A question that is weighing on my mind lately is how much structure helps or hurts a creative. I was talking with a friend who, by all accounts, has mad organizational skills, and she runs a filmmaking business. There’s a lot of structure in her day that is taken up doing the administrative work that you need to do to run a business the right way, and she’s very good at that. However, she tells me that she spends so much time making the admin work and the proposal writing for grants and things she laments not being able to spend the time actually creating as she would like.
For purposes of comparison, I don’t have a licensed business; what I do is what I call a hobby on steroids. It could be a business. I spend so much time on the creative side that I don’t spend any time on the promotion or administrative side. So, I would be the polar opposite of my friend, as you can see. I’m sure there’s a third person out there that promotes like the dickens but doesn’t have anything created and likes the idea of calling themselves a business. Three legs on three separate stools, and every one of them is wobbly.
I’m about to say two words that I hate hearing, and I suspect a lot of us hate hearing. Time Management. We need to employ some of it. Now, I know the urban myth of the creative is some person who’s a night owl, who can’t hold a deadline with both hands, a bucket, and handles, who suffers and bleeds for his art, and haven’t we grown up enough to understand that this is simply not the case most of the time? I mean, I know one person who works all night creating clay yonis and selling gemstones on Etsy, but other than that, most of us who are creatives are day-walkers, probably with jobs. We have too much on our plate for any day, so we need to plan what those days look like. The problem is, we don’t. So, the thing that we hate doing is the one that gets put off until the Twelfth of Never.
Since I am home full time, I’ve been experimenting with time management. I block out three sections of time during the day for things. I get up at 6 am and have some quiet time before the rest of the house gets up and moving. I have a trial balloon of a project I’m trying for the first time this week that starts at 7 am, and once that’s up and running, I take the time between 7 am and 8 am to plan my day. The morning period between 8 am, and 12 pm is for new stuff. For example, this article was written during the morning period. I’ll post any blog articles, drop any podcasts or videos I’ve completed, and look at my idea pile for what I want to tackle next.
Then I take lunch and get out of the studio. If the weather is decent, I go outside and take a little walk. Generally, I take my earbuds with me, but I’m finding that this is one of those times during the day when I am by myself, and I’m finding the usual noises of being outdoors — I hesitate to call it silence — preferable. It allows me to think more clearly about what I want to be doing and not concentrate on what someone else is saying.
I return to the studio around 1 pm, and for my afternoon work period, I work on what I will call the ‘big’ project. The priority item that I would like to get shipped sooner rather than later. Right now, I have two such items, a podcast interview and a video. Both things require attention. The interview has a deadline. The video doesn’t, but I would like to get it done. So any items that require voice, or shooting, or anything like that will happen at that time. I work until 5 pm, then I shut everything down and get out of the office.
The third segment of my day happens between 7 pm and 9 pm when I do my social media for the day. I try to focus on certain hashtags. This is not posting my own work, I did that earlier that morning. This is social media outreach. I follow and commented on accounts during that time. At 9 pm, I head upstairs, put the phone on the charger, and wind down. Lately, I’ve been reading non-fiction stuff before bed. I’m out by about 11 pm if I’m doing it right.
Rinse, Lather, Repeat, as they say.
Now, there are days when I can’t keep to the schedule, if I have a Doctor’s Appointment, for example. I just don’t sweat those things when they happen because I find that getting discouraged by my schedule is the first step to not following it. As this is an experiment, I’ll be tweaking this as we go to find what’s optimal for me, but for right now, this seems to be working ok.
Time Management doesn’t have to restrict your creativity, and it doesn’t have to manage your time minute to minute. If you just lay some minimal guidelines down as to what you’re working on and when you may find that it helps move you forward with everything.