Clean up your creative life

Spring has finally arrived in my part of the UK.

The sun is shining through the windows. And suddenly I’m noticing they’ve become embarrassingly grubby over the long winter. 

This is a time when many of us spring clean our homes, and do a reset. I think you should also clean up your creative life, clearing out the old and stale to make room for fresh ideas and projects.

Let go of perfectionism on this. It’s all about making your work life easier, bit by bit. And don’t feel you need to do it all at once. That’s a recipe for overwhelm. It takes time to accumulate clutter. And it takes time to clear it, too. 

Here are some areas to consider:

Give your website a polish

• Do an audit of your site. If you are so familiar with it that you can no longer see it, ask friends or colleagues to give you some feedback. Is it clear what you do, who you enjoy working with, how to book you or buy your stuff? 
• Update your images, services, shop. If you sell physical products, consider running a sale to get rid of tired stock. 
• If your site needs a revamp and you keep putting it off because it feels overwhelming, focus on just one section at a time. What’s the most important page? What brings in most work? It’s much easier to rewrite your About page or put some fresher images on your Home page than it is to redesign a whole site at once.

Tidy up your social media

Are the channels you use still working for you? Have they got cluttered and confused? Does your profile clearly state what you do, and what you have to offer? 

Analyse what’s working for you, and focus on the channel/posts/activity that are bringing in new clients or sales rather than just randomly creating content. (Or feeling guilty because you don’t.) Then set up systems and routines to make it easier. 

If a channel is no longer working for you, do some research. Their business models and algorithms might have changed – which means you either need to change how you use it, or move on.

Clear out your email in-box

• Archive anything that arrived more than three months ago. If you need to retrieve it, you can. If it was important, the person would have contacted you again by now. 
• Block out time in your schedule to clear the remaining backlog.
• Unsubscribe! From newsletters you no longer read, stores that you don’t shop in, all of the clutter you delete as it arrives. 
• Don’t keep newsletters or other things to read in your in-box. I have a separate READ mailbox. Regular newsletters are moved into this folder automatically. (I use Apple Mail and do this with the Rules function, but most email software has a way of doing this.)
• Don’t treat your in-box like a to-do list. You’ll waste far too much time opening and re-reading the same emails while you sort out what to do next. If an email contains a task, either do it immediately, or put it in your task manager or on your to-do list to deal with at the right time. 

Process paperwork

I file very little now, preferring to scan documents and store them digitally. A lot of information that used to come by post now arrives as digital files anyway. But piles of paper still accumulate: my notes and ideas, bits ripped out of magazines, information to process. 

I gather it all into a basket in my study, then spend a happy hour meandering through this on Saturday mornings. There’s rarely anything urgent here. Most of it is rubbish. 

But there are also bits of buried treasure: ideas and inspiration, recipes and book recommendations I enjoy rediscovering. 

Organise your digital files

Is everything fully backed up? Have you slowed down your computer by overloading it? There are now lots of useful apps to detect duplicated files. When I ran one on my Mac, it turned out I had hundreds of doubled-up photos, Word files and other debris.

Can you find what you need quickly and easily, or is your computer a mess? It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this, and spend days cataloguing stuff you’ll never need again. Better to just dump everything into an clearly labels and dated Archive folder, and set up a new system to move forward. (Tip: the simpler, the better.) If you ever need any of the files you’ve archived, you can retrieve them, then enter them into your new system. 

Weed your to-do list/task manager

If your to-do list, spring clean that too. feels overwhelming, clear it out. 

• Prioritise key tasks which, when done, will make everything else on your list easier – or even irrelevant. Delete, delay or delegate everything else. 
• If your list is cluttered with things you want to do, but don’t have time for now, move them into a new list of future projects/ideas. I review mine at the start of each quarter, so they don’t get forgotten. 
• Have tasks that seem too big or overwhelming to begin? They’re probably projects. Decide on the next baby steps: these are the only things that should be on your list for now. Once they are done, decide the next small steps, and add them. More detail here on how I manage projects. 

