Friday, March 15, 2019
How to Make Time to Work on Creative Projects
offspring.lifehacker.com: In 2017, I was making my living speaking and writing about productivity when my editor asked if I’d like to write a book that—like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The One Minute Manager—teaches a business lessons through stories. There was just one issue. When was I going to find the time between work and caring for my four young children?
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My favorite part of this article was the flooding basement story. We only have so much time, but if something is important enough you will sacrifice something else to take care of it. During college I more or less put everything but school on the backburner (with some exceptions) but now that I’m starting to think about life after graduation I’m trying to decide what I want those priorities to be. I know I’ll end up being busy, it is both the type of person I am, and from what I can tell almost everyone is busy, so it is about deciding what my priorities are and making time for the things I actually consider important rather than filling up my time with things I don’t actually consider valuable if I really stop and think about it. I also really want to be the type of person who gets up 3 hours before work and has a nice productive morning, but I tend to have trouble going to bed much before 11pm and I don’t like waking up earlier than I have to, so I’m probably better off trying to set aside time in the evenings rather than forcing myself to be a morning person.
I love how this article calls out the "I don't have enough time" mentality. I find people around me saying that constantly, mostly because they are not actually accounting for their time and seeing where they waste it. Since I began using an hourly planner, I have been able to hold myself accountable for my time wasted. I also like the advice about using mornings. My parents work several jobs, so growing up I arrived early to pretty much any function I went to. I got used to arriving to school an hour or two early and grew to absolutely love getting stuff done at that time. Finally, treating things like a flooding basement is something I struggle with. To me, a lot of the times it feels like everything is flooding, but figuring out what is the most important to me and also needs to happen the fastest is always helpful in quelling that anxiety. I also cannot advise people enough to get out of Purnell! If it can be done outside of studio, go literally anywhere else!
A lot of these tools can be easily translated to day to day work, even in college. I find myself so often thinking I have absolutely no time, but then at the end of the day I look back and see time where I ended up being incredibly unproductive. Similar to what Julian said, I too really clicked with the metaphor at the end about finding what is important to you and treating it like a flooded basement. I think that it is so important to take the time out of the day to do what is important or healthy to you. Even in the midst of chaos, I think there is something to be said about putting down that assignment or shutting off the computer for a little while and really getting a chance to be creative, especially at CMU. We so often get caught up in creating for class and work and shows, but sometimes taking the time to be creative for yourself is equally important, and can allow you to get back to work and (maybe even) be more productive than you were before.
When I saw the title of this article I immediately jumped on board with it. In high school, I did a lot of creative projects and loved spending all of my spare time volunteering in the theater. Since I started college, I find that I have lost a lot of that creative passion. I think it’s the cumulation of too much work, and doing all of my creative projects for a grade instead of for joy, and the endless hours of crew. I think it’s really important to do something creative because of your own creative drive, and so this article really caught my eye. Unfortunatley, I didn’t find any of the advice very useful. I hate mornings and sleep is the number one necessity for me to function, so working in the mornings is immediately out. I also don’t have the time to move locations or stop and come back to an idea. Most of that time is spent working on ideas for class. I think this is why we have playground, to be able to work on our own pieces without having to worry about other classes. I just wish playground we a little longer so we had more time to prep for our pieces.
This article was helpful, although much of it was a regurgitation of much of what I have heard in the past about trying to get work started. I personally really struggle with taking things in bite-sized pieces, and this articles suggestion of “challenges” really resonated with me. It is amazing how much space the mind will take up just being scared of a task. By making the task have a predetermined time, the mind can more easily and calmly start on a project. I will probably use this, and although the time element is less important, teaching the brain to take things in in small palatable bites is great. I also really loved the part of treating your work like a flooded basement. Choosing one of your tasks, which you yourself determine is much more productive than sitting and staring at the conglomerate of work. I find part of learning to be a more productive worker is learning to prioritize, and also that prioritizing creative work is possible. Emails will not wither and die, and the stress of them can be diffused, at least a little bit.
