Finding Time to Create

Life. It’s messy and complicated and often filled with mundane tasks that “have to get done” (I’m looking at you, laundry) before the real fun begins. Creating stuff is my full time job. I’m self-employed (with a few work-for-others-on-occasion side gigs plus two volunteer gigs that require more-work-than-I-thought-they-would). And I have a husband and two grown-ish kids who require a certain amount of my time – usually on demand.

The problem with self-employment is that you are in charge of your own time. It’s also the greatest blessing. The challenge is two-fold: your own handling of time and other’s handling of your time. This challenge is not unique to those who are self-employed. I teach time management at a local community college (one of my side gigs) and my students are usually office workers frustrated by not having enough time to get their work done. One of the first assignments I give is to chart your typical week, day by day. I’ve had more than one student cry (usually at the inequity of work/home time and often because their job “required” more outside-of-usual-work-hours work than they realized).

The solution is boundaries. It’s easy to write that, but a lot more difficult to implement – self-employed or not. Needs of family and basic living (eating, sleeping, and at least occasionally cleaning) often want to happen on their terms and not yours. But if the desire to create is great enough then it needs to be made a priority. And that means setting boundaries around that precious time.

Here are three tips to help set and keep boundaries:

1. Block off time

Blocking off an hour or two (or less if that’s all you can carve out) is the first step. This is precious time. Sacred creating time. And you should treat it as such. Make an appointment with yourself. Mark your calendar just as you would for a doctor’s appointment or for an event. When someone calls and you check your calendar to see if you are busy during that time – YOU ARE. Just because the appointment on the calendar is with yourself doesn’t make it any less important! If you don’t respect your time, other’s won’t respect it either.

2. Communicate

Now you need to communicate to family/friends (those who may interrupt unannounced) that you cannot be disturbed during this time. You don’t have to make a big deal about it. A text, a sign on the door, a simple “hey, I’m going to be working on something and can’t be disturbed for the next hour” will often suffice. I send out a text to my immediate family (one of whom is away at college but likes to call me several times a day) that I am busy for the next few hours. I have regularly scheduled chunks, and this is just to remind them I am unavailable and not to be disturbed.

For time blocks where I can handle a quick interruption, I don’t send out the text. If I am interrupted, then I let them know I can assist them when I’m finished whatever I’m working on (unless it’s an actual emergency). Sometimes they just want an answer to a quick question, and I can do that if I know the answer – otherwise, the answer will have to wait. Now that my husband and son also work from home, we all try to be respectful of each other’s blocks of time.

3. Plan ahead

Know what you are going to do during your blocked out time BEFORE you start. If possible, have the tools you will need ready and waiting. It’s frustrating to sit down to work on something and find you are missing a key component of the project. Set yourself up for success by minimizing distractions: don’t check email, scroll through social media, set phone to “do not disturb,” etc.

Planning ahead takes a bit of practice. Make a list – check it twice – of what you will need. Gather and organize. Make notes. I often make a list of what I plan to accomplish during my time block. I keep it short: list 3 new products on Etsy, edit photos of new products, work on birthday card designs. The more I can write down, the less mental exertion needs to go into figuring out what to do and that mental energy goes into doing.

Give yourself some grace and understanding if the process of blocking time is new to you. There will be plenty of times that you sit down, ready to go, and find you’re missing something or someone really really needs you right this minute. As long as those obstacles are the exception rather than the rule, you will succeed in harnessing those precious hours (or minutes) into productive time.

What tips do you have about carving out time to create and making that time count? Leave a comment below. Would you be interested in more time management posts – especially for creatives? Let me know!