Time Management for Creatives || 5 Simple Steps

1. SOAR Introduction: Hey, I'm Lord Leven. I'm a teacher here. It's skill share, and I'm so excited to share with you my new time management course for artists and creatives. In this course, I walk you through a five step time management system to help you, to find time that you didn't know you had to put towards the work that matters to you. I want to help you to breathe life into that project, that idea that's been on your heart for maybe too long. And it's just not seeing the time. And space really needs to grow and turn into whatever it's meant to become. What is that for you? Maybe you'd like to write a book or even wanted to write a screenplay. Or or maybe you just like the extra time to invest in building your creative business. Or maybe you're trying to launch an entrepreneurial venture. Maybe you would like to produce a film. Whatever it is, I found that none of us really feel like we have the time it takes to really tackle a big project. I'm an actress. I've had the privilege of working on films shot in my home province of Alberta, Canada, to the coast of British Columbia, the beautiful mountains of Colorado. I've even worked in the palace in Croatia, Europe, which was pretty cool, still getting out a bit about that one. I've also written, produced and starred in a short film that was inspired by the time I spent as a caregiver to my grandma when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. So, as you can see, I'm doing what I love. I'm living the dream, but I gotta be honest with you. This only really happens in the nooks and crannies of my life. I'm not a full time actor filmmaker. I know what it's like to have to try and balance two or even three jobs, with also trying to go to classes and and travel for auditions and practice my craft. Not to mention the time that I want to spend with my family, my friends, and doing a little the hobby things on the side, like playing some music and riding my horses. So if there's one thing that I've had to learn over the years, it is how to manage my time, and none of us feel like we have enough time. But the truth is that every single one of us has the exact same 24 hour day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Which means that you and I, my friend, we have the same chunk of time to work with as the very most successful artists, athletes, entrepreneurs in history. They weren't given extra hours in a day. They just manage it a little differently and look what they're able to do with it. So in this course, I want to help you to really conduct an honest assessment of your life of your priorities and then where your time is actually being spent, I want to help you to clear away some of the clutter that may actually holding you back from fully investing in the work that matters and will create a simple yet powerful time management system that you can easily customize weekly to suit your life. Listen, my friend, if you are waiting for some day to roll around where you finally have the time and money that you need to really make that project on your heart reality, it may never see the light of day. I am confident that you do have the time. It takes right now to make this year your best year yet. And I'd love to help you find. I invite you to join my class today. And let's tackle this thing together. I'll see you inside. 2. The #1 Killer of Our Dreams: one of life's screens. Tragedies is to have an idea Project Dream. That thing on your heart that's waiting to be it only by U cannot be released a gift so rare only you can share entrusted into your loving care. But it never sees the light of day without the space to flourish and grow. It's simply withers away in the depths of your heart. It will rest in peace for never receives. The time needs to ever be more than just a dream, Les Brown says. The graveyard is the richest place on earth because it is here that you'll find all the hopes and dreams were never fulfilled. The books that were never written the songs over never saw the inventions that were never shared. Cures were never discovered. What do you think is the number one reason that most of us will die with our dreams? Still, could it be that we lack opportunity, resources, time, money? Well, that couldn't be the case because many of the greatest artists, athletes, entrepreneurs in history came from a place of complete poverty. Could it simply be fear that's holding us back? Well, not according to Darren or lose the publisher of Success magazine. He's interviewed many of the ones with successful achievers, and, he argues, the number one killer of our dreams is not actually fear. Distractions say most of us fully intended in the life we dream of the problem and the weather. We're not paralyzed by fear, much waiting for the sun to shine before we try to fly for the clouds to disappear. Once the clouds passed by, Ben will learn to fly. Once we get out of school, will finally have time. Your finances, expense, then have to be after you get out of debt. Once the women's babies, once we get past the baby stage, then we'll finally sore. When you get into shape, we get that place. We finally retired will have the time it takes. Tell me you can see it now. These clouds just a trap to give you from trying. You will never be ready. The weapon will have to be perfect for flying stuff, waiting to the natural back together. When you give your day, take to scythe clouds. Open your eyes. Up there, you'll discover the sun always shines, regardless of weather. 3. Welcome + Setup: All right, my friend, I'm so glad to see that you have decided to join me on this journey. I am so excited. I can't wait to help you to make some more time in your life for that thing on your heart, to really grow and flourish and turn in whatever it's meant to become just before we get started, I have put together some resources for him to help you along this journey. I recommend that you go and download them now. And if you have access to a printer, it will be really helpful for you if you can also print them right now as well. Now, a few more things that you might want to have for this class are a pen or pencil colored pencil crowns a ruler, and you may want to have some sticky notes. If you don't have access to all this, it's really not a big deal. Even still, jump into this course and I'll show you some other things do instead. But those early recommended resources Hey, thank you for trusting me to lead you through this process. The concepts that I'm about to share with you have made a world of difference in my own life, so I can't wait to see how this can help you. If you're ready to get started, let's dive in. 4. Roadblocks to the Creative Process: a successful screenwriter, was once asked in the interview. How do you write a screenplay? She replied. Well, first, I start by cleaning out my refrigerator. Now this honest response exposes two major roadblocks to any creative in our process. And that is number one. There are always other tasks that are going Teoh demand our attention. And so it's very easy for us to procrastinate on the work that really matters while still feeling like we're being productive because we're staying busy all the time. Number two, we don't respect ourselves or our work near enough. I mean, think about it. If your boss was standing over you at your job and you just got up from your desk and grab your phone and started scrolling through social media, what would your boss dio well, probably have a talk. If this behavior continues, you might get fired. And if you decided, just sleep in extra couple hours in the morning because you're just not feeling like starting work. What would happen? You'd probably lose your job. But the problems as creatives were not nearly, um, as strict with ourselves. Maybe our boss would be so in this video. I'm gonna help you. Just conduct a very honest assessment of your situation so you can start to step into that being your own boss role and really take back some time and energy to focus on the work that really matters. 