By the end of the day, I know the moment well. When I want to be productive in the hobby (or even work), and I finally sit down to do the thing; my focus slips almost immediately. You’ve probably felt this too. Your phone feels louder than it should. Your thoughts jump ahead. Even something you want to do suddenly feels harder to start.
Most advice I hear about “focus” tells you to “try harder”, or “plan better”. Even I say this. But, yuck, I hate this advice. Even worse, “discipline yourself”. Nope. I’ve learned that this all misses the point. Over time, I’ve come to believe the struggle to stay focused isn’t just in your head.
Focus is a physical capacity, too. When your mind is worn out, your body can carry the load—through habits, posture, setup, and the muscle memory you’ve built through repetition and practice.
In this article, I explain why the quiet struggle to stay focused is physical, and I share ten practical ways I use miniature painting to help my attention come back when willpower isn’t enough.
1. The struggle with focus is about capacity in the mind and body
When I reach my hobby desk, my brain is often already spent. Not distracted. Spent. I’m tired from a full day of doing adult responsibilities. Do you have kids? Full time job? Yep, that’s me and more.
Attention draws from the same limited pool as decision-making, self-control, and problem-solving. Adulthood is draining and when that energy pool runs low, focus fragments quickly. Gone. This helps explain why attention feels hardest at night, even when there’s nothing urgent competing for it.
Research backs this up. A study by Erickson and colleagues showed in studies of attention and executive function that cognitive resources are finite and closely tied to physiological state and neural load. Both your mind and body are involved in keeping attention and making decisions, big and small.
Here, miniature painting becomes easier when I stop thinking too much altogether. I allow my muscles and the reflexes built up from years of practice to take over. When I’m exhausted, miniature painting becomes easier when I stop thinking altogether. This is true for many mundane household chores and tasks, too. I let muscle memory built through repetition take over.
The focus often comes from switching off the mental, and allowing the things “memorized” in your body to take over.
2. Start with the hardest task first
I know my best focus won’t last forever. So I use it first.
If a miniature has one part that demands care—faces, eyes, freehand, clean edges—I begin there. If I’m tired, I start on those things. I leave forgiving work like drybrushing or basing for later, when my brain is tired but my hands can still move.
Yes, it takes some motivation and discipline to start with the “hard” things first; but the overall work will be better, easier to complete, and you’ll find it gets ingrained in you to the point that it “feels right”.
Cognitive science also shows this (Lou et al., 2020), highlighting task difficulty and attention follow hand-in-hand. When mental resources are highest, precision work benefits most. When they decline, repetitive or motor-driven tasks remain accessible. In other words, when it comes to focus, your mind drains faster than your physical body.
Over time, your physical body “learns” to take over when you’re tired!
3. Find a rhythm; interrupt the struggle, not the flow
Painting straight through doesn’t help me stay focused. It dulls my perception.
Build rhythm. It’s how your body works. Work, rest. Work. Muscles need to recover.
So, after 30 to 45 minutes, I step away. I stand up. I rest my eyes. When I come back, mistakes are easier to see, and corrections feel simpler. Weirdly this always works for almost everything I do that requires true mental input.
For more intense activities, like writing, or working complex problems, I shorten the work session into 15-30 minute blocks. Resting my mind and allowing my body to do something else. Take a walk. Slip some firewood.
Don’t check email, or do any related task when “taking a break”. Don’t work on another part of the miniature. Let your entire body do something completely removed from the task. Physically depart. That’s the key.
Periodic breaks help restore attentional control by reducing neural fatigue, particularly in tasks requiring sustained focus (Pashler et al., 1998; see book). I stopped seeing breaks as giving in to the struggle. They’re part of working through it.
4. Your desk defines the struggle
My environment beats my intentions almost every time.
Attention is strongly shaped by sensory input and motor context. Sensorimotor engagement shows that when hands are actively involved in structured tasks, attentional networks stabilize and distraction decreases (Posner et al., 1998).
