A discussion at the bottom of Donald Papp's article We All Need A Win Sometimes talks about getting through the boring parts of a project. My response is based on what I've found out about motivation.

sjm4306 says: I used to find the process of designing and making in and of itself rewarding but now that I’ve merged my hobby with making content for my youtube channel I’ve grown to hate all the other bits of the documentation process that get in the way of the fun bits, making them no longer fun or at best much less fun. Like filming is a huge pita and often works against what I’m trying to accomplish, then there’s monotonous editing of the footage. But it’s sort of a catch 22, I cant continue making all this stuff without monetizing it through youtube so that my hobby can self sustain. So either I have my cake but cant eat it or I have no cake to eat. And I get that I actually am blessed to be in the position that I am in, not everyone’s hobby can be financially viable, but at the same time I’m starting to burn out. Idk, maybe I need to put the brakes on yt till I can figure out the balance I need to both have some fun and be able to support my hobby.

Extrinsic rewards are best at motivating rote and mechanical tasks, things you can do all day without thinking about them. For example, the auto mechanic in the dealership does mostly rote, mechanical stuff and his pay is the motivation for doing that.

Creative projects are best addressed with intrinsic rewards, which are autonomy, excellence, growth, and usefulness. If that same mechanic goes home and works on a project racecar, he gets autonomy (he chooses what to do and how), mastery (he does a good job), growth (he learns about racecars), and usefulness (he wants to start racing).

You’re linking video editing to the extrinsic reward: money. At the same time, it's not routine for you so it’s not a bang-it-out task – you’re always considering what to do, how to do it, whether to try different things, how to use the tools, and so on.

To fix this you need to change the editing into a rote mechanical step as much as you can. Once you do that, the external rewards will provide better motivation.

Start a new project to learn video editing, top to bottom. Choose a concrete goal as motivation: a parody commercial, a 10 minute self-directed movie, your kids as superheroes, or whatever you want. Learn all the video editing you can with an eye towards how it would apply to the project goal, then when you’re ready make that video. Read books, watch youtube videos, consider different styles and techniques, use different features of the software, play with the concepts – cover as much of the field as you can.

Next, create a boilerplate description for project videos that makes the editing as routine as possible. For example, imagine the videos as all having a start, middle, and end. The start has *these* characteristics. The lead-in goes *there*. The end section always has *those* features, and so on. Make it so that creating a video is as simple as following the boilerplate instructions.

Once you’re done with that, video editing will be more automatic. You’ll need to make fewer decisions, you’ll know the software better, you won't be as uncertain, you can do it "on autopilot”.

Video editing will then be a rote, mundane task. It will respond to extrinsic motivations, and you should have an easier time of it.