5. *STEP #1* Honest Assessment!: What I want you to do is if you have some sticky notes, write down all the different activities that you would like to make time for in any given week if you don't have sticky note, but you can just write it all on a blank paper or just flip over the notes app in your phone and do this. But if you have sticky notes, you can write each activity on a different note. That's gonna make it really easy for us to organize these in the next step. 6. Activity Tracking: When you're done with that, I want you to write on the left side of that sticky note somewhere or the left side of back to the right. The number of times that you honestly do these activities each week be honest to yourself. There's always a number that we'd like to put on that paper. But really be honest with the number of times that you actually do that activity in a given week. Now, looking at those sticky notes that you wrote all your activities down on on the left on the left side, your left side is my right side, the left side of those sticky notes. You have the number of times that you honestly do these activities each week. Now, on the right side, I want you to put down the number of times that you're gonna aim to do these activities so you might find that some maybe you're doing more than you need to. Maybe you don't need to be cooking food six days a week. Maybe you could do your food prep on one day of the week. Just his idea and that. How many times do you actually want to fit in your creative time. So right on the right side of those sticky notes, the number of times it's your goal to fit those activities in each week. 7. Exploring Resistance: a person's character is defined by their actions, not by their intentions. And let me show you what I mean. I, for example, I have a friend who has an uncle who is always the first to offer to help with anything. When they were moving, he was the first to say, Oh, yeah, I'll be there. I'll help you move. No problem. But he never showed up. Then they were doing some renovations on their house and, well, he was pretty good at that kind of stuff. So they mentioned it to him and he says, Oh, yeah, I definitely come help. Yeah, I do. I do that stuff all the time. I'll I'll come help you with those rhinos. But he just never made time for it. And they finally did it themselves. Then they had some problems with their their trailer. And this time they thought, Well, we're not going to mention this to him because we know he's not gonna help anyway. So they went and put a bunch of money into their camper trailer because they couldn't figure out how to fix it. And then their uncle came, heard what they did and was almost offended, said. Oh my God, why did you put all that money that I could have done that with my eyes closed? Well, of course, he wouldn't have. So that's an example of how we tend to see ourselves for our intentions, and we see other people for their actions. So I'm sure her uncle thinks he's a wonderful guy. He's so helpful. He's so servant hearted as creatives. I think that we also have a lot of intentions because we're dreamers, because we have a lot of things we want to do and things we want to create, and so often we have these great intentions. But I think we need to challenge ourselves to to look at ourselves for our actions. And what are we actually doing? What are we actually contributing to this world? And maybe if we were to see other people for their intentions and imagine what they intend to be, we might have a little more compassion for other people. So why is it that we can't move from intention toe action while there's this? There's there's many reasons, but there's this one thing called resistance, and if you haven't read the book, the War of Art By Stephen Press Field. Ah, highly recommend it, and it goes into a lot more depth and detail on this. But but understand resistance. It's essentially the thing that that prevents your intentions from being translated toe actions. So, for example, you might have intended Teoh. Come home after your 9 to 5 job and put some time into your project that's been on your heart. But your intentions just never happened cause you get home and open social media. And then next thing you know, you're binging on YouTube and you're stuck in a funny cat video. And, oh, the Netflix comes on. You know, there's always excuses or you might be type a personality and you've got to be busy doing work all the time. Um, I tend to come home and end up cleaning. That's my default is when I should be doing my creative work. I'll often end up cleaning or making food or eating food, so I want to encourage you to think about what kind of activities you default to, to kind of avoid the work that needs to be done Now. You might not even know you're doing this because especially if you're doing another job like like cleaning or making food. You feel like it's an important thing to Dio, which it is, But it can still be a default that give me something that you default to to avoid the work that really needs to be done. So I just pay attention to that next time you I mean today. Tomorrow, next time you intend to work on your creative work, what kind of comes up in your mind? What are you tempted to do instead of that? Become aware of your default? 8. Two Types of Goals: If you want to soar towards your destination, you've got a pilot. Your plane. So in step number two, we're gonna talk about five piece to pilot a plane. I'm gonna help you get really clear on the actions that you really need to prioritize in order to get you off the ground and soaring towards your destination. Now, I want you to think about your big destination or maybe your top three big destinations that you want to get to this year, but certainly not 10 destinations. All right, this is a big problem is that we feel like we can't fit everything in. But the truth is, you're not supposed to fit everything in. Even the greatest, most successful entrepreneurs don't fit everything in, Okay, They do one or two or three big things in a year. So you got a narrow down those schools if they're so, if you're trying to learn a new instrument, you're trying to learn a new language or trying to record that album. You're trying to lose weight. You're trying to all these things. No wonder you're overwhelmed, right? So I want you to just pick three big destinations. And here in the next video. I'm gonna help you to put all of your your activities that we we wrote down on sticky notes in the previous step. I will help you to categorize those into the five peas to get your plane off the ground. So I've always been a big goal center. I would have huge New Year's resolutions every year, and at the end of every year, I would constantly find myself so discouraged because every big goal that I ever set for myself it was just still sitting on a shelf, and I never actually achieved anything on. And finally I had this epiphany that ghouls may have the power to get you in the plane, but it's your patterns that are actually get that plane off the ground. So they're actually a couple different types of goals, and one are the achievement goals. And those are the goals that get hyped up like crazy. Those are the big destinations that we want to get Teoh the big achievements we want to make. But then there are the habit goals and the habit. Goals are what's gonna create the patterns that actually have the power to get that plane off the ground. So, for example, you might have a big achievement goal of losing £50 by the end of the year. But your one of your habit goals for that achievement goal might be, ah, minimum of 15 minutes a day. Physical activity every single day. Maybe you're a musician and your big goal is to record an album by the end of the year. So that is that's a great goal. But how do you get there? Well, you gotta build the