Skyforce Annilihation set to make..

I promised myselft a winter of gluing stuff togetther would give me a grey army that I could spend a few months priming.
Oh, and the Tyranid Sward box . And about 60 boyz on sprues.
Thats before I start on the plastic I have BEFORE the winter build binge..

If I never buy a model for 10 years I will still be busy.

You are so not alone,i have had 5space marines 80% painted for over a month,keep getting distracted by other ideas on things to make,lets not go into the gray models hell not even that,most are not even built by that i mean "Several" Armys 7 Fact,all with small or very large forces to be painted..One day you just wake up and decide to obliterate the collection and paint most of them in a couple of months,but awaiting said day is usually a long wait.

I solved this by having only one project open at a time.

I can buy whatever i want but i can absolutely not open the seal if i dont start to paint it right away. And already finished what i have.

This way if i eagerly buy too much on a whim i can still sell it without losing almost any value because of not opening it.

Having mountains of grey plastic depress me too much.
Right now for example i only have about 10 minis on my painting desk unpainted. And a full bookshelf of sealed packages.
However those 10 unpainted minis bother me more then the full bookshelf full och sealed.

No, I never get distrac-SQUIRREL!

What was the question again?

Sorry about the Blood Bowl thing, Paul. How could I ever have predicted that you would feel compelled to buy or make your own team?

I'm terrible for jumping from one project to the next without finishing anything. Absolutely terrible. I have three Infinity minis from the starter box that I basecoated and washed about eighteen months ago, and haven't started highlighting yet. I have a pretty large (and expensive) admech army all boxed up on sprues, having only built three miniatures out of the entire force. This year I was planning to paint my Sylvaneth army, but inevitably I have more unpainted minis in than army now than I had when I made that pledge. Quite often I unearth stuff in my pile of shame that I had completely forgotten that I owned. I found my Super Dungeon Explore box the other day. I was supposed to be painting that up... some time ago. If I stopped buying now, I could easily keep painting for the next five years.

In fact, I reckon the only part of the hobby I truly excel at is buying stuff. I don't play much, and build and paint slowly and haphazardly, but damn can I buy stuff. I can't afford it, and I absolutely don't need it, but I heroically buy it anyway. It's a fun part of the hobby, to be fair.

I really should stop grasshoppering around and focus on one thing, but it's always the big boxes that get me. GW keep releasing stuff like that new Shadow Wars thing. I wants it. I needs it.

Common theme amongst gamers. If you're lucky, you'll eventually start to develop a discipline that works for you. Plenty of tricks.

-Want to buy something? Wait a week or two. Do you still want to buy it?

-Only assemble the items you're painting, and only play with painted stuff. That'll buzz-kill you real quick and help you determine what you "really" want.

-Buy armies one single box at a time. If you get fed up or give up on them it's a hell of a lot easier to bail out than the $1200 worth of poorly assembled grey plastic you thought you'd turn into an army...and will now sell on eBay at a loss.

-Play skirmish games instead of army games. It's far easier to dabble in games which require only 10-15 models.

-Buy gaming materials (terrain, game mats etc.) which have multi-purpose uses to go with your various gaming adventures. Don't buy a $70 neoprene gaming mat covered in snow because you started to paint 12 figures with snow bases...don't do that.

-The biggest tip: finish something. A unit, a squad, an army. The overwhelming happiness of having a finished army/force/project that you can play on a whim without worrying about further hobbying is fantastic. Not to mention, once you have X, Y or Z completed...you can then add to it later when you get bored or stumble upon a new figure or something cool. The more stuff you finish, the lest time you spend "starting" things. I have a couple of major hobby projects and several of them are "complete" meaning I no longer have a to-do list to make the project/game/army playable. I can now play it when I want and if the muse descends...pick up a new model to add to the existing project/army. Accomplishing something only encourages you to do that again and again. One completed project is 10x better than seven projects at 25%.

I suck at discipline, but hobbying is one of the few areas where I've become better and better as I got older. Thankfully.

I've got similar problems.. and of late I found the key is to focus on a squad, so you can get that finished. That little victory helps with the process, and then you move to the next little unit.

Or, as most say, Baby steps.

