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Lesson Info

Planning for Success

Alright, So here we are, the last time we're gonna look at this and I think the important thing to remember here is that none of this happens by simply sitting back. Um Let's go back to segment one, having a positive attitude and really believing that this is possible is absolutely at the core. Then in subsequent segments we did a lot of goal setting and research how many people have revised their goals or they're actionable tasks based on what they've heard in some of the input segments over the last few days. Almost everyone. Okay. Um, so the more you learn and know about what it takes or what it potentially takes to achieve something, the more you're going to be refining your task list, your goals, all of that. You may decide after listening to Betsy and I today that licensing is the thing you want to try to do, you may have also decided it is a thing you do not want to do. And that's the great thing about learning is that sometimes it just teaches us what we might not want to do be...

cause it's just not resonating and that's okay too. We can't actually just write down our actionable tasks, We actually have to do them. And I hope that some of you at least can go back tomorrow and uh how many of you have one thing that you're gonna start working on tomorrow already. Okay, so action is going to be happening if you don't strategically think about how to use your time and including the time you spend taking care of yourself, which is also really important your life, your career may feel a bit aimless and chaotic. So um we want to manage the planning and the action. So you want to set yourself up for success by creating a work schedule before it gets busy. So you have job making, you have art making time and that's um whether you are a full time artist or somebody who makes art outside of your regular job, you need to treat this time like it's your job. So this means even when you're not, we've touched on this before, but I'm gonna keep reiterating the same points. Even when the work is not coming your way, you don't have a show in a gallery that or you don't have a body of work ready or you don't have illustration work coming in. You want to use some of your time, not all of it, but some of it to build your portfolio and your body of work. Okay? You also, here's my mantra, the more work you make, the more work you get. I think I've said that a few times over the last couple of days. The idea is you're not sitting around waiting for the opportunities to come to you. You're working hard at putting yourself out there, that includes marketing, creating work, sharing your process, creating more work so that when people find you, you've got stuff for them to look at and they can see you you are prolific and you've got a lot there. That's interesting. You want to market the work you do have and you want to use the time to grow professionally. And this is something that we haven't talked too much about yet. So some of the ways you can, um, grow professionally if you have the time to do that are take classes, not just business classes like this. Although there are really important. There are other great online classes out there. Are there great classes on creative live? A couple of which I've recommended. Um, there are other classes in your community. Take art classes. Let's see what else you want to volunteer, volunteer at local arts organizations. If you're looking for a part time job, look for a part time job in your arts community as a way to get your foot inside your arts community. There are several arts nonprofits in every major city. There are more than several. Um, see if there are any in your community volunteer. That's a great way to meet other artists. That's a great way to meet people who are movers and shakers in the art world. Um, volunteer. Take classes, apply for residency. Branch out to build your community, meet others. Broaden your practice. So fully immerse yourself in the life of an artist in all aspects of art making. I can't emphasize enough. This idea of beginning to think of yourself as a full time artist if that's your goal, even if you're not one yet. So begin to envision yourself in that place. What will you be doing? What kind of work will you be doing and begin to live that to the extent that you can Okay let's talk about how to manage a full schedule. So I'm going to cover basically four things. One is workflow. Workflow is your guide to sanity. You the the good news is workflow is your guide to sanity. The bad news is you have to develop your own workflow that works for you because every person's preferences are different. So technically workflow is your orchestrated and repeatable pattern of work activity. Generally your workflow, what you work on during your workflow changes from day to day or week to week, but it's this sort of predictable system that you work inside of. Even if you work in an office, you can create some workflow for yourself provided you're not always in meetings which can often disrupt workflow. Um even especially even when you're self employed meetings, phone meetings with clients and stuff can disrupt workflow, but for the purposes of this conversation, I'm also going to include in the definition all the tasks that you're responsible for completing um listed in a logical order. So that's pretty much your workflow document that shows all the breadth and depth of all the things that you're working on and then you come up with a way of working that works for you, I am going to show you a screenshot of my workflow. This is from earlier this year. I keep a google doc and I'll let you look at it long enough to write down the categories if you want to copy it. But I, this is what I came up with by thinking, okay, here are the things that um here are the categories, that, of things that I worry about when it comes to things that I