An Artist Guide To Managing Time
In my last blog post, we talked about making more time to work on our art and business in our busy lives. But what about managing that time we’ve now carved out for ourselves?
Managing our time is a big challenge for many of us. Walking into a bookstore, you’ll find entire sections dedicated to time management. But are these books really designed for artists? And with so many options, what are the most important points to pick up on, and how can we implement them into our lives?
One problem I’ve found with the typical productivity guides is that they don't seem to be written for artists. They tend to be more tailored towards people in corporate positions, working in an office, or entrepreneurs. They don’t take into account the countless hours we have to put into our designs and paintings. While somehow finding time to run a business on the side. It’s a unique problem and something I hope I can shed more light on.
Here are some strategies that have really worked for me, which we will cover in the blog post:
Keeping yourself accountable with a plan
Checking in with how you feel before starting your workday
Manage priorities by scheduling them at a time when we have more energy
Staying more focused during tasks outside our comfort zones using time-blocking
Track your work hours and increase productivity with a timer
Set your next working day up for success by finishing when you know your next step
Why Artists Need Better Time Management
Time management was not my strong suit when I started making art as my full-time career, and I only gave it little thought. Of course, I thought, “I am an artist, and my job is to make art”, but during that time, I didn’t consider all the other work involved with running a business. If I were working on an art piece, I wouldn’t put it down and end up ignoring all my other responsibilities. Managing them into the time I had to work on top of my art felt impossible. After all, I felt like they distracted me from making my art since it took me a long time to make a piece that I was happy to say was complete.
What would end up happening is that I would finish an art piece, and then I would have to take all the photos for Instagram, make a tutorial, write copy, and the list goes on. It was overwhelming because I was doing so many things outside my comfort zone all at once. And I was doing everything except making art during these moments–or days!
I began to resent doing these things, and I wanted to escape to bed so I could draw on my iPad and not have to think about “business” for a while. This was an unhealthy problem that stemmed largely from my lousy time management!
I began to pull myself together and dug into reading all sorts of books and ways I could better manage my time. It included reading and studying different productivity science and books guided towards entrepreneurship. Although there was so much great information, I felt I needed to tailor it to being an artist. And that's what I did. I adapted them, so they worked to help me be productive with both my art and growing my business.
What Does Good Time Management Look Like?
While I was healing my own time management issues, I realised it was not immediately obvious what good time management should look like. And also, what will it feel like once you have it in the bag? We're often exposed to the two extremes: people who are chaotic and don’t manage themselves at all and others who are meticulous and can be a bit overboard. But what does a healthy and somewhat balanced time management look like?
Like so many other things, there isn’t such a thing as “perfect” time management. After all, everyone is different, and we all have different ways of working and lifestyles we want to live. It was only later I realised that the important thing is that what you settle on feels right for you. After all, the goal is to give you the space for your creativity and running your business. Some people like to be meticulous, while others want to loosen the reigns a little bit. And art is a large field that covers a wide range of skills and time requirements. It would be hard to say that any one method will work for all of them.
Luckily, good time management can still bring great benefits no matter what it will end up looking like to you. Done right, it relieves a huge amount of the pressure that builds up and can lead to feelings of overwhelm when we're trying to juggle everything. Good time management assists you in having more time dedicated to what you really care about.
Taking Back Control Of Your Time
These strategies worked great for me, and I hope that they can help you relieve some of the pressure and overwhelm you feel while trying to juggle all the tasks you have to deal with as a working artist. Remember that embracing trial and error is the only way to find what really works best for you. So, modify these time management tips in any way you need to fit them into your lifestyle!
Check In With Yourself
Let me ask you this: are you going to be able to have a great workday if you’re under the weather, ill or didn’t really get any sleep last night? Well, probably not! Everyone seems to love a story from someone who pushed themselves to their limits to achieve success fast. But, it can all come crashing down when their health, relationships or even the running of the business suffers. And usually, it's because they never took the time to look after themselves. I know this from experience!
Being motivated is great, and really pushing for your success is admirable. And yes, there is a level of sacrifice involved in building your own art business, but you get to choose where that sacrifice is, and you’re worth looking after. So, before you start your work day, check in with yourself and how you’re feeling today. Just like stretching, we want it to be intense so it’s effective, but it’s not good if it’s painful. So, work to the point where you feel challenged, but not to the point where you're burning the candle from both ends.
Keeping Yourself Accountable
We all love to plan. Planning can be fun and exciting, and we always seem to be doing it. But do you know what’s not so fun? Keeping yourself accountable and actually do what must be done to fulfill that plan!
I know how hard it is to hold yourself accountable sometimes. Planning used to be my favourite form of productive procrastination. I used to have stacks and stacks of painstakingly detailed papers and to-do lists of all the wonderful things I had yet to do. But very little got done—for years! Let me tell you, finding a balance between making plans and taking action is a must!
My favourite way to help maintain this balance is to plan my next day’s work the night before. I then push myself to fulfil that day's plans before making new ones. Yes, I still plan out the entire project —If I didn’t, then who knows where my brain might wander off to!
I also make time at the end of my work day to plan and review what I’ve done, keeping myself accountable. This allows me to get a realistic view of what I can fit in in one day. So, when it comes to planning my work, I know how much I will be able to do each day without overloading myself and risking burnout.