I often get side-tracked when working on hobby modeling & painting.

What usually happens during the model assembly process is I take breaks while gluing model components together. If I clean the parts correctly, assembly goes well & I maintain focus on the project.

Painting models for Me usually goes well & I do not get distracted when everything is in order. I Air Brush Spray Prime a model or models, wait until completely dried. Next, I sometimes work until completion.

I get satisfaction from putting in work from start to finish.

 Elbows wrote:
Common theme amongst gamers. If you're lucky, you'll eventually start to develop a discipline that works for you. Plenty of tricks.

-Want to buy something? Wait a week or two. Do you still want to buy it?

-Only assemble the items you're painting, and only play with painted stuff. That'll buzz-kill you real quick and help you determine what you "really" want.

-Buy armies one single box at a time. If you get fed up or give up on them it's a hell of a lot easier to bail out than the $1200 worth of poorly assembled grey plastic you thought you'd turn into an army...and will now sell on eBay at a loss.

-Play skirmish games instead of army games. It's far easier to dabble in games which require only 10-15 models.

-Buy gaming materials (terrain, game mats etc.) which have multi-purpose uses to go with your various gaming adventures. Don't buy a $70 neoprene gaming mat covered in snow because you started to paint 12 figures with snow bases...don't do that.

-The biggest tip: finish something. A unit, a squad, an army. The overwhelming happiness of having a finished army/force/project that you can play on a whim without worrying about further hobbying is fantastic. Not to mention, once you have X, Y or Z completed...you can then add to it later when you get bored or stumble upon a new figure or something cool. The more stuff you finish, the lest time you spend "starting" things. I have a couple of major hobby projects and several of them are "complete" meaning I no longer have a to-do list to make the project/game/army playable. I can now play it when I want and if the muse descends...pick up a new model to add to the existing project/army. Accomplishing something only encourages you to do that again and again. One completed project is 10x better than seven projects at 25%.

I suck at discipline, but hobbying is one of the few areas where I've become better and better as I got older. Thankfully.

Some really good advice here, Elbows. I reckon I'm beyond help, but maybe your wisdom will save someone.

I'd post a picture of my pile of shame, but a couple of things are stopping me. 1) I'm genuinely too ashamed. 2) I don't think my house is big enough for me to be able to stand far enough away from the pile to get it all in-shot.

- Do I still want to buy it two weeks later? Yes. I want it more.

- Only play with painted stuff. I try to do this in theory, but I paint pretty slowly. I try to paint every single miniature to the absolute best of my ability, so I'm not interested in speed-painting. As a result, if I do get a fully-painted army onto the table (it happened once, 1000 points of fully-painted Dark Angels!) it will look good, and it also looks okay in a display cabinet.

- I buy things one box at a time, but they tend to be those big boxes. I buy painting projects, which only become armies later. Also, board games with high-quality miniatures are a particular weakness of mine.

- Skirmish games. Good idea. Or Blood Bowl would be good, I reckon. I only have three teams and a few star players to paint for that. Ooh, Forge World just released the Bright Crusaders...

- Multi-purpose gaming materials - Heheh, I don't do this, fortunately. If I'm going to play, it will be at my FLGS, so I leave that side to them.

- Finish something. I might actually be able to do this, I just realised! I'm about five miniatures away from finishing my Zombicide: Black Plague box.

To be honest, the best thing for me would be to delete my ebay account, wall off Games Workshop and Firestorm Games in Cardiff, and hide all my payment cards.

I hear you on the board games...I do the same, but luckily most tend not to be great enough to warrant spending time painting them. I do some Kickstarters - the save there is that I can sell it off for a small profit if I change my mind!

Be broke. Forces you to make choices as to what you can get at any one time.

(When I started, I was in a crap paying job - unlike many people, I didn't start gaming until I was 18 - this seriously limits how much money you have to spend on mandollies.).

Focus on one project at a time. Buy, assemble, paint, play. THEN move onto the next one.

Accept that it's ok to like other games than the one you play - and that's it's just as ok to NOT BUY INTO THEM.

Discipline you lack. Always your mind on what else you could be playing.

Well I have to say they call them collector models for a reason, all they do is collect dust.

