It’s a slippery thing, time.
We all get the same amount, yet none of us feel we have enough of it. And what we have seems to vanish, before we get to use it well.
In coaching sessions, my clients – all of them creative professionals – often talk about poor time management, lack of time/space/discipline, or procrastination. But what it usually comes down to is this: they’re not getting on with the work they really want to do.
They’re often trying to do too much at once, or doing an awful lot that they are not counting as work at all. Or they’re constantly busy, yet not making time for the things that are most important to them.
Productivity and time management aren’t always about cramming in more things, becoming more efficient. It’s more about choosing the right things, the things that are important to you – and giving them your full focus.
For most of us, this is often the big projects, the personal work, the new directions we want to try. It’s work without firm deadlines, waiting clients. Or even a definite income or audience once we finish. So it’s hard to motivate ourselves to get on with them, or to carve out time in our busy schedules for them.
Sound familiar? If so, here are ten things to consider.
1. Time is limited. But so is energy, and focus.
You need to manage all three, not just your time. Very few of us can manage more than four hours of creative work in a day. Many of us even need to divide that time into shorter sprints, with breaks to recover our energy and attention.
Of course there are days when we have to work long hours – because we’re on a deadline, on a shoot, or we only have the studio booked for a few days – and we get through it. but that isn’t sustainable over the long term, and you need time to recover afterwards.
There are also those magical days when you get into flow, hours fly by like minutes and you’re reluctant to stop to eat or sleep, let alone rest. But those days are rare, and we can’t rely on them appearing when we most need them.
We need regular breaks in our working day, to refocus and to replenish our energy.
Look at the routines of prolific, consistent creators and they’ll often consist of a regular block of time they dedicate to their creative work before attending to other things; or shorter bursts of work with recovery time in between.
Need convincing? Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams cites interesting research on the power of sleep, and how it enhances creativity. And Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s entertaining book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less gives strong arguments for resting more. ( I write about that in more detail here.)
2. Pay yourself first: make the time for deep, creative work.
We often wait for a long stretch of uninterrupted time to magically open up, so that we can finally write that book, start that major art project, explore a new direction.
We put it off until we’ve cleared the decks, tidied the house, got rid of some commercial jobs that have come in. Or we tell ourselves that we’ll begin once the children are older, our business is more established or some other milestone has been passed.
But of course by then there will be new tasks, commitments, and time-vampires greedily waiting to suck up all that ‘spare’ time.
The truth is, you’ll only get the time you want if you take it. And put it on your schedule like any other deadline or appointment.
Ring-fence time for the project you most want to do. Then protect that time fiercely. Act as if it’s an interview with a Hollywood A-lister, a crucial business meeting, a plane you have to catch or a dental appointment.
3. Choose your one thing
As creatives, we tend to have a lot of ideas. and they’re all exciting. We go off on tangents. We get distracted by the latest new and shiny object. Or we’re juggling several projects at once, and never bring any of them to completion. Especially when they’re competing with the day-to-day demands of work and life, friends and family.
Painful though it is, we need to make choices. And only focus on one project at a time. Then we’re able to give it our full focus until it’s finished, or until we’ve got it to its next milestone.
You’ll get more done that way. You’ll also get the satisfaction – and momentum – of completing.
4. Love vs Money
We all need to pay the bills. But many of us are also working on creative projects that are more speculative, that might not immediately bring in income. We need those projects, to grow and learn. To have fun. And to express our unique talents and voice.
Obviously, at some point we hope to reach that sweet spot where art and commerce combine. Where we’re paid well to make the work we love.
In the meantime, make space for both.
It can help to decide which kind of work you’re doing, and when. Money work you do to the best of your ability in the time available. But you always make room for the love projects, too, trusting that they’ll pay their way at some point, or lead you in new and interesting directions.
5. Get clear on how long tasks really take
Tracking your time is tedious, but it’s also eye-opening. Try keeping a record of what you’ve been doing, in 30-minute increments, for a week or even a month.
Be honest. This is to help you understand where your time actually goes. Record the time you spend procrastinating, staring into space, scrolling on social media. This might be telling you when you’ve lost focus, when taking a break might be more helpful than pushing on through (especially if this happens at around the same time, every day).
Also watch out for points in the day when you start doing pointless busywork, just to feel productive.
