Completing any task involves time getting set up, doing the task, and often some kind of tying up of the loose ends, and cleaning or tidying up at the end.   Some tasks may involve travel time.  That’s why batching can be so effective in helping you find more time for your creative projects. You cut down drastically the time you spend on setting up, traveling, and transitioning from one task to another.  Deciding that you will only go food shopping once a week, or less can make a big difference. Putting your errands together can cut down hours wasted in travel time.

Making big batches of food ahead of a major project and freezing it, can also reduce the workload. It may require more planning but it is well worth it.   Also in the last hectic days before a big project’s completion date, consider a few takeout meals as a way of getting you through the hump.  If you are somebody who enjoys cooking you may make your regular food preparation far too complicated. It’s great to create a really delicious and elaborate meal for family and friends on occasions.

But make things simple for your daily life and you will free up a lot of time for other ways of expressing your creativity.  I find batching my coaching calls on one or two days a week, works well for me. It allows me to get into my coaching mode, and have my client files on hand. Then on other days I can focus on my other writing or arts projects, or schedule other business or family activities.  You can also batch your work to promote your projects in a few days or half days spread over the months you have scheduled. Batch together the telephone calls you need to make, or the trips to pick up materials for your project.

Batch together the creative part of the process too. Find out what amount of time you need to get into high focus on your artwork, and then what time your energy starts flagging either take a break, or to go on to something completely different.  I find I work best on a project when I have about three or four hours or even a day, or a weekend, where I can completely get into a project. However if I spend too much time in a row, I go into overload.  I need to schedule breaks to go for a walk or have a meal or snack, about every one hour and a half, although sometimes I get so wrapped up in my work that hours pass without me noticing.

What about you?  Where are you wasting time by not batching together similar tasks?  How often do you need to change activities completely, so that you keep refreshed and productive?  Journal your activities for a few days, and see what time you can free up just by putting similar activities together, or planning better your errands. While you make think you already know what you are wasting time on, you may make some interesting discoveries about how you can free up your time.

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby .

I love YouTube and all the wonderful videos of my favourite artists going back over the years. I used to play Tracy Chapman endlessly, but hadn’t listened to her for years. Here’s one of my favourites, “Baby Can I hold You?”

Brighten up your ay by watching this playing for change video, with musicians from four continents singing a folk tune from Chenna India.

Toronto blogger, Neil Pasricha, whose blog, “1000 Awesome Things”, provides daily inspiration on life’s simple pleasures, in a presentation to TedxToronto, is both amusing and profound. He talks about how attitude, awareness,and authenticity can take us through humps and bumps of life. I love his part about embracing our inner three year old that looks with wonder at the world.

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To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

I love this video both because it both shows  the artistic process of 24 year old ErnestoYerena at work creating his brilliant posters, as well as featuring Ernesto’s comments on the immigration debate in the US, and the way his people have been dehumanized, and used as political fodder.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/9359973.stm

This talk by Majora Carta, is well worth taking the time to listen to. It contains inspiring stories of local eco- entrepreneurship and is wonderful antidote to all the bad news we hear in the press.  Majora shows how “practical visionaries” are bringing solutions to some of the world most pressing problems on a local level.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces,

and which most men throw away.

Charles Caleb Colto

Where do you have small enclaves of time that can be used for your artistic pursuits? Do you spend too much time watching TV or checking your e-mail? Do hours get sucked up by distractions on the internet? Is your day interrupted constantly, so that you have no time to focus and actually get your main tasks done?

One of my clients, a writer found that she was having trouble finding time for a writing project, and the deadline had suddenly got moved ahead. After discussing this with me, she decided for the remainder of the week to only check her e-mail once a day, and not answer the phone while she was working on her writing.

Now this wasn’t making any dramatic changes. It did however take discipline to resist the temptation to answer the phone or check her e-mails. These small changes allowed her to finish the project without putting a major strain on her life.

Tim Ferriss in the “The 4-Hour Workweek:” has some brilliant strategies for cutting down on the work that tends to consume your time without giving you what you truly want. He has many good tips for eliminating time wasters, and advocates the radical approach of only checking your e-mail once a week, and then replying to all of them at once.

What distractions take you away from your art work? Whaf time can you free up for doing the work you are passionate about? Resolve to reclaim some of your time for what matters most. Little step by little step you can train yourself to resist  the many  distractions of daily life, and carve out more  time for your creative self.

How to have a more joyful, productive life?  Ariana Huffington, in this highly amusing and thought provoking video, argues that getting enough sleep is a new feminist issue, and that sleep deprivation is becoming a virility symbol.