You wake up every morning, grab a cup of coffee or tea. Rush to the computer to check our emails and update our Twitter. Sometimes we receive an urgent customer reply. Others are questions on a piece we’re trying to sell. Our house needs to be cleaned and beds are unmade. Maybe you have to make lunch for the kids or run to the store to buy groceries. You’ve got a pile of bills on the counter waiting to be taken care of and you’re not sure whether you were paid last night for that painting or if you have to wait a few days to make enough to pay those bills. Your mind is cluttered from the anxiety of work, timelines and responsibilities. You haven’t kept track of what was completed or what needs to be done. There’s no organization. No timeclock.
But you may think, “I’m a business owner. I can do whatever I want! I have ALLLLL the time in the world.”
No, you don’t. As a business owner, we have twice the responsibilities and require much more worktime than the average employee. We have a lot on our plate to tend to. We’re the boss, the manager, the employee, the stock clerk and the cashier. That is only some of our roles, and on top of that we have to find the time to be in the right mind to create our art. Unless you have honed in on the gift to create art like a factory, you need alot more time to create the art you need to sell. And it has to be on a REGULAR basis if it’s your full-time job. Your only livelihood. Those bills will not get paid while the drawings are sitting on the desk, untouched and unsold.
And now here you are, it’s 4pm and you haven’t even gotten out of your pajamas (a plus for some), and the house is still unkept. The bills still unchecked. The painting still not started. You caught up in the social media, the researching or some customer service relations and lost track of the time. Your husband/wife is probably wondering why someone, who has “all the time in the world” cause you work from home, hasn’t done a single thing.
Yes, this IS lazy. No, you DON’T have all the time in the world, but you can, if you do this right.
For a majority of artists like myself, we don’t work from a studio or workspace. We create, manage and run our offices “right from the comfort” of our homes. And for those of us, where it is a full-time business, it has a few disadvantages.
Okay, let’s be honest. It has many disadvantages.
Common problems we creatives face are:
1. Having cabin fever, which creates a creative slump.
2. Being criticized or misunderstood by our 9-5 mates/family.
3. Difficulty in separation between home life and work life.
4. Understimulation from lack of workplace social interaction.
Of the 8 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve felt the weight of my work. I’ve done everything from altering my methods or work of choice, changing my workspace, working at different times or quitting altogether and attemping Dental school. If you don’t have an effective working strategy or system you will become exhausted, burnt out and frustrated with your work. And NOTHING will get done. You may give it up altogether and move onto something else.
But that’s the thing too. Some artists may find out that it wasn’t right to make it their career at all. Some of us are meant to keep it in it’s sacred place – as an outlet. Not the source of our income.
For those of us, who have been doing this for a long time or intend on making this their livelihood, here are 5 ways to make our work life more productive, profitable and happy:
1. Try to find a new place outside of your house to work. It doesn’t have to be office space you rent or pay for. Maybe it’s a co-working space or a friends’ house. Having yourself outside of the home and in a different environment is stimulating to our senses, inspiring our creativity and productiveness. It’s like fresh air to our souls. I’ve worked in co-working spaces and have had my studio in the most beautiful cabin in Malibu’s canyons. The mountains, ocean and sun were just absolutely wonderful for my creativity and it got me out of the stifling environment of working in my home.
Now, I know not everyone has the greatest options to work from but you can be creative with your use of time to add variety to your daily work.
2. Spend your computer time at a cafe or coffee shop instead of the kitchen table. Taking care of paperwork, writing or bookkeeping is best done outside the house. Or go outside into your backyard and work, weather permitting! Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, among many writers use this method to do their writing for the day. You don’t have to be at home because it’s convenient. Get yourself outside!
3. Don’t let non-art work take away from your art work time! Get yourself a timer or write down in paper the exact time limits you intend to use to complete necessary work like bookkeeping, customer service, emails, packaging and printing, networking and site updates. One of my favorite business books that has helped me execute this is The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. He explains some incredibly simple ways of keeping unimportant work tasks to a minimum so that you can focus on the more important things in your life, like creating the art itself, which is the focus of your business. I’ve come to learn I do not check emails until after noon and 4pm, and will not use social media except at those times.
4. Research more useful methods or work to do. Always continue to learn from your collectors and audience what they like. Test methods that help you create art more efficiently and quickly. Some of us artists may do work that takes a few months or have intense processes, but for the majority, we do quicker and simpler work. It’s what people want and what we love to do. For us, discovering what makes our life easier as a business artist and satisfies our particular market will help us work more effectively and have more of our life back.
5. Use compiling social media tools to help you use them less and more effectively. Broadcast tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to simultaneously post content and updates through syndicated profiles like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even your blogs. Set a time limit for your social media interaction and emails. Even scheduling tweets or posts on the date you want allows you to still be present without being there. Sites like Socialoomph.com or FutureTweets.com allow you to do that. Most blog sites allow you to schedule blog posts ahead of time, so write your posts on a set day and set them up for the next week or two. It IS possible to keep up with the others while not becoming so immersed in the media itself. Noone will forget that you are there, and responses CAN be waited on. Don’t let it take over your life!
It’s a bit harder to really follow these guidelines when you’ve just done it whenever you felt. You HAVE to execute accordingly, or your work will take over your life. And you will NOT. HAVE. FUN. doing it. Change your habits. Change your life.
