How do you stay motivated?

NDallyn

NDallyn

Joined
Jun 22, 2006
Messages
814
I've hit a slump:mad:. It seems to be that about once a year I have a month or so where I just don't feel like making anything. I've got a brand new grinder sitting in the shop that runs like a dream, but I just can't find the gumption to get out and use the thing. I need some advice, what do all of you do when the batteries are dead?
 
If Possible I take a 2 or 3 day road trip on my Motorcycle. Always sets me right again. Hope you work it out!!!!
 
I know there is someone in your life, that you care about and that you have intended to make a knife for, if you only had the time. Maybe this is that time.
:confused:

I have a much easier time building a knife for someone I care for personally than one that is going up for sale.
The ones I make for my family, I find to be a joy.:D

Fred
 
I agree with Fred. Make a knife for a reason and it will be joyful. Sounds a little like a motivational speech, but it is true.

As far as getting yourself going, do this:

Set a time for getting out into the shop. Get up a half-hour earlier, wash your face and go out and just tidy things up, saw off a piece of steel, of profile a blade. You will be looking to get back in the shop after work or on the weekend to finish the job. ( don't loose track of the time and be late for work).

Draw a knife on a sheet of paper, cut it out in cardboard, cut it out in steel ( or forge it if you forge), grind the details in and finish the knife.

Have a knife making friend come over to help or watch. Teaching is the best way to learn.

Go visit another makers shop or attend a hammer-in or show. That usually gets the creative juices flowing.

Have fun.......Knife making shouldn't be a chore, it should be.....well....FUN.

Get more sleep, play less video games, turn off the computer.Being tired or mind dazed will made you depressed and not interested in doing anything.

Get more light, Seasonal Light Disorder is a real problem, especially up in your latitudes.
Silly as it sounds, a trip to a tanning booth (I actually hate tanning booths) may perk you right up.

Eat healthy meals, avoid snacks, take vitamins.

Hope you get going soon - Stacy
 
Have someone over to the shop. This will really get the creative juices flowing. Anyone want to come on over????/
 
Knifemaking seems to go through big cycles over the years. Sometimes I am going like big guns in the shop, sometimes I leave the shop for months with incomplete projects. At one point several years ago I seriously thought about getting rid of the knife shop altogether.
But.... along comes that day when I walk into the shop and the bug bites me and I start grinding them out again. Last year I didn't do anything in the shop for about half a year. I took a time out and spent it working on the house and with family.

Now with spring coming, I am more likely to start spending more time inside working in the shop as the snowpack starts to recede and the bad weather returns. I probably do most of my knifemaking during the messy spring months and when the bug season is in full swing around here.
 
A C Richards said:
Have someone over to the shop. This will really get the creative juices flowing. Anyone want to come on over????/
Click to expand...

Now this I might be able to do. It's only about an hour drive or so to your shop. I was in Albany not too long ago, but was pressed for time that day.

Thanks for the offer!
 
Make a knife for yourself, make that dream knife. Those are the things that get me going. I keep a sketchbook of dream knives, when I get a bit low I'll forge one out and start it on it's journey to a sheath lol Or I'll see a knife that one of the other guys have forged and I'll try to work on the technique. Learning or doing what I want are what keeps me going.

I have goals I want to accomplish and the only way I can meet those goals are to make knives.

Of course if I lived up there I'd be kinda depressed to be in all that cold. It's 65 degrees today and I'm in the shop in shorts and a tee shirt :p
 
Lots of good advice above!

One thing I do is I try to keep some big projects going. Things I am not sure how I am going to finish. Its fun to me to try new things. To be challenged. When I run out of new ideas I do research and start over. When I am not working on one of the big projects I think about it and am motivated to get other work done. Also as silly as this may sound I like to clean and do simple chores when I dont feel like working. It helps to get the blood flowing:)

The bigest thing though is to get started once I get started on a new project its not so bad.
Like Stacy mentioned the cold and lack of sun can make it hard. Dont let it get you down to much. Spring is comeing:) In fact its finally above 30 here so I better get out to the shop or maybe I will play with the horses. I havent done much but feed them for the past three months.
Good luck.
 
take orders.....dont have a choice but to stay motivated :)
Seriously, I normally take 1/3rd of what I make on orders and squirl it away for something I a eyeballing. A watch, gun, whatever it is I dont want to use my other funds for.

