Maria Bamford has a mantra of sorts, and here it is: Do the work. Three words, three syllables. An easy, orderly thing. She tells it to herself when she wakes up in the morning, whether it’s at her bungalow in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Los Angeles or at a Holiday Inn in Boston or a Marriott in Bloomington, or any of the other highway-side hotels she hits for one night before moving on. Do the work. It’s a stay against paralysis, against the descent of dread. It’s less dramatic than “seize the day!” more affirming than “stop overthinking everything!” It is functional, and that’s what she’s trying to be. Do the work. She repeats it on airplanes, in taxis, on the long walks she takes to calm her nerves before a show. Sometimes she amends it to: Just do the work, the “just” a reminder that she’s not, after all, performing surgery on babies. There’s another, more refined version, too. Do your bits, she’ll tell herself, resigned to the idea that this may always be a struggle. Just do your bits.

It should be simple, even if it’s not. Because she’s a comedian, and comedians do bits.

The first time I met Bamford, one evening in May, she was at a theater in Boston, about to step in front of an audience of roughly 600 people. She had been rehearsing her bits all afternoon, silently delivering jokes as she speed-walked alone along the Charles River, internally running through the intricacies of her timing as she browsed a couple of bookstores in Cambridge, thinking up a few chummy Boston references she could throw in to her 60-minute monologue. Now, dressed in black pants and a quilted North Face pullover, Bamford paced a small room backstage, her layered blond hair mussed and a little spiky, her blue eyes downcast as she avoided chitchat. What she was feeling, she’d later tell me, was “terror.”

You would think that stage fright, at this point in her career, wouldn’t be an issue. Bamford is 43. She has been doing stand-up comedy since her early 20s, when she was living in Minneapolis, a two-hour drive from her childhood home in Duluth. She has put out three well-received albums, twice done sets on “The Tonight Show,” landed a guest role on the third season of “Louie” and has had two half-hour specials on Comedy Central. Judd Apatow has described her as “the most unique, bizarre, imaginative comedian out there right now.” Last year, she appeared in the Netflix revival of “Arrested Development,” stealing scenes as DeBrie Bardeaux, a freakish, endearing meth addict in recovery. Mitchell Hurwitz, the show’s creator, calls Bamford “a genius” and “a real artist.” He adds, “Real artists talk about things that nobody else talks about, and talk about them candidly.”