Tracking your time for a while will help you become more aware of the tasks you dread doing, that you put off for days. But which only take a few minutes to actually do. And the tasks you tell yourself should only take an hour – but which really take half a day, every time.
Knowing how long things really takes makes you more realistic planning your time, and less likely to beat yourself up for not being able to get impossible amounts done in a day.
6. Look out for energy hangovers
Some tasks are more demanding than others, and they leave you with energy hangovers. In a busy workplace, there tend to be natural breaks where you can shift these. Walking back to your office after a meeting, for instance. Or having a chat with a colleague. And of course the commute to and from work is a huge signal to our busy minds that we’re moving from one headspace to another.
But if you work alone, you still need to make space for recovery. If you don’t plan for it, your mind will find its own way of distracting itself, with scrolling, surfing, clicking, playing daft games on your phone.
After interviews, meetings or long coaching conversations, for instance, I tend to scroll through my social media feeds, start long replies to emails I’d usually ignore, and engage in all kinds of other time-wasting activities.
It took a while for me to realise that after such periods of intense concentration and social interaction, I need some space to come back to myself before moving to the next thing. So I now go out for a walk, play some music, or do a short workout. Then I’m able to focus again. And get on with what’s really important, instead of getting tangled up in trivia.
7. Don’t forget the admin!
Multi-tasking just doesn’t work. Every time you interrupt your creative work to look at an email, or interrupt your work to answer the phone, it takes a while to get back into flow.
So schedule in blocks of time to do these essential but distracting maintenance tasks. To make phone calls, reply to email, check messages and alerts, pay bills, chase invoices, and all the other routine tasks that tug you out of flow. Batch them, then mute them in between.
If your boss, your clients, or even your friends are used to getting an instant reply, 24/7, gently set new boundaries. Tell friends you won’t reply in work hours. Put an autoresponder on your email, telling clients that you’ll reply within 24 hours and giving a phone number for emergencies. (Hardly anyone will use this, but it’s reassuring to offer it.)
Tell them you’re creating more time to focus the concentrated, creative work they’re actually paying you for. Once they see the value in that, most employers and clients quickly get learn to live with your new rules.
8. Chunk down big tasks
Sometimes, we don’t start a task because it’s overwhelming, and impossible to know where to start. Or we have a mammoth task on our to-do list for months, maybe years on end. Even if we’re making progress, it’s dispiriting to see it just sitting there.
So I try to have nothing on my to-do list that will take longer than an hour. If it’s too big to complete in that time, I’ll break it down into smaller pieces. On a big project, this also gives you a sense of forward motion.
“Finish book” is a task that will linger accusingly on your list for months, even years. But if you’ve ticked off ten research tasks, set up two interviews, written a first draft of a section, edited a chapter, you see you are progressing. And that’s motivating.
It also means that if you don’t have a big chunk of time to devote to your project that day, there are often smaller tasks you can do, to move it forward.
9. Make space for ideas and inspiration
There are some parts of creative work that don’t always look like work, from the outside. We need to make time for walks, reading, thinking. For looking at new things, talking with other creatives and looking at their work, going to see films, gigs, exhibitions: anything that stimulates new ideas.
As this rarely bears fruit immediately, we often feel we don’t have the time for it. Yet without it, we soon start to feel grey, uninspired – and the work feels a lot more difficult.
Experiment with a regular play date or artists date, and block out time in your schedule to just read, play, explore new things. You might find that you work more efficiently – and feel more inspired, more often.
10. Just say no
It’s a simple, short word, although a lot of us make it longer by marrying it to sorry. And weighing it down with unnecessary emotion. Saying no doesn’t mean you’re rejecting someone, that you’re a bad person. It just means you can’t do this thing, this time.
Learn to say no gracefully. Stop being sorry. Protect the time you need for your creative work, without apology, without that fear of missing out. It’s important.
Then you’ll get work done, and be able to offer your unique gifts to the world. And who knows what that could change?
Sheryl Garratt is a coach helping creative professionals get the success they want, making work they truly love. Get The Creative Companion, my bi-weekly email packed with articles, links and resources for artists, designers, directors, makers, musicians, performers, writers and everyone who makes a living from creative work (Or wants to.) It’s free!
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