If you are an artist, especially an independent one, you'll need to wear many hats. Not only do you have to create art which is challenging and time-consuming by itself, but you also have to market your art, get paid for it, manage your finances and, if you have any energy left, then get to the administrative stuff.
All of this can get overwhelming quickly, especially if you are starting out. However, there are hacks and practices that you can use to make the process easier and, in turn, make you more productive.
And in this blog post, we will explore tips with which you can become a more productive artist without having to compromise on your art.
Block time for mundane tasks
Mundane administrative tasks are part of doing business and need your attention. The best way to do this would be to schedule administrative tasks and check-ups monthly or quarterly.
For example, you can analyze your monthly expense reports and tax liabilities quarterly. You can create recurring events using the Routine Console, where you can choose the cadence.
Put all your deadlines on your calendar
What is out of mind is out of sight, and your deadlines are no different. It would help to quickly audit all your deadlines and add them to your calendar on Routine.
Like the tasks, you'll have both one-time and recurring deadlines, so schedule them accordingly. Regarding the timing to work on the task, you can use methods like Eat the Frog or Biological Prime Time.
Digitize and document all your paperwork
One of the easiest ways to waste a lot of time and effort as an artist is to look through your paperwork manually. However, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by first digitizing it and then adding them to a searchable vault.
To digitize it, you can use an app like Adobe Scan, and as a vault, you can use DropBox. Ensure that you name your documents aptly to ensure that they are easily discoverable when you search for them. You can also routinely take back-up of these files for future reference once they are no longer regularly useful.
Identify your creative prime times
You are probably already aware that certain parts of the day are better when working on creative endeavors, and you must protect those hours from other types of tasks.
You can start by blocking that part of your day on your calendar and setting up a reminder to switch on DND mode during that session. It would help if you also communicated with your circle that your creative time block is a non-negotiable and to consider it when planning events involving you.
Set quarterly goals
Goal setting as an artist can be complicated because it is unlike conventional jobs. So instead of setting strict daily goals that account for multiple parameters like the number of pieces worked on, ideation, etc., you can have a hybrid approach.
You can have a quarterly goal of finishing two collections with X number of paintings in each. Then you give yourself one north star goal daily, like committing 4 hours to the project. While preparing for the quarterly goal, this hybrid approach will ensure that your day-to-day productivity remains intact and continues to contribute.
Conclusion
As an artist, the lack of rigid structures can limit productivity, but that fluidity can lead to some creative breakthroughs. Give yourself constraints and see how it affects your creativity; it is all about experimenting and finding the right balance.
What are your thoughts on this post? Tweet at us (@RoutineHQ). Thanks for reading.
