Hi None,
Several months ago, I was on the edge of overload. I had a number of great projects in progress, gallery sales were humming along, and the little things that a business owner has to deal with were beginning to compound. Add to that dealing with dozens of emails each day, random phone calls, traveling and meetings, (not to mention writing for this blog) and, quite simply, there weren't enough hours in the day to get it all done.
Though I am fortunate to have a high stress tolerance, I was beginning to feel the weight of carrying a workload that was simply too high. Many days I would start work before 8:00 a.m., work all day, come home and, after dinner, work again until 10 or 11 at night. Even so, each day I felt I was falling just a little further behind in accomplishing everything I wanted to get done.
On a regular basis, I have the opportunity to talk to artists and have found that many are experiencing exactly the same predicament.
You might not think of it this way, but as an artist you are the owner of a small business, just as I am. As the owner of your fine art business, you have to manage your accounting, your inventory, and your marketing. You have to find time to build and maintain relationships with galleries. If you sell your own work, you have to manage your sales, both by making sure that you are developing new leads and following up and closing sales. You are responsible for managing your website and following through with your social media. These tasks alone could keep you busy most days, and we haven't even mentioned your most important work: creating art.
I am sure that many of you can understand the desperation that was beginning to creep into my days.
Luckily for me, I was directed to some tools that have changed my day-to-day life and helped me get control of my time.
I don't want to cast myself as a time-management expert, nor is my intention to write an all-encompassing post on how to get control of your life. I just want to share a few things that have had a huge impact for me, and could help you become more productive and feel like you are in control of your day, and more importantly, your over-all direction.
The Ideal Week
Many of you know Barney Davey through podcasting and workshops we have done together. Barney is a fountain of great information and he is particularly good at finding great tools and resources online. I consider him to be my digital guru. Several months ago, Barney pointed me to Michael Hyatt's blog.
Hyatt is the former president and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and blogs about leadership at michaelhyatt.com. While his blog posts cover a wide range of leadership topics, Barney directed me to an article on planning, where Hyatt describes how he designs an "ideal week." I recommend you read Hyatt's post by clicking here.
I won't attempt to repeat everything Hyatt writes. but the basic concept is that by creating a template of your week - scheduling out your time in blocks - you become more efficient and complete your most important work. Obviously Hyatt isn't the first to discover the concept, this is a bedrock time-management principle, but the timing was just right for me. I read his article at exactly the moment when I needed to have more control over my activities. Hyatt includes a downloadable spreadsheet that you can adapt to your schedule, and I did just that.