The only thing I would add to sticking to one project at a time is setting goals and deadlines. Post a picture of your project at the end of the deadline regardless of your progress. Get a few friends involved and then at the end of the month, you get to see what everyone has or hasn't been working on. Criticism optional, but if it is all grey or worse still in the box you deserve a poke or two.

I started an escalation league with my gaming group, and it got me to start painting the first 40k models that I purchased. 7 years ago.... Amazing what $5, and a little peer pressure will do.

Good luck, and the first step to correcting your addiction is admitting your chasing the plastic dragon

I get too easily distracted when it comes to buying/planning armies. I've amassed a load of minis over the years and need to kill off my ebay account as that's been nothing but trouble (too many good deals) when on the painting/gaming side of things is almost non-existent. Made a pledge to myself to build a DG force one box at a time, and offloading a bunch of stuff I'm not going to use. It's a cycle:

1. OOH, shinys! Buy the shinys!
2. It's been 2 weeks, interest in shinys fading...paint something else in the mean time
3. Shinys arrived! Maybe assemble something
4. Ehhhhh...It's been a few months....I'm not going to use this/paint them am I?
5. Damnit, to ebay they go *Hates self*
6. Yay paypal monies!
7. OOH, shinys! Buy the shinys!

I need to set goals and set out to use the things I collect. I used to be fine as I was poor, then got a decent enough paying job and an ebay account >.>

Welcome to gamer ADD, after years, I have finally learned to manage my condition.

My strategy is to have two or three projects that I can work on and stick to those with a single figure that I can super detail in case I get burned out a little on an army, and not buy more stuff for projects that have no real purpose.

It's sort of working.

I struggle to get through painting an entire army without losing interest or the game changing massively halfway through the project. The 1850 point standard these days is too much I think

haha...I'm juggling 4 full 40k army collections (one will dual-purpose into AoS, and another will dual-purpose into 30k)...so many projects on the go it's not funny...and I often want to simultaneously work on several things at once, but can't decide which one to actually work on, so just end up wasting time and getting nothing done...ebay's been my biggest problem, I've bought so much stuff off there with intentions of fixing them up and adding them to my armies, but then I'd be working on something else by the time they arrive, so they just get added to the pile - I don't just have piles of grey - I'll have to put in a lot of work, soaking and scrubbing, before I even get to that stage!

anyway, I'm not too ashamed to show my pile'o'shame...I'm an adult and I'm fully responsible for my own situation

This old thread is still one of my favourites.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/blog/538083.page

Why would you want to change that?
I can't paint 1500 points 2 years, because I constantly want to start new projects ahaha!

I struggle with this too, I can't really offer much advice that hasn't been given already, but just really try to have a goal of smashing out 1 project at at time.

Also, delete all social media accounts and disconnect your Internet, otherwise you might see something else to be tempted by!

Lately I found myself in the same position. Still am to a degree. But I saw something and it changed my perspective. Not every miniature needs to be a master class. Challenge yourself to paint fast and neat. Give yourself x amount of time per miniature, per squad whatever and stick to it the best you can. The quality of your work will improve so much by just completing projects rather than procrastinating over them and eventually discarding them for new projects. A neatly painted army with minimal shading/highlighting will be far better than not being able to field that unit/model. Or even worse, they grey horde! Besides, the only way you become a better painter is through repetition. A good podcast/audiobook is pretty nice while painting too. In short, paint fast, paint neat and complete. Rinse, wash, and repeat. Its not the only way I guess, but its what i'm doing and its been working for me

if you don't have a mountain of unbuilt/unpainted plastic you are not a gamer or broke.

I'll have to admit i tend to get distracted too while painting. My advice: Find an activity that entertains you WHILE painting, like listening to music or talking with another person. I usually paint while I'm doing rpg sessions (Horus Heresy these last days, what an irony XD) or while my bf is painting too, so we can talk of what are we doing while doing so, with music in the background.

I'm on my third army in less than 18 months since resuming my plastic crack addiction. Over 3000pts of Dark Angels (painted), about 1500 of Death Watch (painted), and now- Thousand Sons.