The above and the fact I am WAY O.C.D. pretty much does it for me.
 
Lets not forget about alcohol, it can make the most motivated person slump into depression.
Go out and do the things that pump you up in the particular season, eat right, get exercise, enough sleep, the energy and ideas will come along in proportion to the feel goods that you do for yourself.
 
I have to agree with Scott, he was just at my place and I found the exchange of ideas very motivating.
knocks a little of the creative rust off and he shared a few ideas that are going too save me some time and frustration.
 
tom kernan said:
I have to agree with Scott, he was just at my place and I found the exchange of ideas very motivating.
knocks a little of the creative rust off and he shared a few ideas that are going too save me some time and frustration.
Click to expand...

hmmmmmmmm.....Like using a little pair of needle nose pliers to bend hot thin steel into a loop? :D:p:rolleyes:
 
Thanks a lot for he advice guys. I think that most of the issue is because I am dead tired all the time. Over the last four years I've averaged between 60-70hrs/wk (had a two month period where I was doing 84/wk) at my real job - and knifemaking has just seemed to be more job and less fun lately. Add that to the fact that most of what I make bores me silly (utility and kitchen blades). I'll try some different things and we'll see what we can come up with. I've actually come to realize that the amount I've been working is not real healthy: the only real interaction with people I have is at work, somehow my whole life became wrapped up in my job and I've got nothing outside of that. So, I'm thinking pretty seriously about scaling back to only working 5 days a week and maybe actually taking time to be around people again. We'll see what happens, thanks again everyone,

Nathan
 
Nathan, I've been where you are (at least to whatever degree we can live similar lives) take some time off of doing the utility and kitchen knives. Make a knife for yourself or do something outside the box, make a rifleman's knife or something to stretch your abilities.
 
Can't say for anyone else but I know exactly how this worked for me. I've had over two years off from making knives. I got burned out with too many orders for the same old stuff I'd made before and it was no longer fun, wasn't fulfilling my creativity. It had just become work.

So I quit.

That did not mean my creative urge went away; I worked on some other projects that had been set aside in favor of the knife orders and completed some really satisfying stuff. But still I felt a bit out of my element, because I wasn't making knives. And those orders were hanging over my head. I felt that I should do those before I did any of the "dream" knives Will talked about.

I think that was misguided. It kept me from doing anything.

When I saw Bruce Evans' post of the knife he made for Ebbtide, my life changed. Suddenly - and I mean that - suddenly and fully blown I was ready to make one of those personal projects Will talks about. A piece that I'd never gotten around to because no one but me will ever want it. But the sketch has been hanging on my office wall for 12 years ... which tells me I want to make that knife. Suddenly it was time.

And there are at least two others that will test my little bit of skill, that will make me think how the hell do I do this?, that when completed will let me feel like a real knife maker again. Making stuff that no one else has thought of, or at least that I've never seen before. Yeah, the orders are still out there and I'll have to get to them eventually, but I just realized that making what I really want to make was better than letting too much 'work' spoil my fun.

One thing that occurred to me this weekend as the steel got too hot to hold is that in the end I'm a knife maker. I've made all kinds of stuff that I liked - armor, sculpture, jewelry, etc - but what I really like to make, what turns me on and gives me a sense of who I am, is knives. I don't know why this is true. It just is. My wife told me that since I've been back in the shop I'm more animated, more fun, look happier and more excited about life than she's seen me in years. I'll second that. I can feel it too.

So to boil this experience into a nutshell, I'm better off to follow my "muse" than my mind. And that the spark can come from someone else's success. The orders will get filled and they'll be better because my creativity has been recharged by doing what I really want to do. And it feels so fine.
 
I hit burnout about once a year, and it's getting worse every year. It gets hard to find things to get me back into it, but I usually just work on the house, play a lot of golf, do some landscaping and just keep away from the shop until it subsides. Sometimes it takes a week, sometimes a month or more.


MT
 
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