How can I stay motivated and become more productive as a video editor? I really like the editing process, how it's possible to bring a vision you've had to life, by timing things just right, etc. It's a great art.

Unfortunately I am super un-productive at it. This has been a pattern for me for a long time. Editing always takes the longest time and it a huge dread for me. I have several projects that I failed to complete once they got into the editing stage.

Often I am quite excited at first, piecing together one sequence that's viewable pretty fast.

From there it's downhill. I lose all kinds of motivation, excitement, or passion, and the process is tiring me out. Trimming the 150th cut, fixing the 96th issue, finding just the right 3 seconds from a 4 minute clip... It just becomes sooo dreadful and overwhelming. Even if I made it through putting potentially usable clips, which I pre-trimmed, in a somewhat useful order, it becomes tiring to go through the footage again, and yet again find just the right frame in the 200 frame clip... phew. Another thing that always frustrates me is when my material just isn't any good. I am missing important shots or angles or whatever, or the existing ones have giant mistakes in them, which makes the clip hard or impossible to use.

Overall my output is pretty good after the first session (after I piece together the first usable bit) but for the rest of the project things just take forever and drag out endlessly. As I said, I have some projects that are still not completely edited.

I mean generally this sounds like any project you could do (not just video related) : At first the motivation is high, but then it steadily declines and things become a dread. Perseverance makes or brakes success. For me personally though, editing is extremely affected by this problem.

Has anyone had this issue, too, and found good ways to overcome it? Are there any techniques I could use that are rewarding, or at least help me stay productive? Any guidelines or "recipes" I could follow that give me a different perspective? Has anyone ever successfully applied Scrum to editing?
Do you drink coffee?  That's my solution.

More seriously though - For me, it helps to jump from project to project, setting individual goals each time I move to a different project, e.g. for project 'x', finish creating sub-clips from raw footage before I stop editing.  It also helps to alternate between tasks that are boring and tasks that are more exciting.

In reality, you often don't have the luxury of moving away from a project or boring tasks.  That's when you have to just power through it.  In the end, if you're proud of what you have done, it's always worth it. 

It can be extremely frustrating to work with bad material or to have to work in projects with missing shots.  Again, with these situations, there is no secret sauce.  You edit what you can, and do your best to prevent the situation next time. 

I hope this helps. 

Calvin