I managed to hold off buying the Thousand Sons stuff until I had finished painting 10 of each of the horrors, plus a herald. Now I have 10 Rubrics and 5 Scarab Occult Terminators undercoated with 5 more sorcerers, 5 screamers, a Deimos pattern Rhino, 3 flamers, and an exalted flamer sitting in the 'to prime' pile. I'll try and resist buying Ahriman until I've at least finished the troops.

I caved and splurged on Shadow Wars and threw the squad of scout snipers from my Pile of Shame in it. Goneski! That just leaves 2 drop pods in the Pile of Shame...

I tend to work in groups of 3 to 5 models, and go squad-to-squad. I set goals, such as "I will paint that character/special model when I've finished X (a tac sqaud, etc.)

I'm OK with assembling a whole army and painting a little at a time. It's all about the journey! I've finished armies in the past, and it's more fun to play with painted forces, but we must be reasonable. It takes me 2ish days to paint 3-5 guys, so why rush?

I buy too many new and shiny things. still basically dont have a single fully painted army :/

I had a phase when in secondary school I used all my birthday/pocket money and bought tons of 40k stuff Chaos space marines/tyranids/space marines you name it and either messed the paint job up or just flat out didn't finish them. Dunno what even happened to half the stuff I owned, I'm more mature now and am in the process of building an Imperial Guard army, I've done more in about a week than I have years with the other armies I've built. The trick is I've went with a paint scheme for dummies guide that I found on YouTube which thankfully leaves out the farty detail and still looks perfectly adequate, I'm encouraged by the ease of it and hopefully this time I can finish my army. I've painted my 'muse' test model and it only took a few hours so now I'm going to start batch painting the rest, doing them all at once one step at a time.

I got back into gaming, with minatures, mind you, when I was 40. That's all I'ma say about that part

I know there is a huge culture of people worried about ADHD, ADD and the influence of electronics, just as a for instance, on our younger children. I'm not trying to drag this into the whole 'ADHD is not real' or 'ADHD is an epidemic' debate or anything like that. The reason I bring it up is just this:

We're all adults here. (Ok, well pretty much, you know what I mean!)

So, to me the question boils down to a much simpler question:

Are you having fun?

IE - is the chaos of soo many shinies, and your own distractability affecting your happiness? Then yes, by all means, take steps to fix it, as advised above.

But if it's not - who cares?

EMBRACE THE CHAOS!
Be as ADHD as you want!
Seriously. I love having a lot of projects. I don't get bored. I rarely get stuck in the "I don't want to paint that!" because there's always something I want to paint. And I joke, but I'm only really half joking, I will have plenty of models to paint in the event of the Zombie Apocalypse! Cuz you never know.

I, too, suffer from severe distraction syndrome. Part of it is an electronic crack habit (video games, Facebook, etc.), part of it is just being too damn tired after work to want to paint anything. I sometimes get a serious case of the "gimmies" when I see new shiny stuff released by GW. Fortunately I have managed to avoid buying a few things that I really thought about getting but also really don't need (like Death Masque, Burning of Prospero, Gangs of Commorragh, etc.). Most if not all of my extra income (beyond necessities like food, rent and bills) feeds my plastic crack habit, and occasionally my electronic crack habit (Steam sales always tempt me). It probably doesn't help that I have 3 (actually 4 now, since I have a lot of regular CSM stuff) main 40k armies and a host of small "ally forces" for those armies. The vast majority of my models are unpainted, and I have a few unassembled kits as well. I struggle with sticking with painting anything; as an example sometimes I'll completely basecoat a squad in just one day, only to leave that squad sitting around for a couple of weeks before I touch them again. That kind of thing. I also tend to jump around on which army I'm working on painting at any given moment. I'll do a unit for my Tau, then I'll switch gears and do a Dark Angels character, and then I'll change it up again and paint a Chaos unit. Right now I'm trying to stick with the Dark Angels and get a bunch of them painted; so far I'm doing okay as far as sticking with them. It's still slow going, though. You'd think it would be easy for me as a single, unattached man with next to no social life to get lots of stuff done, but trust me, even without a family my attention wanders.

Yes lol.

Too many awesome models, not enough time.

I don't get -SQUIRREL!