Some of the things mentioned in this article are things that I definitely struggle with. I absolutely do not use my mornings to the fullest of their potential, and if I had a choice, I would not wake up until at least 9:00. Albeit, this is likely also due to the fact that often our class schedule runs very late in the night, and often inhibits a good night's sleep if there is work due the next day and an early class the next day. I do like the idea of using music or other forms of art to inspire and prevent “artists block.” However, I do disagree with the “change your scenery” advice. I think it is helpful for people to establish a dedicated space for them to do work. If you change your scenery too much, then you may become too reliant on it, and be unable to work creatively when you finally do have a dedicated space.
The topic unsurprisingly got my attention, since we all have our passion projects piled up, knowing how to make a better path to achieve it is always a good thing. The flooded basement metaphor makes me smile, as long as we treat the projects as hobbies, they tend to slip away between the one thousand thing on our daily schedule. But if the project somehow have limited time window and it matters not only to one person, the will of finishing or starting it would significantly rise. Personally I have used this trick several times, most common situation is that the project serve as someone's birthday present. In the limited time frame, I usually found myself cranking more time to deal with it than the other not-so-desperate projects. The other hint caught my eye is paying for the childcare more, even without a child, I can get the idea of getting rid of daily task by outsourcing them, since they are reoccurring anyway, shift the resource between them and the passion projects makes a great point to me.
I know that this article is clearly geared toward working parents, but I am glad it was posted because I think some of the advice in this article is very pertinent to busy college students as well. The two pieces of advice I found the most helpful were the one saying to work early in the morning and the one saying to find some accountability for your work. I often get so caught up in getting something done that I will spend all night working on it rather than just getting up early to finish it when I will be able to take less time to do it, so I found that advice a really helpful reminder that most people can be the most productive in the morning. I also think the accountability advice was really necessary because it is really easy for people to disappoint themselves because often we will just change our own expectations for ourselves so it isn’t actually a disappointment. But other people don’t change their expectations and many people don’t enjoy disappointing others, so they will do what they can to get the work done for them.
I really enjoyed reading this article. While it wasn’t quite what I expected, it still seems useful. I constantly struggle with this because so much of my time is taken up by school between class, homework, and production that I find what little time I do have being used to relax. Using it to relax is what keeps me going so where to find the time to do the stuff I want to and create the things I have floating around in my head? This article is great because it actually gives me some of those answers, they just weren’t any answers I didn’t already know or didn’t find useful. My issue is figuring out how to make more time for those creative projects but in larger chunks because in hour here or an hour there isn’t enough for the kind of creation I want to do. So, while this article is helpful, I just isn’t helpful for me. Nonetheless, a very useful article.
I think this article is pretty straight forward if you want to achieve your artistic goals or passion projects you have to set up time to make that happen and make it a priority. You can’t just assume because you are passionate about something you’ll magically find time to get it done, news-flash it won’t happen. I don’t really agree with the basement analogy, using a sort of emergency situation to be like, see you have more time in the day doesn’t really sell me on her points it actually ruined the article for me. I think she’s getting at the idea of prioritizing your passion projects a point she made with her email waiting story. If you are in a situation that needs immediate attention, yes you will find time to deal with it. It will certainly detract from the other responsibilities and priorities you have. You’ll likely neglect them if the problem is serious enough like not going to work to deal with your house flooding. If it isn’t that severe you’ll likely lose sleep or skip dinner or not have time to decompress for the day increasing your stress levels and not contributing to a well balanced life.
For someone who considers myself an artist and a maker, I pretty much never work on independent creative projects just because I want to. The entire body of work in my portfolio results from productions I worked on or projects from classes that I took. This is not a revelation to me, I have long told myself that that I’m not suited to independent, isolated creative work; I am much more of a collaborator who enjoys structure and collaboration. Reading this article affirmed that for me. What if I followed some of this guidance, for example, going to bed and waking up early to set aside productive morning time? Realistically, I can imagine that I’d stare at my canvas, computer screen, whatever it is, not knowing where to begin, feeling pressure to make use of this time that I had so carefully set aside (and making the lost hours of sleep feel worthwhile). I don’t know that this article was particularly helpful for me, I can see how it may be for those pursuing side passion projects.
