How do you support your creativity within your business? You may run a business that has creativity at the core of its services, like a graphic design studio. Or maybe you’re a naturally creative person and that runs all the way through your business.
You want to run your business well but the idea of having it organised concerns you. What if that restrains your creativity in some way? And when someone mentions structure, procedures or processes, your eyes start to glaze over.
I’m that slightly odd combination of creative and organised. A keen photographer and writer, my brain is always on the lookout for ways to improve how I work. The key is to ensure that your business is set up in a way that supports your creativity, and allows it to florish.
The many ways to support your creativity
1. Your work space
As creatives we can have a lot of ideas on the go. This can mean our work space, whether our desk or our online space, can be chaotic. Documents half-finished, a pile of post it notes and a stack of ideas on pieces of paper.
You don’t need a super tidy work space that is picture perfect to be organised but you do need a space, both physical and online, where your ideas can flow and you aren’t distracted by the clutter.
If you’re constantly searching for that post it note or document then it’s time for a tidy up.
Tip: Put on your favourite tunes and take 30 minutes to tidy up your desk or your online filing system.
2. Keep your goals within reach
We all know goals are important but that doesn’t mean we’ve taken the time to write them out, let alone checked our progress against them. Putting your goals down on paper is a great way to reconnect with what you want to achieve with your creative business.
Keep those goals front and centre. Reading them regularly will help keep you on track with the key projects you want to complete and are a great reference point for making decisions.
As the saying goes . . . if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.
Tip: Write, or print out, your goals and put them in a place where you’ll read them every morning. Colour them in or surround them with inspiring photos. Who said goals need to be boring?
3. Connect your to-do list to your goals
Our to-do lists keep us on track but they can very quickly get out of hand and become an unruly monster as there is so much that you want to do!
Whether it’s a written list, or stored in an app like Asana, make sure your to-do list relates back to your goals. That might sound simple but I guarantee if you look at your to-do list right now there would be plenty of items that have little to do with your goals.
Don’t fall into the busy trap, where you’re constantly rushed but your goals always feel out of reach.
Tip: Write out your to-do list for next week. Double-check that the actions relate back to your goals. Give your creativity space to breathe by keeping that list short.
4. Time blocking to manage your capacity
Do you ever get to the end of the day and find that you haven’t done the very thing that you meant to?
It’s all too easy to get distracted by small things and never get onto your important tasks.
Blocking out time in your calendar can solve this.
You choose the main areas that you want to focus on for your business e.g. content creation, marketing, client work, then add blocks into your calendar. I use Google Calendar to colour code my time slots, partly because I love colour and partly because I can quickly see if I have too much time on one area and not enough on another.
You don’t need to do this every week, just when you’re planning out a new phase of work so you can ensure your goals have space to happen.
Tip: Write out the main areas of your business. Estimate how much time per week you want to spend on each area. Allocate time blocks in your calendar to those areas. How does that look? Full of space or too crammed?
5. Batching
Switching from one task to another requires our brains to readjust. Would you believe it can take up to 20 minutes for humans to be fully focused after we’ve been interrupted?!
Batching similar tasks together can save a lot of time. You can write a number of blog posts in one seating or edit a number of photos in one block.
It’s like when I used to do the ironing (I do NOT like ironing!). It took much less time to do the ironing all in one go while I was watching a good series than having to get out the ironing board and iron out each day to do one shirt.
Tip: Identity any similar tasks that you do and experiment with batching them together.
6. Anything you repeat can be streamlined
This is a mantra for me as I’m a constant improver who is always looking to work in a smarter, simpler way.
I keep an eye on the tasks I do on a regular basis and create a checklist for them (for those from the corporate world you may have heard these referred to as Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs). My checklists are very simple and written in a way that one of my young nieces could understand. The lists serve two purposes; they are a helpful reminder for tasks that I don’t do every week and they are the basis for outsourcing in the future.
Tip: As you go through your week keep a list of tasks that you do often. Are there any obvious tasks that could be streamlined? Can you create a preset in Lightroom? Can you create a template for your blog posts?
7. Plan to save time
Planning saves time. I see this with my clients; when they put thought into what they’re creating in advance the actions take much less time.
When I plan out my social media and blog posts in advance it’s so much quicker to do the writing as I know exactly what I want to do.
Tip: Take 30 minutes and plan out one part your work for next week.
Bringing some organisation into your business won’t stifle your ideas. It will support your creativity. It’s important to ensure that any systems or workflows that you use are tailored to the way that you work, that way you’ll see how useful they can be rather than feeling constrained by them.
If you’re ready to organise your business in a way that supports your creativity, then book in a free call with me. We’ll talk over what you need and how I can support you.
