I am currently facing the challenge of working away from my studio. My work space is an apartment living room in the city of Brno in the Czech Republic. I am embracing this by doing the stuff that I haven’t got time to do when back in UK. Now I have time to do the things that I’ve been putting off and appeared too much of a challenge and time consuming, like trying to put together my email list, work on my email newsletter, write a regular blog and also try to tackle the online shop, which I have been meaning to do last year, but never finished.
For example, when I was back in Aberdeen, I found it a challenge balancing my time between my studio time, part time job and also working on my website or posting on social media/ blog. As you noticed I only managed to post one blog post last year. Another challenge for me is dividing my time between all those activities, without allowing one to impact another (like organising my website, sorting, emailing, writing and painting on my day off). Time management is something I need to improve on!
It always seems that I need to work more hours in my part time job as well, to have some money to live on, and that doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to create, work on my business or for exercise and days off. (No, artists don’t live on air!). I guess this is a challenge any creative is facing and a whole big topic to write about. Up to now I have been supporting my art by doing part time work, but I want to turn this around!
At the moment I am using a business tool called ‘The Maker’s Yearbook’ a productivity planner by photographer Nicola Taylor.
https://makersbusinesstoolkit.com/makers-yearbook/
https://nicolataylorphotographer.com/
I am still not quite perfect in following the planner, however I am getting better. This planner gives me very simple but effective productivity tools to follow in achieving my goals. ‘The Maker’s Yearbook’ comes with a great online resource of classes and workbooks. I also get access to a Facebook group. This is a great resource for artists and makers, in sharing knowledge there is power! Sometimes the group can be a little overwhelming and also create a source of distraction. However it’s up to everybody to use the toolkit to it’s full potential or just use what suits the person. I definitely recommend it. You either love it or hate it!
Below are snippets of artworks that I am currently working on.
In the next blog post in March I would like to research and talk about Productivity tools like ‘Pomodoro Technique’, and take up the challenge of following the Pomodoro Technique in the month of March and see how I get on.
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