Class Introduction
Lesson 1 from: FAST CLASS: Workflow, Time Management and Productivity for CreativesLisa Congdon
Class Introduction
Lesson 1 from: FAST CLASS: Workflow, Time Management and Productivity for CreativesLisa Congdon
Lessons
Class Introduction
08:29 2How to Create an Effective Workflow
04:30 3Organizing A Workflow Document
18:47 45 Tips for Managing Your Workflow
02:03 5Working with a Rolling To-Do List
02:30 6Setting Up Your Rolling To-Do List
09:14 7Time Blocking: What it is and Why it Works
03:45 8How to Use Time-Blocking Effectively
09:28Lesson Info
Class Introduction
and welcome Teoh. Uh, workflow time management and productivity for creatives. I'm always afraid I'm gonna mess up the order of those things. Not that it really matters. Um, I'm so excited to be teaching this class because I feel like it is one of the most common points of pain for people in general out in the world. But especially for creative people. This idea this, uh, sort of challenge of staying organized people often ask me, how do you manage to do so many projects and work on so many things at one time? And what I always say is number one, I don't have Children. Number two. I have a system for organizing my projects in a way to keep track of everything I'm doing. That allows me to be really productive. So that's what I'm going to teach you today. What if you could working away where you felt on top of your assignments and tasks, right? What if you could wake up every morning knowing exactly what you needed to tackle that day and had a plan for getting that day's work? Done like ...
every morning? Wake up. I got this. What if you entered your day with a sense of ease and control. What if you could develop a system for yourself in which you were focussed and organized and completed assignments on time, even when you had several projects on your plate? What if you could be productive and actually get stuff done? That would be awesome, right? And I'm assuming that you're all here and those of you out in Internet land or listening, because this is something you struggle with and let's face it, we all struggle with it, and that's why having systems is important, this is possible. Believe it or not, you have it in you. And if all of these ideas sound compelling to you, you're in the right class. So even if you're sure this could never be you, it can be. Here's the thing. We're all different. Not everybody works in the same way. Some people enjoy organization, their brains are wired for it. And it's also a true fact that most people need to work at organization and productivity intentionally, even those of us who are more wired for it. What works for one person's productivity doesn't work for another. So again, I'm going to be telling you about systems that worked for work for me and I think could work for a lot of people. But if there are ways that you think changing them for your own needs is important, then I say Go ahead and do that. You don't need anybody's permission to do that. The system is are. The idea is to develop a system that works for you that plays on your strengths in minimizes the stuff that distracts or weakens you. Okay, it is a myth that creative people thrive in chaos. Developing structure will actually help you to thrive. So the idea here isn't to oppress ourselves with systems I think systems awesome often or organized people get a sort of bad rap for being really dogmatic and strict. But the idea isn't actually to oppress yourself with a system for organization organizing your time. The idea is actually to create a structure in which you can thrive and become more creative because you're less overwhelmed. My anxiety, my sense of overwhelm is always in direct relationship to what I feel I have control over don't have control over. It's also a myth that creative people are inherently disorganized and have irreversibly poor time management and focus. It is true that many creative people, many people in general, have poor time management and focus. But it is a myth that that is irreversible. Anyone can learn to apply structure and organization to their life if they desire toe have it so while. And it's also true that like while a lot of those stereotypes are really for a lot of people, not just creative people, it's also true that you can learn different behaviors and work inside of systems that help you become more organized. I also believe it's true that so many creative people are highly organized, highly productive, meet deadlines, go to bed on time. You know all of those things. So I'm really all about dispelling those stereotypes. Here's why Thinking about working differently is important for creative. So we're often doing projects like eso how many of you are freelance or have a part time job but also work freelance on the side? Okay, so most of you, and even if you're a creative person working inside of a company, regardless, you are managing lots of projects at once. Ultimately, your goal as a freelance artist is toe have enough projects to make a living. Correct. And to do that, you're going to juggle a lot of things because oftentimes, projects for creatives don't pay that well. So if you got to do, like 10 or 20 of them at once, I'm exaggerating. But so we're doing a big designer illustration assignment from clients, sometimes many at once. We're designing our illustrating an entire book or Web project, something that's gonna take us, like six months. And if you're not doing that yet, you might do that someday. So the organizational skills I'm gonna teach you are gonna be super important. Were planning executing the launch of a project, maybe a website and online shop, A personal project online? Well, we're fielding requests from potential clients. We're preparing for an exhibition or an art fair. Were working doggedly on promoting our work and business. And we're doing all of these things plus a 1,000,000 other things by ourselves, right? And so we don't have anyone often until we're sort of further on in our career who's helping us keep organized or stay organized. So there's a lot of that. We bear a lot that we hold every single day. So neuroscientists refer to our ability to hold stuff in our working memory as our cognitive load and your cognitive load is your ability toe hold stuff in your working memory. So think about that for a moment. And it's all about systems and developing systems breaking down big things into smaller parts. Okay, So if you get a big project figuring out, what do we need to do first? What do we need to do next? What do I need to do next? And how can I time all of those things so that I get the project done instead of being like I have a giant project, I don't even know where to begin recording details somewhere so that you don't forget them managing moving parts, adjusting to accommodate changes. This is really important. And I'm gonna talk about this a lot. Every one of the systems I'm gonna teach you today and many teach you three and they all sort of work together is, um, are all super flexible systems. So this is sort of the three tiered system I'm going to teach you today. So workflow, which is sort of where you capture the details about everything, you're responsible for it. Any given time, having a work full document changed my life, a place to capture everything that I was responsible for. You can even include stuff from your sort of non work life in your work flow. If that's helpful to you, It takes discipline to take the time to enter the stuff into the spreadsheet. But having it is important, then we're going toe, take everything specific things from our workflow and put them in our rolling to do lists. And the we're going from everything to today in this week two time blocking, which is what am I going to do this hour? Right, So you're taking the big breaking it down into smaller chunks and then into even smaller chunks, and I'm gonna refer back to this graphic several times during the glass. So
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Michelle
While I'm not a designer, I'm a creative who is responsible for multiple projects, most of which take a week or months. Lisa's use of Google sheets then breaking things down is super helpful. I appreciate the bonus document! Thanks for the Fast Class version! So many of the Creative Live classes are far too long and need to be edited.
mary gabriola
I really enjoyed the class with Lisa. She's a clear and engaging speaker, and the examples she provided really bring the course material to life. She's talking mostly about creative projects, and since I have many writing projects on the go that works for me. I also am using her approach to set up other projects, though -- gardening and renovations and such -- and I think it's going to work really well. Thanks, Lisa!