Time management for creatives
By: Sheryl Garratt
Tags: Focus, Freelancing, Creativity, Writing, Time Management

It’s winter.

The nights are long in the UK, the days short, cold and dark. We’re in lockdown (again). And this month, one after the other, my coaching clients expressed disappointment that they’re got nothing done.

“I’ve just been lazy,” says a photographer.

“I’ve not moved forward on anything,” says a writer.

“I don’t know where the time went,” says a fashion designer.

Yet when we analyse their to-do lists, and go through what they have been doing, it soon becomes clear that isn’t so.

The ‘lazy’ photographer has moved two personal projects forward, taken care of a sick child, bought and assembled some new furniture for his studio, and done some serious online networking.

He feels he’s got nothing done because none of this work was paid. And he tends to measure his productivity by how much he has earned. Yet he knows from experience that the personal projects will, in time, either turn into a story he’ll get paid for, or open up new work.

The ‘stuck’ writer has sorted got the family car repaired, written two features for a national newspaper, done three in-depth interviews and hosted an event online. What she means is that she hasn’t advanced the book project she’s been working on, concentrating instead on paid work to support her family.

She’s frustrated because this is the kind of work that is never done. There’s always a new deadline, a new interview, a new feature to write. She’s longing for the satisfaction of actually completing a big project: finishing her new book, and getting it out into the world.

The designer who didn’t know where her time had gone was packaging and posting orders herself during lockdown, as well as negotiating deadlines with a factory itself floored by the virus. She had hosted several virtual sales events online, and helped a friend through a major crisis.

This had left her with no time to plan a new business venture she’d been considering. She’s excited by the new thing, keen to get on with it. Which is why she was feeling behind.

Time management can be challenging for creatives.

If there’s one issue that clients bring to me most often, it is this one. They call it poor time management, lack of time/space/discipline, 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, but not making time for the things they feel are important.

Sound familiar? If so, here are nine things that can help.

1. Time is limited. But so is energy, and focus.

You need to manage all three, not just focus on time. Very few of us can manage more than four hours of totally focussed creative work in a day. Of course there are magical days when you get into flow, hours fly by like minutes and you’re reluctant to stop to eat or sleep. But those days are rare, and never come 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 followed by recovery time (a walk, a work-out, coffee, time to read or relax).

Most of those people also talk about a magical effect when they finish work with an unresolved problem, and then the next day return somehow knowing the answer. Take more breaks, and your subconscious mind will continue working on it, even if you are not. Research has shown that plenty of sleep, frequent breaks and exercise — especially walking — helps here.

Need convincing? Read Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams is packed with research and evidence 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 — and for the power of walking.

2. Ring-fence time for the project you most want to do.

And then protect it fiercely. Act as if it’s an interview with a Hollywood A-lister, a crucial business meeting or a plane you have to catch.

If you absolutely have to postpone because a huge money job comes up or some other emergency, move it to the nearest available space and only move it again if someone’s life depends on it. (Because your creative life does depend on it.)

It can be difficult, in the stresses of deadlines and day-to-day life to find this time. Be ruthless. Maybe it means leaving the house a mess, ignoring phone calls, arranging a play date for your kids, turning down a social engagement. That’s OK.

I write well in the mornings, so that’s what I do. Every day, from 8am-9am. Before breakfast, before getting dressed sometimes. And definitely before giving my time to anything or anyone else. Even if I don’t get back to the page later, knowing I’ve done that hour leaves me at peace for the rest of the day.

Only you can do this: no one will clear the space for you. But it will make the difference between moving forward, and feeling like you’re stuck on an endlessly revolving hamster wheel, running but getting nowhere.

Protect your creative time fiercely. Photo by Charl Durand on Unsplash

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, or get distracted by the latest shiny object we’ve discovered. Or we’re juggling several projects at once, and never bringing 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 choose one creative project at a time, and give it our whole focus until it’s finished. Then we can choose another.

You’ll get more done that way. You’ll have the satisfaction — and momentum — of completing.

4. Love vs Money

We all need to earn money somehow. But many of us are also working on creative projects that are more speculative, that might not immediately increase our bank balance. We need those projects, to grow and learn. That’s where your joy is found, and your unique talents and voice find expression.

Obviously, at some point we hope to reach that sweet spot where they combine, and we’re being paid well to make the work we love.

In the meantime, we need to 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. That balance is crucial.

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 (and how), staring into space, scrolling on social media. This is telling you when you’ve lost focus, when taking a break might be more helpful than pushing on through. Also watch out for those points in the day when you’re so weary you lose the ability to decide what’s important, and start doing busy work, just to feel productive.

It will help you become more aware of the tasks you dread doing, and put off for days ­ — but which only take a few minutes to actually get done. And the tasks you tell yourself should only take an hour — but which really take half a day.

6. Look for energy hangovers.

It is never simple to move from one task to another. That’s why multi-tasking just doesn’t work. Every time you interrupt your creative work to look at an email, move from creating to an admin task, or interrupt your work to answer the phone, it takes a while to get back into flow.

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 work these off. Walking back to your office after a long meeting, for instance, and maybe stopping off to chat with someone while you make a drink. 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 we work at home or in a studio or workshop alone, we need to make space for recovery. If we don’t, we’ll find a way of doing it anyway — and it won’t be healthy.

After interviews, meetings or long coaching conversations, for instance, I realised I tend to pointlessly scroll on social media, 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 recover. Now I go straight out for a walk to clear my head, I dance or do a short workout. When I come back to work, I’m able to focus agin. And I get on with what’s really important that day, instead of getting caught up in trivia.

7. Don’t forget the admin!

We all have it, in some form or another, and it takes time. Answering emails, invoicing and accounts, coordinating with manufacturers or contributors, setting up meetings, networking and marketing, buying materials.. the list goes on and on. Yet few of us actually allow enough time for it, in our schedules.

I like to get my admin done after my creative work, or it swallows my day whole. But if you’re at your best creatively later in the day, get it out of the way first. Either way, I find a timer helps: I tend to do admin in 30-minute bursts, followed by a short break. It stops me getting distracted.

Admin takes time, like it or not. Photo by Charl Durand on Unsplash

Other things that help:

Turn off your email, and only check it at set times. Don’t let your in-box — which is full of other people’s priorities, not your own ­­- dictate how you use your days.

Keep your phone out of your workspace.

Build systems. If you find yourself doing the same job twice, take a few minutes to consider how you can avoid doing it a third time. Writing the same email? Keep it as a template, and just adapt it each time. Doing a repetitive computer task? Find some code to do it for you.

Delegate. Do you really need to do this task, or could someone else do it? This isn’t just about outsourcing work tasks. Sometimes hiring a cleaner, ordering a takeaway or getting someone else to cook, or getting help with your home or garden can free you up to do more of the creative work only you can do.

If you need to be on social media for work, use a timer, to stop you falling down the rabbit hole.

Assign set times of your day/week/month to deal with your money stuff. You can then put receipts, invoices and bills in a drawer or envelope as they arrive, confident you’ll deal with them in time.

8. Chunk down big tasks

Sometimes, we don’t start a task because it’s overwhelming, and impossible to know where to start. I try to have nothing on my to-do list that will take me 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 get done.

9. Just say no.

It’s a simple, short word, although a lot of us make it longer by marrying it to the word 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.

Stop being sorry. Protect the time you need for your creative work, without apology. It’s important.

Then you’ll really be offering your unique gifts to the world. And who knows what that could change?