I’m glad this article was posted on here because I think this an issue many of us deal with, especially as art students. In high school I had this problem a lot because I felt like my need for art wasn’t being fulfilled in my daily school activities. In college, I didn’t think that this problem would be as evident, as my main school work would actually be mostly art projects. I was right, in some ways, as that craving for art has definitely lowered, as I get to do it on a daily basis, but I realized I still need time to make art for myself—art that is not graded and has no guidelines and exists purely because I felt like making it. It is definitely hard to get into the mindset after a long day to be able to make this art, so I mainly utilize my weekends to do so, or nights when I don’t have crew calls/work study. I make a real, intense effort to make as much art for myself over breaks from school as possible, and I’ve found that it’s actually more fun now because I can challenge myself by furthering studies of certain materials that have been introduced to me at school, like charcoals, watercolors, and so on.
The article here caught my eye because for most of my life, I’d been doing a lot of creative projects outside the realm of school work, and since coming to college I’ve felt like I’ve lost most of that drive or ability. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that the work we do in most of our classes is creative work, but not the type of creativity I’m wanting to do, so when it comes around to being able to do personal work like drawing/creating/etc., I’m all burned out. I tend to take the school work as being more urgent, and the grade more important, than doing the creative things that are fulfilling to me. I liked the idea of the flooded basement the article presented, because it gives a way to help prompt yourself to work on things that are important to you. Maybe I’ll be able to use it. Some of the things in the article are things that I already kind of knew, but helps to re-read and think about. ‘Challenges’ are fun, even just for a little while, because they do get you to change things up and push you outside the comfort zone. (Like Inktober). Changing spaces is also good because it does help the feeling of getting stuck or distracted by certain things. However, I am not a morning person, even if I get a good amount of sleep, so trying to use the time right before classes wouldn’t be that productive.
Ever since coming to carnegie mellon, I haven’t found time to work on a personal creative project besides sketching here and there. Thats easy to do because I can do that in class while listening to a lecture or hanging with friends drawing in my Collaborative Drawing Notebook™ . I’ve tried to start a couple of projects but I haven’t found time to consistently work on a personal creative project from start to finish. So when I saw this article I definitely knew I needed to read it. I don’t think I’ll need to use the advice about paying extra for child care, but I like the idea of doing actions with a similar motive, making room for this project like it’s something completely urget. When it comes to personal projects they, at least for me, usually are found at the bottom of my to do list, so maybe I can try to treat it differently. Well that still is easier said than done for me. That's why the advice I think I definitely need use is her advice on building accountability, by bring a second party to be invested by checking in our work. That's the kind of incentives that would definitely motivate me to work on a project.
One of the things my father worked really hard to instill into my sister and I is the attitude that there is always time to do what must get done. Part of what has really helped me in this is actively tracking how much time it takes me to do things, so I improve my ability to estimate how long it will take me to complete a task. I think that maintaining an hourly planner to force me to realistically consider how much time I have and how much time what must get done will take me. Having my day parceled out in blocks of time before the day actually begins does a lot to help me to mentally prepare for the work ahead. I found myself not totally agreeing with the changing of the scenery point. I find myself being able to find my flow much more quickly if I am in my designated work space. That being said, I think something I want to try is making different designated spots for different kinds of work I am doing. This could fulfill the goal of changing it up and giving my brain a bit of a break. I think forcing myself to break up assignments to smaller chunks so I can effectively use the smaller blocks of time in between classes would really help my efficiency and accountability.
I think this might be the most comments on one article I’ve seen in my time doing these assignments, and that speaks to our shared experience of coming to Carnegie Mellon and feeling like we don’t have time for anything other than Carnegie Mellon. Which is a fair feeling when you come home at 11:00 pm after a twelve-hour day and still have to write a paper, you’re not going to stay up any later than you have to, in my case, to draw or paint or sculpt. You’re going to go to bed as soon as that paper is acceptable because you have Drafting at 8:30 in the morning. So where do you find the time? I know this article is geared more towards parents, but I think the tips are still transferable in some ways. Some of them aren’t for me, “using my mornings” would mean getting up at 6:00 am or earlier, but remember I probably finished that paper at 2:00 am, so that isn’t a sustainable option. But treating my life like a flooded basement seems pretty doable. Not only because the analogy is funny and kind of fitting, but because that “something else” that would be thrown out is probably something I wouldn’t even miss. Those “in-between activities” that you do when you have a little time but not enough to start and assignment or go to a different place. I think that time in combination with setting materials up beforehand so I don’t waste time on that could be my golden ticket to knocking out some personal projects this semester.
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