habits that are actually move you forward, so your habit goal for that might be a minimum of 15 minutes a day of creative time, writing, music, playing around some new stuff. Andi just getting your work together now. The reason I say a minimum 15 minutes a day is because we have this thing in our mind that we need Teoh allocate huge amounts of time and take these quantum leaps to success if we're going to do anything big with our lives. But that's actually not true. So I'm not saying that you only spend 15 minutes a day of whatever it is you're working towards, but that 15 minute minimum is something that you just. There's no reason for you ever skip. You know, if you're coming home from your day job and it's been a late night and you gotta get early in the morning, it's so easy to say I don't need exercise today or I don't need to do my creative time today or whatever it is that your habit goal is. But when you have to do just 15 minutes a day, there's no reason ever skipped that habit. And so see habits are not built by, you know, the amount of time that you spend on an action in one day, but by how consistently you come back to that action day after day after day. So this is not a goal setting class. However, I think it's necessary to talk about that because it's really gonna help you get clear about how to structure your time, which is what we're going to go into right now. 9. *STEP #2* The 5-P's to Pilot a Plane!: Now we're going to go into the five peas to pilot a plane. I want you to take all those sticky notes that you have filled out in the previous step, and I'd like you to post them up under each of these peace to categorize them. Now, as we go through these five peas, you might have some different ideas come up. Feel free to put another sticking out there, or you can just actually right down all of your activities into these particular categories . All right, Number one is petty tasks. Now. Petty tasks are you know how that relates toe, You know, someone flying a plane or maybe the tasks like, oh, changing the puke bags or wiping down the windows or sanitizing the seats All right. Like, those are important things, but they're not the things that are actually going to get your plane off the ground. Right? So in our own lives, that might apply to checking emails, washing dishes, doing laundry, anything that you know are obviously they need to be done brushing your teeth, you know, important stuff, but kind of petty, like not that kind of stuff is really gonna move. You forward. The next P is pleasure tasks. Now these air things, it's like fueling your plane, all right. You need fuel in the plane if it's ever going to take off your pleasure. Tasks are things that fuel you as an artist or a creator, not things like scrolling through social media are binging on YouTube, but things like whatever brings your heart alive for me might be riding my horses. I love going out riding music. You know, I'm not a professional musician, but I love writing. I love singing and song writing. And so that's something that really fires me up as a creator is to take time to do those creative things. So you need to make sure you take time to do your pleasure test, cause that really fuels your engine and helps to keep you motivated and alive. As you work towards the things in the destinations, you want to go personal development. Now, this is like pilot training, all right, this is like once you get the plane in the air, you gotta know how toe land, Right? So it's important Teoh to train yourself in whatever it is that you're working on. So that might be podcasts or books or some courses that you're taking scheduling and that personal development time is crucial priorities. Now for a plane, this might be motor maintenance. You know, the things that are going to keep the plane from flying through the air and just suddenly coming, crashing down these air like these are crucial, these air life saving things. So these are the things that take precedence in your life. For me, it's my family. It's my friends, particularly my closest, my core group. And they're my priorities. You know, if if one of them is suddenly going through a break up or calls me on the phone crying and needs a friend to go hang out, These are the people that I would drop everything for to go see. My horses are my priorities. Funny horses used to be pleasure until I owned my own. And now I realize I consider them priorities because they rely on me productive tasks. These are your runway activities, all right? These are the things that are going to get your plane off the ground, these air, the activities that are actually going to move your life forward. And so these are the things that we're going to schedule into your calendar first. 10. *STEP #3* Clear the Runway!: some regard discipline as a chore for me. It's a sort of order that sets me free to fly. This is step number three and it is the hardest step. But it is going to set you free, so don't you dare skip it. This is where we get to make space for the things that really matter in your life. So here's the thing. We do have limited time. We have 24 hours a day, but everyone has the same chunk of time to work with. So it's a matter of what we put in there. And I know you know this, but we need to focus on the things that are gonna move you forward that are gonna move you forward and clear up more time in your life for the other things. So something that I think a lot of creative struggle with is we feel like we need to do this quantum leap to success. We need to come up with something big and gigantic, Alon magical in order to propel us to success. But the truth is that you're flying a plane here, right? Planes don't leap into the air. Planes have a very slow, consistent incline. So what we need to focus you on is the runway activities, the things that are going to move you forward and and and get that plane off the ground. And here's the thing. It's tempting to think all if I only have 30 minutes a day to work on my creative project, I'm never gonna get it anywhere. But that's actually not true. Even 30 minutes a day really adds up. If you do it consistently. 30 minutes a day, 365 days a year at the end of the year adds up to being 23 full eight hour work days that you spent on that project that you didn't think you had time for. Now this also goes in the opposite direction, which is why it's so important that you choose which activities you are going to quit in your life because they're taking up those 30 minute chunks that you really need that you could be putting towards the things that are gonna move you forward So 30 minutes a day, I confess my weakness is spending too much time in bed after my alarm goes, and sometimes that snooze button gets hit a few times. So just 30 minutes a day of laying in my bed doing nothing, waiting to kind of get up and start the day leads up to 23 full eight hour work days that I have laid in bed doing nothing at the end of the year. So this is why these activities air so important that you choose what you're gonna add into your life, even if it's just 30 minutes a day and what you're going to eliminate from your life. That's taking up those chunks that you could be putting towards other things. So I have a downloadable for you called Clear the Runway, and this is where we're going to help you clear your space to actually be able to do the runway activities that we mentioned in the previous video, where we talked about five peas. Now consider the fact that even good activities can be harmful if they're used at the wrong time. For example, I wanna learn violin. I used to play when I was little, but I know that if I started learning violin now, it's not my priority. It's not one of my top three big destinations that I want to get to this year. So learning violin, though it's a wonderful activity is not gonna be helpful for me now because it's taking away from the time that I could be spending in other things that