The Greatest Time Management Tool ever & it’s free!

MP14: The greatest (& free) Time management tool ever + Marysia's weekly tracking [ 17:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I LOVE MY BELLY MORE THAN ANYTHING That’s what I have learnt this week using this management tool, cooking and eating is what I do most after sleeping (and some days that order sadly gets switched round).  This is the weekly Love Your Creativity podcast,  the podcast goes into more detail but I know myself sometimes it’s great just to read the highlights, time management and all that 😉 so the main points are below

For the last 5 days I have finally got around to using a time management tool that just involves a pen and paper (or a note on your smart phone). I have known about this for years but have never actually got around to doing it. Now that I have, I can report back that when I say ‘I have no time, I am always rushing around’ I know exactly where my time is spent. In my case I spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and eating. In fact I have spent over the last 5 days as much time cooking and eating (yes as stated I love food and my belly) as I looking at my emails, sending CV’s out and organising the business of my creativity.  I have also spent 3 times more time in organising the business of creativity than on the actual practice of my craft.

So how do you do this? Well you could build a spreadsheet but that is way too anal and focused for me. I just grabbed an old A4 page a day diary and scribbled in old fashion pen what I did during the day. So I wrote the time I woke up, how long I hit the snooze button for, how long it took me to sort out breakfast and morning coffee, feeding the cat. During the day as I changed activities from getting on a tube to cooking again, to travel and time spent on Twitter I just jotted down the time.
Was it perfect? No. However at the end of each day I added it up into the following  rough categories and then after 5 days totalled the lot
Travelling
Work on my craft
Getting ready to go out
Cooking/eating
Faffing
Cleaning/feeding cat etc
Emails.CVs out. Printing scripts,
ebay, twitter,
Running
The snooze button
Blog/podcast time
Sleep
Actual time spent on looking at scripts
Rehearsals and time actually in auditions
Phone Calls.

I suggest you try this for 2 weeks, I hate the idea of it but just in 5 days I am already seeing huge anomalies on where I think I spend my time and where I waste time. The snooze button and I have a committed 3 hour relationship over the last 5 days, far more than I spent practising my instruments or my voice outside of singing rehearsals, or indeed on working on text and scripts.
Let me know what you learn.

I hope doing it for a further 9 days will show I am learning to use my precious time better. I have been using my 13.5 hours travel time well, but I am now getting super organised about taking work and scripts etc to read on the tube. I remember Clive Rowe, the fabulous West End star saying to me that he used to sit and go round and round the Circle line to learn a script as there were no distractions, he couldn’t get on the phone or on email etc. So rather than getting upset about your time schedule, see where you can make small positive incremental changes.

AiTunes rating would really help other people find the podcast so if you have a moment I would really appreciate it
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/love-your-creativity-podcast/id633181477

Tracking Your Creative Progress

Here we also look at the  weekly tracking where I encourage you to do an end of week think back on what has been done, produced, worked on, booked and paid for creatively. (I don’t mean you are doing ‘creative accounting”!)  Whether you are a full time painter or a 40 hours a week office administrator who sings on the side, this is to encourage you to keep creating and make the world a better place, one song, poem, piece of art at a time.

I also have written a mini tracking tune for you to sing along to while you track.Time To Track by Marysia Trembecka
Plus I did a Podcast in detail on tracking and its advantages.

The following is what we need to track each week as a look back in brief, full explanations are in the podcast on Tracking

How many CV’s and emails did you send out for creative work?
How many creative jobs did you actually do, whether 8 shows a week, a gallery opening or a song in a children hospice?
How many auditions and meetings for creative projects?
How many classes and workshops did you do?
How much practise done that week, how much each day?
How much money made through your creative pursuits?
What marketing of your creative output did you do and what revenue generation plans put in place?
Did you learn or see anything new or worth exploring creatively?

If it is zero then don’t feel guilty, just look at the coming week and endeavour to do better. Each week track these statistics and review the same day every week.
Love Your Creativity.com is dedicated to all creatives trying to make great work and make a living from it.

Other posts you might want to read

Blog on 9 fun ways to come up with a great title for your show or event

A Morning Routine with Seven Ways to feel better, more beautiful and strong
Podcast on being strong and wrong
How to find the Katniss Everdeen inside of you

Podcast on 7 life lessons from Sookie Stackhouse

<p>Image courtesy of Pakorn / <a href=”http://www.freedigitalphotos.net” target=”_blank”>FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

About Marysia and Love Your Creativity
I blog at least three times a week on creativity and techniques to get your art on.
Whether you are a musician, an actor or a choreographer I endeavour to make https://loveyourcreativity.com is a place to come for inspiration and motivation.

I also podcast interviews and this weekly newsletter via podcast with a 13 minute task.
Go to my iTunes Channel

The dance music I use Londontown, is a track I wrote years ago and Andrew Hyde and I are currently working on 3 remixes of it. We will be releasing it very soon as a dance track, dub step mix and bar mix.  I figured if I was going to podcast I may as well use my own tune! The other bits of music are me, my inspiration and whatever instrument is lying around!!.

Just go the website for the blog and you can subscribe there via your email if you dont want to miss a post. Equally please subscribe to the iTunes Channel to get the new podcasts without any more effort on your part
If you like the podcast a rating on iTunes would really help.

Also Stitcher Radio http://stitcher.com/s?fid=33657&refid=stpr
&lt;div&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post 25 of Dream, create and make money in the arts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;This is a &lt;a href=”https://loveyourcreativity.com/Topics/series-on-becoming-a-successful-creative/”&gt;series&lt;/a&gt; of blogs for you on how to dream up, build, market and sell a creative event, gig, festival, book launch, cabaret night, exhibition of rude plastic cupcakes or whatever creatively inspires you. It is time to create and put on that play about your family, a series of drawings about hedgehogs, the album you have talked about making or the short film you always wanted to write and make. You can read the series in order &lt;a href=”https://loveyourcreativity.com/2013/05/03/how-to-be-successful-dream-create-make-money-in-the-arts-1/”&gt;Part One&lt;/a&gt; or just pick and choose a topic that interests you.&lt;/div&gt;