Refresh your studio or workspace

Give it a clean and tidy. Lavish a bit of extra TLC on the areas you use most. Oil or wax a wooden desktop. Wipe down your office chair. Clear out your desk drawers. 

What would make this a more inspiring space to work in? Rearrange the furniture. Buy some new storage if needed. A few plants, or some art for the walls. Consider a lick of paint, if the space is really tired. 

We often skimp on this. But you spend a lot of time here!

Service your equipment

• Are you holding on to stuff you no longer use? If so sell it, donate it, or otherwise move it on. 
• Does anything need maintenance/repair?
• Do you have software that needs updating – or that you need to learn how to use? Block time in your schedule to deal with this. And do it. Having software set up properly and knowing the shortcuts can save you hours, every week. 

Examine your assets/archive

Your past work is your wealth, your security, your resource library for future projects. Take stock of all you have. 

• Is there anything you can reuse/repackage, sell, use as marketing? More ideas on that here. 
• If it’s disorganised, create a system for tagging, storing and easily retrieving work in future. Put all your new work into the new system. As and when you need to access old work, put it into the new system too. 
• Once it’s all working well, you might want to get an assistant to input your archive, or sent aside some regular time to sort through your old work.

Update your inputs/inspiration

If you’re anything like me, you have piles of unread books and magazines scattered all over the house, plus digital piles all over your apps and hard drive. 

• Gather all your unused physical items together: books, CDs, DVDs, magazines etc. Get rid of anything you’re never going to read, watch or listen to. Decide not to feel guilty about this. I sort the rest into two piles: work, and leisure. Pleasure reading goes in a pile near my bedside. Work reading goes next to the armchair in my study. 
• If you have a long queue of podcasts to listen to, YouTube clips to watch, articles stored in a read-later app, do a triage of your digital piles too. Delete anything that now feels irrelevant or dated. Reorder things so the most important/interesting things are at the top. And block out time in your calendar to actually do it – or make sure you have relevant stuff downloaded so you can listen while you travel, walk or do chores. 
• Life is short. Information is infinite now. Notice when you’re thinking that this is something you should, must, ought to consume. And question it. Says who? What will be the consequence if you don’t? 

Assess all your open projects

Is there something you’ve been work on that just needs one more focussed push? Schedule that in, and finish it. 

Chances are, you also have a long list of things you’ve been meaning to do, ideas that have gone stale, things you’ve never finished because they didn’t work out – but which you’re holding onto because you invested time and energy into them. 

Examine all of your open loops, your unfinished projects. And decide what to do with them. Please remember that nothing is truly wasted. you learn a lot from the dead ends, the ideas that didn’t work out. Go through them. See if you created anything you can recycle or use elsewhere. Then archive the rest. 

Put it in a box, a file (digital or physical). Label it clearly, then put it away. Or just throw it if it contains nothing you might go back to. And move on. You’ve cleared space for new inspiration to come!

Get to grips with your finances

This is often a gnarly one. Here in the UK it’s the start of the tax year, so a perfect time to get your finances in order. 

If you tend to avoid this, make your money admin into a ritual, or a game. Create checklists to make it easier. Set up a reward after a session, until it becomes a habit. (I used to schedule coffee or lunch with a friend.)

If you don’t already have one, set up a system for updating your accounts, paying bills, invoicing, chasing payments and any other admin. I now do this every two weeks. It takes 90 minutes at most, often less. And I’m on top of my bills, renew insurances and the like in a timely manner, and I know how exactly much money is flowing in and out of my business. More here on how I overcame my blocks with financial admin.

Consider doing your tax return early! Imagine the relief of knowing exactly how much tax you’ll owe next year in the next few months, instead of waiting until January then having to find the money quickly.

If you have savings accounts, loans, a mortgage, check the interest rates on all of them. Make sure you’re getting the best return on your savings, and paying as little as possible on your loans. (But don’t move them without checking if you’ll incur penalties.)

Do an audit of all your other outgoings. Are you paying more than you need to for your utilities, your phone, your broadband? Spending an hour or two checking this and moving to better tariffs or providers can save you hundreds over the year.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

If you do clean up your creative life, let me know what was most effective for you – and what happens in the space you create!