are going to get my plane off the ground. So my violin is going to be pushed off to another year. So go ahead and download that downloadable. Now, take just a couple of minutes to fill those out. And then when you're done, I'd love for you to stop by the community tab. If you'd like to put your voice in there and just let us know what is one thing you're gonna remove from your life and then one thing you're going to replace it with. 11. *STEP #4* Craft Your Flight Plan!: If you want to know a person's true priorities, you just gotta look at their calendar. All right, In this video, I am going to share with you my absolute favorite tool to really eliminate overwhelmed and and get you more clear and focused on what really matters. Now, that sounds like a big promise, but I'm serious. Before I started using this tool. Oh, my goodness. I was constantly overwhelmed about all the things that I wanted to be doing that just weren't fitting into a given day on day when I was even had the time to focus on one activity, I felt guilty because of all the other activities that I felt like I should be doing that I wasn't doing so. This tool is going to change your life. That sounds anything like you. You're just gonna love this. So this is your personal flight plan. Go ahead and download the pdf, and we're going to use all of your activities from the previous video. We're gonna fit them in to this white plan. 12. Three Tips to Get Started: to craft your flight plan. There are a few things you will ideally need. I like to use color pencils. What kinda gives me a little variety and helps me to color codes and things and also a ruler. Now, you don't necessarily need these things. You could also just use a pencil or a pen. So those are the things we're gonna be using for this session to start out you're gonna want put the date right up there. You're gonna want to choose your top three goals as they are related to what you want to get done by the end of this week. So you do this a couple different ways. You could use them all, put all three year goals towards one big gold ever sitting, or you could do kind of one for each. I also like to choose one day of the week to leave relatively unscheduled. I'd like to choose Sunday, and then we're going to schedule all the activities that you want to fit in to a given week when possible. It's a great idea to try and build some routine into your days. So to do the same thing at the same time every day. It kind of helps make it easier for you in the long run, you kind of find the automatically get out of bed and you start doing this thing or you finish lunch and you know it's time to do this thing. So if you work a 9 to 5 job and your hours are very, very reliable every day that this actually works really well to build a routine around that , obviously for a lot of us creatives we worked some odd jobs that are kind of our schedules are all over the place, so it's a little harder to do that. But you can still kind of schedule the same things in the same kind of order in the day. And we'll go through that. You kind of see what works best for you. I want to encourage you to leave about 30 minutes between each activity, and it sounds like a lot of time to leave between activities. But when I first started, you know, trying to organize my schedule this way, I found that I I e just jump straight from one activity to the next on my schedule. But there was just no way that I could organize myself to get ready from what activities the next in that time, and I'd find myself falling so far behind, and it was just really discouraging. So try to leave 30 minutes between each activity, at least in the beginning until you get used to scheduling your life like this. 13. Let's Craft YOUR Flight Plan! (DEMO): I get my schedule for my day job every single Friday. So Friday is a day that I go through and I schedule my upcoming week. Also at this point, want to schedule in any appointments that you've made in the previous week? Doctor's appointments or auditions? In my case, I'll sometimes have an audition, although more often than not, they come up last minute, so it totally messes with my schedule. But you can schedule in any appointments you have, so we'll say we have an audition from 1 to 1 30. After you get any appointment scheduled in, you're gonna want to schedule your productive work. These are the activities that are are the runway activities the things that are moving your your project forward that are moving your your artist career. Whatever it is that you're working on these air, the activities are really moving. You forwards thes air. Things like creating, like working on that screenplay, like writing that novel like, um, practicing your work as an actor preparing for auditions. So this is what you want to schedule in next. So you have all of your appointments. You have all your day job, the very next thing you schedule into your calendar are your runway activities. So I'm going to challenge you to actually schedule these in first thing in the morning. Now, I was never a morning person, OK? I never got up more than just what I had to to get to my job. But the thing is that go to my job, I come home. I you know, all day I was motivated to start working my creative stuff, but I'd bring this stress from work home with me, and I'd be tired, and it would just be so much easier to do mindless tasks than it would actually create something. And I don't have going to bed at the end of the day and wondering, What did I do with my day? I I didn't do anything that I wanted to get done. And you just start to lose yourself. You know, when you are a creator and you're an artist and and you have all these ideas you want to work on and they don't happen, it actually is so overwhelming. And I'm sure you experienced it just kind of weighs down on your soul. So that is why it's so important to schedule these in a soon as you can in the morning. So what I like to dio and I'm gonna challenge you to do the same is to set your alarm earlier in the morning to fit in a 30 minute chunk or 60 minutes or a 90 minute chunk of your really ambitious of your creative work. The important thing is not how much time that you're putting in, but that you are consistently putting in time because it adds up. And I think you'll find it is not so bad getting up early when you build this habit of just getting to work on your work first. Before going to that job, you're gonna find you have more energy. Um, and you're more excited about life and you're gonna be a better employee. Agreed job. Just because you're putting this time into the things that matter to you as well, obviously as artists, we kind of wear two hats. You know, we have the creative side, but then we also have the CEO side of our business. And so I personally like to do the creative work in the morning and then, after getting home from my job. All typically schedule in of the more marketing aspect. I'd like to leave myself a little bit of time to get home for my job, maybe have a quick supper shower, get refreshed and then jump into an activity. Obviously, on the days he work. A little later, you consume house fitting all your work right in the beginning of the day There, before you can go to your job, you kind of to take off the artist hat and put on the CEO hat. Once you have your runway activities in there as well as your day job schedule, this is when I reach out to my friends and my family. This is where you fit in your priorities when a friend reaches up to me and wants to hang out, I've been talking with someone and wanted to get together with, um, I will not usually just spontaneously hang out unless it's a Sunday. Like I say, I try to leave my Sundays relatively unscheduled. So that's the day that I'm likely to just up and do something spontaneous with a friend. But other than that, I will just, you know, let my friend know Hey, this week is packed because it's already scheduled up pretty tight. But let's