Make Your Priorities a Priority
Being swarmed by priorities nagging at you and demanding your attention can hijack your entire day. But what exactly makes something a priority?
For me, priorities are what we need to do for our business. They are tasks that can have negative consequences if you don’t do them. Or maybe everything stops running altogether if they're not done first. Quite often, priorities are time-sensitive, and they tend to fly around your head and distract you while you work on other tasks. Like, time-sensitive communication with a client, finishing an art piece for a deadline, managing payments, or even taxes.
For artists, producing art is also a priority. And even though art can have deadlines, much of our work takes many hours to produce. So, if we focused only on producing art, we would never get any other work done. So, we need to make sure we're also dedicating time to our other priorities.
The best way I've found to tackle priorities is to take advantage of your natural energy levels. Throughout the day, we have both ups and downs with how much energy we have. Some of us have higher energy and mental clarity in the morning and some later in the day.
The trick here is to figure out the energy levels you need when working on different tasks. Like many other artists, you may find drawing relaxing, so it requires less energy. If that's the case for you, it may be more beneficial to draw when your energy levels are lower. And, if you find the day-to-day running of a business to be more tiring and stressful, do these tasks when you have more energy. That could either be in the morning or in the evening–whichever time is best for you.
How Not To Get Distracted During Your Focus Time
Making art as an artist comes as naturally as breathing (most of the time) and is the part of our business that we love to do. Heck, we would do it for free if we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads. But growing and running a business doesn’t usually come naturally for many of us, and it's often overwhelming. So, we need to be intentional and set aside time each day to focus on those tasks outside our comfort zone.
But how do we do the difficult things that need to be done and schedule time for them each day?
Let's expand the idea of managing our priorities according to our energy levels above by setting each set of tasks into its own block of time. This is called “Time Blocking.” These blocks can be hourly, daily, or even monthly, but let’s first look at how they work.
Say you wanted to run a blog alongside your art. Well, now you need to set aside some time to write. Using time blocking you could make a 1-2 hour block each day during the moment you have higher energy, which for most of us is in the morning.
So, your day will look like this:
First block: Dealing with time-sensitive priorities;
Second block: Working on your blog post;
Third block: Working on portfolio or commissions;
Fourth block: Planning your next day and general admin.
And the best bit is, if you find this hour-by-hour approach too restrictive, you’re not limited to having time blocks that only cover the hours. So, another less strict approach might be to expand it over the week and have each day dedicated as a time block. Monday might be your day for working on social media, Tuesday for blogging, etc.
You could even stack both daily and weekly time blocks on top of each other to manage your time! The point is that you can really shape your blocks to suit you and move them around to match your energy. Once you get to know your energy levels more, planning a project or taking on another task will be much easier!
Get Yourself An Accountability Timer
Running your own business comes with a lot of freedom, which is great, but lack of structure is not. When we feel lost and lack structure in our work, it is easy to get frazzled and procrastinate. I used to struggle with this a lot in the beginning —and still do at times. One technique that helps me stay on track is using a Pomodoro Timer. Typically, this timer works by timing you with 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 to 10-minute break, and you repeat this loop throughout your workday.
One of my favourite benefits of using Pomodoro Timers is that they can prevent you from using your phone while you work. This is especially good if you love to procrastinate on your phone like me! And using it, you may even notice that you'll feel much less fatigued since it forces you to take breaks regularly. After all, breaks are just as important as work because if you don’t let yourself have a moment's rest, your work will suffer in the long term. And since I always seem to forget to take a break, they've really helped me not burn myself out.
And Pomodoro timers can also help you in another way. By using them, you can track how much time you're spending working and how much you're getting done in that time. I've created a worksheet to keep this data organized, and it comes with a bonus! Every time I score off a 25-minute work block, I get a small win, and it creates a positive feedback loop that helps me stay motivated.
If you want to grab the worksheet I made for myself, you can download it here.
Feel free to right click to save this image!
Stop Your Work Day When You’re Winning
Starting your work day can feel daunting, especially when you need to pick up where you left off the day before. It’s even more challenging if those tasks waiting for you are difficult. So, how can you kick off your mornings feeling more energized and ready to go? Here's a counterintuitive but powerful trick that's really helped me start the work day smoother.
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”
This little trick is known as the Hemingway Method. Whenever you wrap up your work, try to stop at a point where you know exactly what your next steps are. Ideally, the next step should be clear and, if possible, easy. This strategy means that when you sit down to work the next day, diving back in won’t need much effort. You might even be itching to get back to work as soon as possible!
Time For You
After a decade of working as a professional artist, I've learned that managing time is a lifelong journey. Sometimes, we can feel like we are on the right path, and at other times, we feel like we are lost in some dark, hunted forest—and that's all perfectly normal.
Remember, each of us faces unique challenges, and that means discovering your own effective strategies is a part of the journey. Don't worry if it takes a few tries to get it right. The important thing is to keep exploring and adjusting.
I encourage you to pick one tip we discussed and try it out this week. Whether it’s blocking an hour for creative work on your calendar or downloading the Pomodoro worksheet, see what difference it makes. You have the power to shape your time and feel more in control over your life. Start small, and enjoy the process of finding what makes you thrive!