How do you get your butt into gear and do what you have to do when you're bored and burned out?

Look at yourself in a mirror, while holding one of your crocheted gifts. who is bigger? you or the crotched gift? tell yourself that you can do this.

Your reward, at the end of the session, will be your favorite bottle of wine. then, you can toast yourself to a job well-done.

You can do this.

What kills me is that it’s become a thing with my family… “what is she making this year?” and it’s flattering that my heavily-crafting family awaits my gifts every year. But it’s pressure, man. PRESSURE.

(Is everyone getting a crocheted penis this year? Can I?)

Sometimes it helps me to remember that all the anxiety I’m feeling about starting will go away as soon as I actually start. Or break it down into manageable chunks—I’m just going to work for 15 minutes, then I can watch TV or something for 15.

@janbb: only the boyfriend’s best friend is getting a crocheted penis… and that’s only if I can get the freaking testicles right lol

@nikipedia Good advice. I find the same thing too; once I get started, the anxiety usually dissipates. The other suggestion is good too.

I have the same problem with the fruitcakes I make for everybody. (Stop groaning and rolling your eyes, people, they ask me to make them and get upset if I say I might not, and usually start eating them immediately. So there.) They are a lot of work and it it takes a bomb going off under my ass to get me going. Advice you give to @poofandmook will help me, too. Thanks for asking this, @poofandmook . GQ!

For starters, turn off the f@#%ing computer.

@submariner: I’m at work, thank you very much.

When you figure out this question, will you share it with me, please? I have a stack of junk mail that is 6 months old. All I have to do is throw it away, but I get this idea that I need to at least look at it. What I should do is look at it while I’m throwing it away. Still, I can’t seem to make myself do it. Sigh.

I second @submariner.

Or Just hang here in Fluther land. Like that will help. ;-)

To me, if you don’t enjoy doing it – then don’t do it. I have so many projects to keep me busy, I don’t even know how to be bored.

Make yours first, wrap it and put a gift tag on it to yourself. Then make the others. Don’t count the first one in your gift count. If you don’t make enough, give cookies or candies that you’ve made yourself to the ones that you suspect might be iffy about it.

@hawaii_jake, I’ve cracked the junk mail thing. I sort the mail on the way in from the mailbox. If it’s a bill, statement or a personal letter or card, I drop it into a basket in the kitchen. Anything else, I look at the envelope to determine if I’m expecting it, if I can live without it, and if I can replace the information if I needed to. If I’m not expecting it, can live without it, or I can find the information elsewhere, it goes right into the shredder unopened.

@YARNLADY: I did enjoy it… for the first couple.

My issue here is that if I make different things for different people, then it’s too easy to go even more nuts on details than I already do. Plus, that costs more in materials (it’s almost never just yarn) and the whole point here, really, is to give thoughtful gifts on my nearly non-existent budget.

@poofandmook : I love that you give gifts with thought and care, knowing that they’ll be appreciated. We should get together and spur each other on!