have to do and I made those the columns. Okay, so we have over here, this is my actual workflow. So you can see some of my client works and things that I had to do. So I have client in column a um what the product specific project for that client is because sometimes I do work overtime for a client and it's different, different jobs, specifically the task or job. Um Let's see if I cross it out because I don't want you to know how much money I make but the fee and then if my agent takes a commission, if it's an illustration job what the fee after the commission is. And that way I can also sort of look at my workflow is a place to just even check in on how much money I potentially have coming in over the next few months. Um Have I received the art direction for that job if it's relevant. Um was there any inspiration or concept ng that I needed to collect. Um you can see, I don't really use that column very much. Sometimes you think of categories and then you don't end up using them on your spreadsheets, but that's okay. When are the refs do? I didn't always put that in one of the finals do. And for the most part, I keep my workflow in order of when the final artwork is due. You also want to create workflow in your day. So you want to find a schedule or rhythm that works for you and this is how you actually use your time, you want to experiment to see what works and it may take you a while to figure that out. I highly recommend considering dividing your day into 25 or 45 minute chunks. I started this and it's changed my life. It won't work for everybody. In fact I posted on Facebook that I was doing this 45 minute chunk thing and some of my friends were like, Oh, that's a great idea, I'm gonna try that. And then of course they tried it for a few days and it didn't feel natural to them. So again, this is something that has worked for me that you might want to try give it some time. It takes time to develop a habit. Um, so the, The idea here is that let's say you're, you're in the position that I'm in, where or your, or you just want to accomplish a lot, even if it's not paid jobs, you just have very rigorous goals for yourself and there's things that you want to get done and your self motivated and you've got that workflow that's got like 10 things on it. How do you decide what to work on? Especially a lot of stuff needs not equal attention, but similar amounts of attention in a day. The way I used to work is I would say, okay, that job for florida travel in Life magazine, that, that is six maps. I know they're gonna take me forever, so I'm just gonna do that and get it done. And then what happens to your week, everything is about that job and or email because email also is um, a time suck. And then that other stuff that's also due around the same time has completely been ignored and then I'm freaking out even more because while I'm almost done with florida travel in Life magazine job, I also have all these other things that I haven't paid attention to because I put all my energy into that. So what I decided to do Is divide my day into 45 minute chunks. Um some people do 25 minutes, there's, it's even a name for that Pomodoro. Yeah, that didn't seem to feel long enough to me, I get my head into things and I like to go for a little longer, so I decided to use 45 minute chunks. So what I do is I say every morning I look at my to do list and I just kind of parse things out. A lot of it is just sort of gut feeling about how long something is going to take me. And I say Okay, I'm gonna spend the 1st 45 minutes on this thing. I'm gonna take a 15 minute break Or 10 minute break And then I'm gonna work 45 minutes on this thing, it's something different and then I'm gonna take a break and then it's usually between that and maybe going to the gym, it's lunchtime and I eat lunch and then I do the rest for the afternoon. So at the end of that day I've probably worked on florida travel in life. I'm using that as an example. It was very difficult and time consuming illustration job I had. So it will remain in my brain for a long time Um for maybe two or three even of those 45 minute chunks and I've dedicated a lot time to it. But I've also dedicated 45 minutes to something else on my list and maybe another 45 minutes to something else. And maybe even broken up working on those maps for that trouble magazine by working on other things, which At least my brain a little fresher when I come back to it. I've been working on something else and maybe one whole 45 minute chunk is just working on, getting through some email, which I actually have been trying to do at the end of each day. Unless it's low hanging fruit fruit stuff, I can respond to in a really quick turnaround. Um so dividing your day up into chunks, Forces you to take breaks. So I try not to just dive from 145 minute chunk into another without getting up in at least walking around a little bit. Sometimes if I have to run an errand or walk the dog, I try to do it during the breaks and um it allows me to attend to lots of different things and still feel some sense of accomplishment. It's like it feels like a strategic use of time. So remember also it takes time and effort to make something a comfortable habit. You may not like this chunking out your time idea, it's worked really well for me. So if you struggle with this feeling of overwhelm like you're ignoring certain things that you shouldn't be ignoring, it's a great way Two to get a system of work flow into your day. And you can even be, if you're really Have a mind that works in a very organized way, you could even say the 1st 45 minute chunk of every day is gonna be this, the second chunk is going to be this, you can really like if you're somebody who likes a predictable schedule and likes understanding or knowing what they're gonna work on next, it can be really strategic about how you use each chunk or what you do in the morning versus what you do in the afternoon.