get in touch on Friday, which is when I get my work schedule and we will pick a time, see if we can find a time or our schedules meet up. So when I get my schedule on Friday after I've scheduled the appointments and my priorities might productive work on my runway activities, then I will get in touch with that friend and and find a spot in there that are schedules meet up so I'll typically schedule them two evenings or into the weekends. So even though Sunday is relatively unscheduled, that is what I'm gonna allow myself to schedule, um, time with friends or time with my family. Next, we want to schedule in your personal development. Now, if you are not always learning and growing your shrinking, it's just the way it is. Learning is such a powerful way, especially if you are kind of overwhelmed or you're just unmotivated. Learning is a powerful way to get you out of the rut, and it doesn't have to take much time when I'm driving to work. Soon as I get in the car, I turned on a podcast or an audio book on my way home from work. I also turn on a podcaster on audiobook during my 30 minute lunch break. I'd like to actually have a physical book with me that I can read while I'm eating my lunch . Next, I want you to schedule in your down time. Now, I know this may seem weird because a lot of us downtime is just, you know, whatever time we have free. But I want you to schedule in to be intentional about how you spend your downtime. This is where you schedule in your hobbies so that you don't default to just doing mindless things like social media and binging on Netflix. Okay, so my hobby is his horseback riding and music, and both of those take effort. But there's so enjoyable for me that they actually re energized me and refresh me. So I'm ready to dive back into work the next day. So I find that what I'm not scheduling them in my poor horses get so neglected because I just find more and more work that I want to keep working on. And I work myself until I go to bed and then I'm not sleeping because I'm thinking about work and then I get up in the exhaust ICS. I've been dreaming about work, and it's just a mad cycle. Another thing you may want to schedule is an artist date. I learned this from Julia Cameron, who wrote The Artist's Way, which is an incredible book. You should check it out on. One of the things that she highly recommends is every single week. Taking yourself on a date, taking your inner artist on a date. I try to go once a week. Teoh, my favorite little place. That's a beautiful lake. I like to pack a picnic and go out for a hike there. That's kind of my artist state. And then I'll also bring my creative journal. And I had a writing all all these ideas and stuff that come to me while I'm out just enjoying myself. Lastly, you want a schedule in your petty work. These are the things that are not really moving your life forward, all but need to get done food, prep, laundry, cleaning those kind of things. So I will only ever do these things, either In the evenings. But as you can see, my evenings get pretty packed. Eso usually save them for the weekends. Generally Sunday. On that day, where I'm not supposed be scheduling a lot, that is where most of my food prep is gonna go or my laundry and my cleaning. I also might get that done on a Saturday. As for emails and social media, usually checking into that either on my lunch break at work for a couple minutes or just before lunch at home kind of fit those in in. In between those spaces where nothing scheduled is usually wear my email checking and my social media come in so it doesn't get a lot of time. Which is good because you really don't need a lot of time on the thing with those petty jobs is they can go on forever. Eso Sometimes I feel like my life is falling apart during the week, when my house is a mess and my laundry's piling up. But at least it's not my creative work. Leading pushing aside right? At least it's not by runaway activities, at least those air getting done. So I don't mind kind of just trusting that on the weekend, I'm gonna have time to actually catch up on all the physical stuff in my life that looks like it's falling apart around me. What do you do for exercise? Obviously KF exercise. If getting in shape is one of your big top three goals, that might be what you want to do first thing in the morning before going to your job is getting that workout in. That's what I was doing for a while and oh my goodness, it was incredible. The energy I had for the whole day as much as it sucked to get out of bed and work out, it just became a habit. And it's something that got easier and easier because my day felt incomplete without it. Now, at this point now that exercises such a habit in my life, I'm not afraid of going, you know, weeks and forgetting about it. Eso What I usually do now is actually stick my exercising in just a few minutes between the time that I get home from my job and actually started my creative work or whatever I'm doing for my evening tasks, so that just really helps meteo re boost my energy before diving in to the rest of the work for the day. Okay, my friend, this may seem like a lot if you are feeling excited to tackle this, you know, go for it. And good luck and have fun. But I would actually really I prefer that you start by scheduling fewer things at first. So if you're gonna just start this week, just start by just scheduling in your your shifts at your job, whatever appointments you have and then scheduling in your creative work or your runway activities, and that's it. Feel free to start adding on and making a more intricate schedule as you get comfortable with this. 14. Helpful Tips to Prioritize Your Priorities: Let's quickly just revisit your priorities. Your priorities are called priorities because they are the priorities in your life, and sometimes they don't get all the time and attention. We want to give them some things. We just don't have time to spend every single evening with our friends and our family and our loved ones, and I don't know what that something. I want to work towards being able to do more in the future. But right now I found that when I do that, just not moving forward cause I don't have the time. What I do, though, is your priorities should be allowed to interrupt your schedule at any time. All right, if you're working away, you've got a plan for your life. You feel it on your heart to talk to a friend or to go talk to a co worker. Seems like she's struggling or to go for coffee with someone who just needs a friend. You know, let God interrupt your plans and let your family and your your close friends interrupt your plans. I don't mean anyone, just everyone, but if you have a few close friends who you really want to be there. You're always there supporting each other. They're the people who should be allowed to interrupt you when they're going through a break up. When they're having a crappy day when they just need someone to hang out with and talk with , Give yourself permission to just wipe your schedule for the afternoon and go spend that time with those people. Also, when you come home at the end of the day, if you're living with these people, if you have a family you're living with, um it's so tempting, I find to just come home and lock myself away and get focused on the work that I have to do at home. But you know what? Only takes a few minutes 15 minutes, 20 minutes to just, you know, take time to say hello. How is your day? Just kind of catch up and hear what's going on in their life. And after that point, you know you can go and lock yourself away and focus on your work. But just making those few minutes of connection goes such a long ways. It's not really the time you put in its what you put in the time when it comes to your priorities, 15. "What if I can't do everything?": now going. To be honest, this might look like I have my entire life under control, that there are many things that I want to be doing that I just don't have time to be doing . For example, I love music. I love writing music. Um, I also love riding, so because I live in Alberta and we get winter six months of the year, that's when I kind of like the horses go aside and for six months of the year, I don't ride, and that's what I'm more focused on my music. Where is in the summer? My music. It's sadly neglected, but I spent a lot more time with the horses, so you can't always do everything at once. Give yourself permission to not be great at everything, right? You kind of gotta pick something to specialize in. And for me, it's acting and story telling and making films, and that's what I want to focus on. So that's where I put the majority of my time. But my life without horses or without music, would be so sad and so difficult to to find that inspiration every day. So it is important to give yourself time for for your hobbies and the things that you enjoy , but not to feel like. You have to be great at it at this time of your life. There's always gonna be more time in the future where you can kind of shift your focus and focus more on different activities. 