Get Everything Done

Being a part time artist I have found that since starting Autofocus most of my art related tasks haven't been standing out for me and I haven't been getting much done on that front. However, I'm really enjoying how the system is working on all other fronts so I put my thinking cap on to see if I could work out a better way for me to get back in the studio ( i.e. my spare room).

The trouble as I saw it was that if I schedule a block of time to work in the studio then I have the pre-Autofocus problem of feeling stuck and not really knowing what to get up to. But if I put all my art related tasks in with the other tasks in my Autofocus list then they seem to have a nasty habit of losing out to other things. So I decided that for the purposes of Autofocus I would declare my spare room/studio a separate location and make a separate list for it. Ah ha! The lightbulb went on and I realised I had got something.

With a separate list I can block off time in the studio but still have a range of tasks to work on (from mundane admin type things to actual painting and drawing). I have yet to start using my new list as I figured this out at the end of today and am out all morning tomorrow at my weekly life group. But I can't wait to see whether it makes it easier to get more done. It may even be a new way to overcome that dreaded thing 'artist's block'. As Mark has mentioned regarding writing, many people find that doing a set amount at set times can really help. I'm hoping that running my separate list within a scheduled block of time will have a similar effect.

Thanks for that Hannah - I was toying with a similar idea for doing my Family History which gets progressed very erratically at present. ps I suspect a number of life groups will be being regaled with the wonders of AF this week :-)

Hi Hannah

Funnily enough, I had more or less the same "lightbulb" moment today! Just substitute "art-related work" with "fee-earning work" (which I guess still boils down to the same anyway).

All week I've been struggling with the new system in that I couldn't see it coping with my deadline-driven freelance work situation. I could see all sorts of benefits in the system as such, and I was enjoying using it, but I kept worrying about missing work deadlines as a result of getting too carried away on the "wrong" page of the list!

The thing is that I work from home, so I didn't think that there was any need to have two separate lists, as Mark suggests in his instructions. As a result, the list has fee-earning work, business development, marketing, networking, unpaid committee work, domestic chores, emails to friends etc etc, all muddled up in the same list.

What I suddenly realised today is that, if I keep a separate list in which I enter only tasks that are fee-earning, and then have a different list for everything else (including business development, marketing, admin, everything that needs to be done, but that I can't charge anyone for), this system actually offers a wonderful opportunity to finally solve an age-old problem of mine, namely how to ensure that I spend a set amount of hours every week doing actual fee-earning work, as opposed to just "work" work, whether fee-earning or not.

So from next week on, I will give myself set hours during the day in which I'm only allowed to pick tasks from the fee-earning autofocus list, which should have fewer tasks in it than my current list, but much juicier ones, while the rest of the time I can choose tasks from the other list, the one I've been using all week, and which would also include relaxation "tasks", such as going for a walk, doing exercises, reading, along with chores, CPD, marketing and so on. This should solve the missed deadline/missing out on crucial work tasks worry that's been bugging me all week.

I think the key worry behind it has been all along that I couldn't help getting the feeling the autofocus system, as I'd been using it so far, gave me too much scope for doing things that needed to be done, granted, but weren't paying the bills! Something that I have a tendency to do anyway, but the autofocus list seemed to aggravate and, in fact, encourage it....

I feel much more positive about this now!

Betti

Yes, you came up with exactly the same idea as me for much the same reasons. I guess we didn't do it to start with simply because we both thought that everything happened in the same location. Well, we've seen the light now and I guess as they say, great minds think alike.

Keep us posted with how you get on and I'll also report back on how it works for me once I've put in some scheduled blocks of studio time and had a chance to see how it's working...

PS I possibly should have made it clearer? I meant Life Drawing group!

Without wanting to be awkward, I've actually found the opposite - one single list is perfect for me (so far!)

The thing is, I work odd hours on about 5 different careers (journalist, badminton coach, stand up comic, creative writer and writing tutor), so for me, it allows me to put some 'life' into the work-life balance, but without guilt, because those other things (knitting, crochet, books to read) are on the list because they matter, but also without then just giving up on the rest of the day, or next few hours, as a lost cause to work.

I'm still only 3 days in, but on 2 of those days, the previous one had been tough and overly busy, and I could have self-justified doing very little, but in the time off 'work', I actually did some of the 'life' things I want to, and always mean to, and then stopped, and got back to work.

I guess different things work for different people, and I've already been juggling numerous careers for years... just sometimes forgetting the me time, or ending wasting it because I feel I can't start this or that craft project, or book to read, or whatever else, in case I then don't want to get back to work. But actually, the lure of crossing a few more things off is working, and after a satisfactory time on one 'life' project, I get back to the list.

The proof of the system, for me, will be if I'm still using it this far through February, March, etc. I often find time management schemes that feel revolutionary and brilliant for a bit, then the novelty fades, and I'm back to square one.

A bonus, though, is not needing to shift every possible item from somewhere else. For example, when the Outlook reminders pop up, I either do them right away, if the time is right, or pop them on the last page to deal with at a better time.

I was going to suggest something that someone else already had the idea to do :)

Having a separate list for stuff like this, this is really cool and you can actually apply the idea of having your own working hours and a time to stop.

You can have a separate'work' list and then work predetermined hours on it and then another list for something else.

Maybe have a different coloured notebook for each.

Update on this idea:

Well, although I posted this on the 9th, I have only now got to my first scheduled studio day (it's been a busy week!). However, the difference I noticed was vast.

Whereas before Autofocus, if I'd been away from the studio for a while, I'd have spent all morning flailing around achieving very little. Today I read through my studio list completely (it was onto the 5th page when I started) then went back to the first page. I did some, or all, of whatever stood out for me and added more to the last page as things occurred to me during my morning session. I got a wide range of things done, from sorting my waste paper bins (recycling/shredding), looking through a book on 20th century American drawings I'd bought recently, thinking time, starting a colour sketchbook, doing a number of drawings, reading the info sheet for a course I'm booked on, etc., etc.

So I got a range of chores, admin and creative tasks done and despite a few interruptions I felt energised and happy to be back in the studio. I did feel slightly like I ran out of time as I wanted to do more before I stopped for lunch but I had to go out this afternoon so needed to stop on time. However, I'm back in the studio tomorrow and I even managed to take a sketchbook with me and draw while I was out (a very rare occurrence for me previously!)

I'm not for one minute saying that anything I produced was of any quality whatsoever but it has got me started and kept me motivated as well as wanting more, in a way that I've not felt before.

Long may it continue!!!! Thanks Mark...

I'm working on a few writing projects at once and I have been breaking each project into small tasks and entering the tasks on my lists. The tasks are deliberately open-ended -- if I'm working on a love scene in a story I might just say "work on love scene." Then when I see that item on my list I''ll work on it for however long I like, then cross it off and rewrite it at the end. Doing this I've been able to move forward with one story and also to reignite my interest in a story that had been lying dormant for awhile.