productivity

How to Decide Whether to Take on a New Project or Not

You are in charge of your art career.

This means you are the person who decides what to do immediately and what can wait for tomorrow, next week, or next month.

This sounded ideal until you realized how hard it is to prioritize your life and business by yourself.

You might have been accustomed to a boss telling you where to focus your energy. No more.

Entrepreneurship issued a wake-up call. You want freedom? Here it is! Go decide for yourself.

If you’re actively looking for opportunities, as you should be, there will be a time when you have more opportunities than you realistically have the bandwidth for. You’ll be hit with new invitations and requests from all corners.

But it’s unrealistic to involve yourself in every opportunity that comes your way.

Intellectually, you understand this. Emotionally, you want to believe you are somehow superhuman.

The projects might be exhibitions, commissions, licensing deals, wholesale contracts, teaching possibilities, separate jobs, or something else. They’re all projects that beg for your time, and they sound so exciting!

Your resolve is being tested by a voice that some people call a gremlin or troll. I call it The Tester.

How serious is she about this other project—really?
How good is he at knowing what he wants and needs?

All good entrepreneurs struggle with decisions in moments like these, especially if there is the potential for a big pay off at the end.

This is when you must ask yourself hard questions to help you answer the biggest question of all:


How to Decide Whether to Take on a New Project or Not Read

The Art Biz ep. 10: Creative Organizing with Heather K. Powers

I used to teach an online class called Organize Your Art Biz. I quit teaching it when I realized that there’s no such thing as the right way to get organized.

My guest for this episode of the Art Biz Podcast, Heather K. Powers, figured it out long before I did. As the founder of Creatively Organized Spaces, Heather customizes solutions for organizing systems and storage for her creative clients.

In this interview, Heather and I discuss:

  • The stereotype that artists are inherently disorganized.
  • Her philosophy for helping artists get organized.
  • The biggest pain point artists have when it comes to organizing.

Heather also shares a number of tips, including:

  • Know what you want before you start organizing.
  • Schedule time for organizing (3-4 hours at a time seems to be a sweet spot).
  • Make a plan before you go buy a lot of containers.
  • Create work zones.

LISTEN NOW …

The Art Biz ep. 10: Creative Organizing with Heather K. Powers Read

Bluff painting by Marsha Savage

Organize Your Busy Art Career with Evernote

I am writing this draft in Evernote on my iPad while taking the light rail train into Denver to see a few art shows.

When I want a document that I will reuse and share with students, clients, or my team, I create it in Word, Pages, or Google Docs.

When I want to save drafts of documents or to store something to remember, it goes straight to Evernote where I can access it across devices.

Evernote is an app that organizes information into digital notes and notebooks. It would be impossible for me to keep track of all the information I need to without it.

Here’s a peek at how I use Evernote in my life and business along with suggestions for how you might use it in your art career.

Keep Your Travel Information in One Place

This might be my favorite use of Evernote. In your Travel notebook you might store:

  • Hotel arrangements
  • Flight details
  • Car rentals
  • Contact names and information
  • Directions
  • Things you want to do and see when you arrive
  • Local restaurants

You might also store travel information for your family or for friends who are visiting.

Capture Content Ideas

One of the problems I hear most often from artists is that they don’t have anything to say. And this is a problem when so much of your marketing is based on the written word.

No more worries! The minute you have a bright idea, you can start a note in Evernote. Save drafts for:

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Painting of Red Shoe by Cheryl Wilson

5 Lists You Need for Your Art Career

I live by lists. They’re so beautiful on the page: one item after another after another.

Whether we process each item in the order in which it appears on the list or, more likely, get around to them someday in no particular sequence, lists help us create order in our hectic lives.

The most valuable thing about making lists is that it gets tasks, projects, and ideas out of our heads and into a place where we can find them again. At least that’s the idea.

With that in mind, here’s a list of 5 lists (yep, a list of lists) that are useful to artist-entrepreneurs.

1. Your To-Do List

This is the list that you’re probably most familiar with.

Your to-do list consists of urgent or near-future items that you must accomplish. It might look like this:

  • Pay bills.
  • Order framing supplies.
  • Write draft of newsletter.

If you’re disorganized, your lists are probably all over the place – likely on sticky notes covering your desktop or computer monitor. Not the best way to be productive.

If you’re organized, you have a single to-do list in a single place. You know where to find it and how to prioritize the items on it.

Next, you need a place to store the not-so-urgent things. This is …

5 Lists You Need for Your Art Career Read

The Art Biz ep. 2: Getting The Difficult Things Done

This month I asked artist/author/coach Cynthia Morris back to the podcast to discuss a topic that comes up often with my artist-clients. See if this sounds familiar.

You have things you don’t want to do. It’s painful to even think about tackling them, but you know that you need to work through them in order to move forward.

How do you do it?

In this episode, Cynthia and I talk about how to accomplish things in your art career and business that you don’t enjoy doing.

I was particularly interested in the discussion we had about happiness v. satisfaction.

Listen in and then please leave a comment to let us know you’re listening.

The Art Biz ep. 2: Getting The Difficult Things Done Read

21 Mindless But Productive Tasks for When Genius Takes a Hike

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could call up your genius whenever you needed it?

Hey, genius! Help me out with writing this article, please.

What would be even more amazing is if Genius would come running whenever you issued this command.

But Genius runs on its own time and has a pretty smart mouth.

My Genius lets me know who is boss:

  • I’m tired. Leave me alone.
  • You really should have used me when I was in better form. You know … like 6:00 a.m. That’s my power hour.
  • Are you kidding me? You spend the last four hours doing diddly-squat and now you expect me to drop everything and run to your rescue?
  • Hey, lady! I worked hard for you today. I’m entitled to stupid time.

Stupid time. That’s what I call the hours when my brain can’t make sense out of words or come up with a single creative idea.

I imagine Genius is taking a hike, sweating it out at hot yoga, or gulping down a green smoothie. You know, because Genius is Genius. She doesn’t need naps. She only needs to refuel.

Whatever happened to Genius, I’m left alone to endure stupid time.

And then there is someone else’s time. This becomes an issue when

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Say no without guilt

Say No Without the Guilt

When someone asks something of you, there are a couple of ways you can respond: Yes or No.

When you say yes to everything, you are probably saying no to yourself and many of your art goals. You are saying that what someone is asking or offering is more important than your agenda.

You can’t even do everything that’s on your list right now, so how do you ensure that your art business remains a priority when so many people are asking for your time?

Say No Without the Guilt Read

productive-day

How to Have a Productive Day

I am not immune to unproductive days, and I’ve had more than my fair share of them recently.

In order to get back on track, I’ve regrouped and, with the help of a coach, reminded myself of these principles. They really work – when you do them.

Start The Day With 3 Intentional Steps

I swear by the importance of these first three steps. When I don’t do them, I am significantly more overwhelmed and stressed out. Doing them brings peace of mind and helps me start my day on my terms rather than diving in and responding to everything being pushed at me.

How to Have a Productive Day Read

Be the Boss of Your Inbox

How I Became the Boss of My Inbox

As I write this, I’m sitting with an inbox with far more messages than is comfortable for me. I usually keep a relatively sparse inbox, but the messages accumulate from time to time. Here’s the ugly truth. I know that 177 messages isn’t a lot for most people, but it is for me. Instead of

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