As others have become familiar with this blog and with my art and crafting interests, I’ve begun being asked more and more what the secret is to prioritizing so that I can paint every day, do multiple blog posts, work on other crafts and still have a life. The sad answer for everybody is that I have no secret. I just do it! See the calendar above? I put that up when I moved into my apartment in July of last year. As you can see, it’s never been changed. I must have at least 4 separate calendars around the apartment and of them all, only the ‘Art of Star Wars’ day calendar on my desk gets updated and that’s even hit-or-miss. I don’t even wear a watch! That said, I do have some guidelines I try to stick to for myself, and two golden rules, so let’s talk about those.

Guideline #1: Give IN to crafting ADD, except when painting. When I’m painting, I really can’t break away or else I risk losing the ability to blend well and my acrylics thicken or dry out, even if I cover them, as I can’t afford a fancy moisture-retaining palette yet. Otherwise, if I’m in the middle of a project and another comes to mind that’s much more compelling at that given time, I switch gears and go do it. I probably have 6 or 7 different projects going at once which may seem counter-productive but for me it isn’t. Why not? Because if I’m stuck thinking about something else, I move more slowly on and pay less attention to what I’m currently working on anyway. Switching gears lets me focus on a new idea or re-energize by working on something different. However, to avoid a never-ending stream of incomplete projects, along comes Guideline #2!

Guideline #2: Don’t allow a project to sit untouched for more than a week. It’s ok for me to have crafting ADD as long as I make certain I circle around each week to the various projects and get a little further with each one. Some days I can work on multiple projects and feel refreshed and other days it may be just one, but as long as I give them all some time each week, they eventually get done!

Guideline #3: Keep the project journal nearby! In an earlier post, I spoke to the fact that I keep a journal at hand to capture project ideas. That journal helps curb my crafting ADD considerably by allowing me to get the idea out of my head and down on paper, thus freeing it to focus on the project at hand. If the new idea is so compelling that I just HAVE to get started on it right away, Guideline #1 comes into play, but usually writing it down allows me to relax and finish what I’m doing. If I do succumb to my crafting ADD, then I write some quick notes about where I left off on the current project in the journal so that it’s easier to pick back up on later.

Guideline #4: Get some rest! Technically, that should be a rule, but I’ve never been able to fully follow it, so for now it’s a guideline. You don’t need to sleep as much as my cat, but getting a good night’s sleep, or at least some solid blocks, is immensely helpful as being sleep deprived just draws energy away and I feel less interested in doing anything, let alone creating.

Now for the two rules. These are rules I absolutely follow no matter what!

Rule #1: My little girls come first! This is a pretty simple and easily-understood rule. While I have a bad habit of being so focused on my projects that I will put aside getting together with family and friends, or just plain forget, I NEVER do that to my girls. Being a single father, they are the center of my world so nothing takes precedence no matter how compelling the project may be!

Rule #2:Do something creative every single day, including writing one blog post! Generally, doing something creative is pretty easy to fit in. Writing blog posts is harder. But I set aside a half an hour to an hour each evening (after the kids go to bed if they’re at my place) and just sit and create. I also work on at least one new blog post every day. They may not all be winners, but they force me to be disciplined and exercise my writing skills. Now, to be honest, I don’t necessarily write every post you see on a given day ON that day. Some posts, such as the Daily Artisan Spotlights, I put together in bursts and use the scheduler in Wordpress to pre-publish them so I don’t have to worry about it. But for the most part, the posts that aren’t about other artisans are done on the day they are published.

So if you’ve trudged through all of this and want to know what comes next, I’ll give you a hint: I’m going to work on learning time management. Why would I do that if things are going well anyway? Because next week I go back to working 40 hours a week, and a lot of the time I’ve been taking for granted to do these things the last few months will go away. So think of this as the first post in a series of self-help posts regarding better prioritization and time management and I’ll share the results as I go along in case it helps others!