16. *STEP #5* Distraction Defense!: What do you think? The number one reason is that most people don't ever live the life that they dream of. But you say fear. Okay, that's what I said. First of all, um, but Darren Hardy, who is the publisher of Success magazine, interviewed hundreds of successful artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, he says The number one reason is actually distractions. We are bombarded by distractions more than any other time in history. Half of distractions come from outside the outside world, and then half come from actually inside our heads. Study has shown the average person takes about 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get refocused after they've been distracted. Now the problem is with phones and technology. The average person who's sitting in an office surrounded by these things actually get distracted every 40 seconds crazy. Right now, those are the outside distractions. But inside our brains, if we haven't been distracted by something, the average person feels the need to check in to social media or two emails and notifications every 15 minutes. Smartphones are a wonderful tool. They are Oh my goodness, we're using them for so much. I'm using them from my audio right now. we use them for checking emails, we use them to tune into the world. They're incredible for building a business and for getting our creative work out there. But they don't come with a manual on how to use them to avoid being consumed by them. Most people will confess that the very first thing they do in the morning before even getting out of bed is to tune into social media or the news or their emails there in their phone that also the last thing that most people do at night. After tucking into bed, they're on their phone. People even have the urge to pick up their phone. Tell me you've done this because I have way. Pick up your phone and look at it even when there's nothing there and we know there's no notifications there. We still have to pick it up and look at it. I'm gonna confess I have even taken my phone to the bathroom with me and strolled through social media while I'm doing my business. That's embarrassing. That's a problem. Our constant need to check in is eliminating our ability to show up. We cannot show up in the world you cannot do the work that you were born to do when you're too busy checking in. So I'm going to share with you four basic defense mechanisms that you can use to defend yourself against distraction. Speaking of distractions were about to get rained out, so we're moving this party indoors. 17. Four Ways to Guard Your Time: All right. Welcome to my office in here. It's 21 degrees sunny, 0% chance of rain. Eso as I accidentally demonstrated, there are some distractions that you just don't really have any control over. But in this video, I'm going to share with you four methods, tools, mechanisms, ways of structuring your life to really defend against distractions. So number one don't film outside. You know, it was a risk I was willing to take. It was a gorgeous day. Number one going to flight mode. All right, if you're flying, you're piloting your plane, right When you're doing those runway activities that are getting your plane off the ground , I want you to actually think about being in the cockpit of your own plane. You're gonna You're gonna your to fly this thing, right? So what do you do when? When you're sitting in a plane, What do you do with do you do with this? This device here, you put it on airplane mode, right? That's what I want you to do when you are doing your runway activities. You're in the cockpit of your plane. I want you to turn the sucker on airplane mode. you don't need any notifications, any emails and calls. Nothing is more important than this focus session that you are in. So do that for however long you're gonna make your flight. All right, You could do 30 minute chunks that you do 60 minute chunks, 90 minutes. But I recommend you don't actually go over 90 minutes because studies have shown that your productivity levels actually start going down after 90 minutes. Your brain can't mentally focus on one solid thing for more than 90 minutes at a time without getting distracted and losing its ability to be fully present. So that brings me to point number two. Land the plane. All right, so in between flights, you need to land the plane and the fuel up because your plane is not gonna keep flying without gas. Right, So you need to land your plane between flights. This plane has a really small gas tank, obviously, because it can only go about 90 minutes before you want to land it and fill up. And remember, we talked about the fuel activities being like the pleasure activities. So things like, you know, for me when I land the plane, I will usually get up. I will go out for a walk in the sunshine. Um, I might have a snack. I might make myself a cup of tea. Um, and maybe do some stretches. You want to do this for, um, 15 to 30 minutes is what I recommend. I do 30 minutes. And because I also at this point, you can turn your phone back off airplane mode and see if any important emails have come in many important notifications again, this is not a time to scroll through social media. This is just a check. And make sure you know that nothing is really demanding your attention right now. So that's what happens when you land the plane. At that point, you can get back in. You can do another flight session if you like. Number three is to schedule non negotiable activities. Now, this again goes along with your your runway activities. These are the things that are gonna get your plane off the ground, and I want you to make them non negotiable. So I don't want you to try make everything on negotiable. Okay, cause that's just setting yourself up for failure, But I want you to pick one activity this month that you want to do every single day. No matter what, you got that in mind something that's gonna move your life forward or move your creative, your creative business, your your career, your craft forward that might be writing that screenplay. You got a screenplay you want to write. I want you to do that every single day. It doesn't have to be 90 minute chunks. It can be a simple is a 15 minute chunk every single day. But I want to make sure I don't want to make sure that it's non negotiable. Number four Alternate physical and mental times. Now, this is a little more advanced. So if if you are looking at you know what we've covered so far and it seems like a lot, just ignore this last one. You can always add that in later, but this is really helpful. Teoh. Keep your brain and your body, you know, working at their peak capacity. So it's kind of like going to the gym and doing a full body workout. You know you can do some squats, and then while your lower body is resting, you can do