If my phone is within reach, it pulls at me. If tools are scattered, my attention scatters with them. If three half-started minis are staring back at me, my mind keeps switching targets.
When I want less struggle, we simplify:
- One active miniature
- One task
- Only the paints I’m using
- Water, towel, and light ready before I start
Less clutter means less internal noise.
5. Stop fighting distraction and give it boundaries
Distraction doesn’t disappear when I fight them. Blocking them or trying to avoid distractions doesn’t work.
Instead, I give distraction a place. I tell myself I’ll check messages after finishing one layer or one section. It’s like managing water behind a dam: You control the release to manage the pressure of all that… stuff. When attention knows there’s an outlet, it stops pushing so hard.
As Bruce Lee puts it, “Be water, my friend.”
6. Try to unload the mental weight before work
Unfinished thoughts keep the struggle alive.
Before I paint, I write down what’s pulling at me, emails, errands, tomorrow’s obligations. Then I write the next two steps on the miniature.
Externalizing tasks reduces working-memory burden and frees attentional capacity. Write with pen and paper. Once it’s on paper, my mind relaxes.
7. Music is magic. Find the match.
Follow the Yerkes-Dodson Law. In short, this law says focus works best in the middle; too little and you drift; too much and you tense up. And the “right” level depends on the task.
For precision work, faces, fine blends, clean lines, I may try to keep things quiet. For repetitive, tedious work such as basecoats, terrain, batch painting, I turn up the volume. I may even listen to an audiobook.
8. Paint (and finish) one thing at a time
Want to lose your focus, quickly? Paint some parts of the model, but don’t finish. Move to another area, then another, and circle back to the beginning. You’ll get done…eventually. But this switching, without finishing will lead to burnout.
I’ve suggested painting multiple models at the same time as a way to maintain motivation. However, this only works if you’ve built up the ability to “work without thinking”.
Task-switching is not helpful at all for keeping your focus (this is obvious to some of you). Going between tasks without getting things done (i.e., “feeling” finished) increases mental load and fragments focus. When I stick to one miniature, or even a single goal (just paint this armor plate), one technique per session, my mind settles. I finish well. I enjoy the time more.
The “practice of completion” builds and maintains forward momentum.
9. Compartmentalize every session
Open-ended sessions drift. Define what “done” is.
Make a single checklist that contains 1 or 2 tasks you know you can finish. Stop when you check 1 or both. Basecoat the armor. Shade the recesses. Whatever. Finish, then decide when I’ll stop.
Time boundaries create habits that allow you to truly “rest”. It makes you a better worker, artist; it improves your ability to engage with whatever task you’re working on. Boundaries, constraints sharpen attention. Endless, open-ended tasks make you into a never-ending worker, even when you’re doing something else.
10. Get good sleep
No muscle memory or ingrained technique overrides exhaustion.
When I’m underslept, under-fueled, or sedentary, focus dies. You want to improve your ability to stay in the moment, to focus, to flow: Rest. Your ability to focus depends powerfully on your physical state and your energy to move your body. This is true at any age.
Painting supports my well-being, but it doesn’t replace sleep, movement, or nourishment. When the foundation is steady, the struggle loosens its grip.
Final Thoughts
So, what do you think? Did any of this sound familiar? I’m always seeking new ways to see the same things differently. Of course, I didn’t dive into reading papers to learn how I operate. I just do things and write ideas down.
Over time, struggling through the reality of working, writing, painting, I discovered a pattern of what works and what doesn’t. This is how you formulate a hypothesis. And to test it, you research into what other people did and perhaps published. You’ll eventually see what matches your intuition. There’s a discipline here, of course, and also a humility. You never arrive at 100% confidence.
But my understanding improves.
What I noticed about myself had names, curves, and studies attached to it—”cognitive load”, “attentional networks”, and other concepts. Seeing focus this way, labeling the process of holds it back and what can improve it, made it tangible. I could now practice the art of focus.
Ultimately, the simple lesson I have around focus is this: Treat it as physical.
Notice your body when your attention slips, adjust your setup, and start moving instead.
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