By Carole Hayward
I just wrapped up a writing retreat that I promised myself (and others) that I would take to finish a draft of a young adult novel that I started several months ago. During this time, it struck me how important it is to carve out time for creativity.
Regardless of the business you own, run, or engage in, it can easily dominate your every activity, waking moment, and bit of energy. And we know that dedication to our primary business is key to success, but we can sometimes win that battle but still lose the war. We can get so bogged down in the day-to-day functions of our business that we forget to dedicate time for the thing that will help take our business to the next level. We neglect to carve out time for creativity.
How you interpret creativity is as individual as our respective businesses whether it’s creating a new product line, making a video to explain what you do and why, or exploring the software that will improve efficiency, but the important thing is to make time for it.
Right now, I spend my mornings doing client work, and I spend my afternoons promoting Clear Message Media, and at night I’m planning what I’m doing the next day and catching up on whatever wasn’t finished during the day. But I have several things in mind to take my business higher, and they are not going to happen unless I make time for them. Here’s how I plan to do it:
Work Backwards. By that I mean I have to figure out when I want/need to get this thing done. For example, I want an e-book available for download by July 1. Realistically, it is going to take me 50 hours of work to research, write, edit, and produce it. I can’t carve out 50 consecutive hours for this project, but I know that I have 18 weeks until my deadline. I need to determine how much time is needed for each task and then set milestones for each of them.
Schedule It. Now that I have my milestones, I have to set aside time on my calendar that will be devoted to this task. Two hours, five hours, whatever is required, but I have to be realistic. If the task is going to take more hours than I can give in a day/week/month, then I might need to move the target for my project back to a reasonable, achievable date.
Do It. I’ve given myself a schedule, I’ve got the plan, I know how to break this down, but now I’ve got to do it. Deadlines set for myself are the easiest to miss, so I have to figure out how to hold myself accountable. For example, I let someone know that he will be able to read my draft of my novel by a certain date. That makes it a more solid, real deadline for me, so I’m working hard to meet that date.
The mundane tasks of scheduling, deadlines, and planning don’t sound very creative, but they are essential to giving yourself the space to breathe, to imagine, and to create. Carve out the time for creativity and just watch what happens.