some bench press and then we'll. Your upper body is resting. You can do another lower body workouts. You're actually working the whole time. But it's some. It's working different body parts, so you kind of feel like you're getting arrest. So that's kind of the same that I found with alternating physical and mental activities. Oh, it's changed things for me because I find that if I'm focusing, you know I can do a couple focused sessions in a row of mental stuff, but especially in the afternoon, comes around. I need to do something to switch something up, like I can't keep focusing mentally on writing, are doing something that after it takes a lot of thought. You know, I have to get out of my head and more into my heart for a little bit. So the afternoon is usually when I will schedule the time to work on an audition that's coming up, you know, to work on a script and to just get up and play, or, you know, to go out and work with the horses or whatever else physical that I need to do. It takes less mental capacity and I find that if I do that physical task. If I spent an hour working that audition, then I'm prepared to come back and maybe spend another focus session on that screenplay of mine. So you may want to give this a try again. Don't try to fit in right now. If the first stuff is already kind of feeling like a lot, save it for later. You can come back and add this in once you got the first things done there. 18. Three Steps to Put This Into Action: so to help you just get going here. I want to give you three action steps that you can take right now to start making these changes. If you work in a place where you're not totally on your own, you know if you have a roommate, if you live with your family, if you have an office where you do your creative work and it's kind of surrounded by other offices, and if there's people who are going to distract you, I want you to actually make a sign so that you know, when you are in your your the cockpit, your playing and your in airplane mode, I want you to also have a sign on your door that tells people, Hey, I'm busy right now and I made mine to have a time on it that I'm going to return. You could make a really, really simple sign, if you like, or you can have some fun with this, you know, get some fancy paper and make a sign that you can be proud to stick on the outside of your wall. Okay, Number two, I want you to turn off all unnecessary notifications. I see people who have their Twitter and instagram their Facebook, everything beeping up on their phone every few seconds. And then they've got emails, and then they got calls. Oh, my goodness, it's got to be completely overwhelming. So turn off those notifications. Anything that you don't need, turn it off. So if you have Facebook popping up when someone comments on the photo, you can fix up. Get rid of those notifications. All right, you go into settings on your phone or into Facebook and fix that so you don't get those notifications. The only notifications that I do get on my phone. Other than calls and text messages, I have a specific email address for my acting business. So that's where that's the address that my agent emails me when I have an audition coming up. For example, when I get an audition, it's often like the next day, so I have to actually clear my schedule right away. So that's a bit of an emergency that I need to respond to you right away. So I have it set to get notifications on my phone when I get an email at that address, but not at my other email addresses. So that's an idea. If you have, you know, important emails that might be coming in. Maybe you can actually have a separate email address. I want you to set check in time specific times in your calendar where you're actually gonna go check emails and you may want to new social media if that's also a part of your business . So for me, I like to check emails right before lunch time. So be about 11. 30 12 o'clock. So hopefully I've got a few focused sessions in before then. Then I can check emails and I look for the important emails and see if there's anything I need to respond. Teoh, I will delete everything That doesn't matter. Um, and we're all set aside to look at it later. Um, a really handy app that I like to use if you're an instagram er is. It's just called wind to post, and it can actually hook up to your instagram account to see the best time for you to post according to how many followers or online at a particular time of day. So I check that in the morning just to see if it aligns with my schedule. And if I can, you potentially pop onto social media at one of those times. So actually plan to do that, and that's when I'll go on to post something. And I also set my timer for 15 minutes to go and comment to replied, Any comments on to kind of tune in and check out what my friends are doing, what they're up to. So that is 15 minutes of my day and then I'm off there. So give those things to try, my friend. I am. They may. If you've never done these before, they may seem crazy and intimidating and like, do people really do this? But give it a try. You're here because you want more time for the things in your life that matters. So I know you've got what it takes to put these into action, and I'd love to hear from you and see how it's going when you give these a shot for a little while, right 19. Helpful Hints for Handling Tight Schedules: if you're really working with a tight schedule here, I have five helpful hints for you. Number one. Show up consistently and trust the process. Can speaking this to you as much as I am to myself because I don't know what you but I really struggle with just way overestimating what I can get done in a day and then getting really discouraged, I reached the end of the day. And even though I put the time in, I'm just nowhere near where I thought I would be on that project. And so it's so easy to just lose yourself to discouragement and and, you know, toss that project aside and just not even want to work on it for days or weeks, and that's not helping us at all, either. Just show up consistently and trust the process. You are moving ahead even if you're just not moving as fast as you think. You'd like to go. Number two. Choose one big goal. Now we've been talking about having three big goals that you want to reach at the end of the year. But what I have found is that when I am focused on three different things, as well as working a full time day job as well as trying to fit in my friends and family and my hobbies. It's just overwhelming. So what I encourage you to think about doing And I know this this so hard for creative types like us because we generally have so much we want to work on. But I want to encourage you to maybe just pick one big goal at a time and focus on that one big goal for three months or for six months before switching to a different goal. Um, for example, when I made the most progress on my screenplay, I was writing a feature length screenplay, and when I made that, my number one focus and I pushed everything else aside, I said, Okay, I'm not gonna market two different productions. I'm not going to try and active anything this year. I'm just gonna work on the screenplay, at least for the next three months, which was the quiet season for acting anyway. And I actually made some incredible progress on that, and I was motivated because I didn't feel overwhelmed because I wasn't thinking about everything I had to do. It was literally just my job and my screenplay. And when you can narrow your life down like that, I think you'll find it really helps to eliminate some overwhelmed and help you make some forward momentum and make some progress towards a t least one of your goals that has been on your mind for so long and really deserves to be getting some some momentum here. Number three alternate days. So if you are not going to just go down to that one goal on, you know, it's really hard to just decide. You're only gonna focus on one thing if there are a couple different things you're gonna focus on encourage it'd maybe try alternating days. So rather than trying to schedule, you know, your creative time in the morning, maybe your business time of the evening and then working on that other project, you know, after that, try alternating days. So maybe you want to work on the screenplay on Monday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then, you know, maybe you're working on a scale share course on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday or something like that. So some of the finest is really helpful to to build momentum that way. And just you know, when you're looking at your schedule and you're looking your day job schedule and you're trying to figure out how to slot in your runway activities, choose one activity to continually slot in several times through that day, and you might find that just seeing yourself go through that and build that progress in that moment, Um, on one area might be really motivating, and it might be easier than switching your brain from one activity to the other throughout the day. Number four clear the canvas. So when you are an artist and you're making a painting, you've got this big white canvas. And if you paint a picture on that canvas and then you immediately start painting another picture over and then another picture over it, it turns out to be just a big mess. So here's the thing. We got a clear the canvas between age activity, so when you're going to work, okay, that's one. That's one painting your your job. That's one painting. If you don't clear that canvas before you go into dinner with your family, you're gonna be mentally solving problems at work while you're trying to have dinner with your family. If you have. You know what I meant. You were dealing with a customer who has a really crummy attitude, and it's just irritated you. And you're bringing that home into your creative work. It's like you're painting over the same picture. You haven't cleared the canvas so that that grumpy customer is still with you while you're trying to be creative. So I encourages you to come up with some transition activities and these can take, like, five minutes. This. Give me five minutes of meditation. This could be five minutes of jumping jacks. This can actually be going out for a walk. You know, it could be 15 minutes whatever you need, but just a moment of time to transition from one thing to the next. That's also why I find it really helpful to listen to an inspiring podcast on my way home from work because that is my transition activity is actually on my drive. So by the time I'm home, I'm ready to just jump into saying hello to my little sister Andi hearing about how her day was or, you know, jumping into my work number five by back some time. Ask yourself, Do you really need to be working this this full time job? You know, if you're working 9 to 5, If you're working more than that, ask yourself. Is this necessary? Do I have to be working these two jobs? What would it take to say Cut out one day a week from my day job that I could actually focus on this project on the creative work that you want to dio one day a week? How much extra income would you have to be making In order to achieve that? I think about how you could live minimally. What subscriptions are you paying monthly that maybe you don't need to. Do you really need that Netflix account and that crave account? Like, Do you really need all these things you're paying into on a monthly basis? And what could you live without? If it would allow you to cut out a day from your day job to work on your creative work? Maybe getting higher paying job isn't really in your capacity and over for me as an actress , I need flexible jobs, So it's really hard to find Ah, flexible job that'll let you drop everything last minute to go to an audition except restaurant work, which is quite flexible. So if you're in a situation where you, you know, maybe you don't want to get a bigger paying job, maybe you want to start some side income if you want to start a business on the side and we're in an age in the day where that's easier than ever. So just think of just start thinking about some different ideas and and ask yourself, You know, what could I do to claim back some time, which I could then put into my creative work? 20. Two Surprising Elements to Flight: All right. Congratulations, my friend. On making it through this course. I am so proud of you. You made it. And I'm excited for your team. Put this in action this week. I'm excited to see how this helps you. Before I say goodbye here. I just want to share with you too. Surprising elements to flight that you might find very helpful. As you put together your weekly flight plan Number one is the concept of aerodynamics. When a pilot knows where he wants the plane to go, if there is a wind going one way, the pilot will actually not aim the plane to the place he wants it to go. He'll actually aim it against the wind. So the plane ends up where he wants it to go. Now, this is the same when you are setting your goals. And when you're working towards these things that are important to you. I mentioned before, You know that I tend to get overwhelmed when I am and discouraged when I when I set these goals and set my sights on what I want to have done by the end of the week, I'm gonna be honest. I very often don't get done. What I said that I wanted to get done by the end of the week. And it's not that I don't put the time in. It's that I hugely overestimate what I'm capable of doing in a single day. So just because you set a goal and you didn't hit it, I'm saying Don't beat yourself up for that because you actually got closer than you would have gotten if you didn't set that gold number two re calculations When you set a GPS in a plane to go to a certain destination, it doesn't just fly straight to that destination. It's actually Ah, Siris of these tiny little adjustments to get it to where it really needs to go. So it's not just flying a very straight path. It's It looks like a straight path, but it's actually made up of all these little micro adjustments to end up getting the plane to the landing spot where it was destined for from the beginning of the flight. So think about that as well when you're going through and crafting your weekly plan is to feel free to make these recalculations, you know when you're first starting this, you're gonna find that you maybe you need a little more time between activities. Maybe you need a little more recovery time before you jump from one activity to the next. You need a little more transition time. Maybe you'll find that you're really not creative first thing in the morning. But your creativity happens later at night. So maybe you need to schedule your creative time at night. We're all a little different. I just encourage you to pay attention to what works for you and what's not working. And give yourself permission to make these little adjustments as you go until you find a plan and a schedule that really work for you for your class project. I want to see your flight plan. So I want to see how you schedule your week. So snap a picture that posted up in the class project section. Maybe you have some tips or ideas or suggestions that you've discovered on how to manage your time, how to be more productive. Feel free to share them with the rest of us. We'd love to hear from you. We may even inspire fellow students, so go ahead and leave a comment over in the past community. If you like this class, don't forget to leave a review. Also check out my other classes on skill share. You might find something else there that she is helpful to you. I'd love to stay in touch so they share to connect on Instagram for ongoing inspiration to help you stay motivated in your journey. Well, it's a little behind the scenes. Looks into my life as an artist and creator. I am Laura Leven and you, my friend, are ready to soar.