ARTICLE

Creative time management

The new year comes hand in hand with resolutions, organisation, planning, and goal-setting. Time management and creativity seem to go together like asparagus and ice-cream. How can you possibly be expected to box your art into convenient hour-long sessions?

But if you look back over the previous year and note that you were constantly missing deadlines, not learning lines in time, or forgetting to turn up at your gallery showing, then perhaps it's time to start thinking about time. It may be stating the obvious, but the best way for a creative person to organise time is creatively.

Fun day planners

Organising a day into hours and minutes is stifling, but planning your day around something colourful, like post-it notes or photographs, is much more fun. I call these "time splots" - but any name (except "hours" and "minutes") will do.

As a tree-hugging alternative to the paper diary or day planner and post-it notes, you can create a calendar electronically on your PC, using colourful AutoShapes or graphics to block out the specific time periods you require.

Break your day into the amount of splots you require to get everything done. Give yourself plenty of leeway for creative overflow or strikes of inspiration.

Time minding

Instead of turning into an ordinary clockwatcher, stick coloured shapes over the numbers on a large analogue wall clock and remove the minute hand (you might want to get hold of a cheap clock from a $2 store, and you'll probably want to remove the clear fronting so that you can get at the hand and move the splots around).

If you have a daily routine that you're trying to stick to, mark your shapes with what you are supposed to be doing at that hour – for example, take a photo of yourself writing or painting. Stick a photograph of food at "lunch time" and one of your family at "home time".

The splotched clock gives you a less specific work routine than sitting down from 9AM to 11:15AM, and having a break from 11:15AM to 11:30AM, etc. The time to move onto the next task is determined by your hour hand moving out of that particular time splot and into the next.

You get extra flexibility, too, because the splots are awkward shapes, perhaps even overlapping a little - so if you are ready to move on before the hour hand is properly in the next splot, then allow yourself to do so. If not, then keep going until it is, or shift the splot out, or move the hour hand back.

The point of the clock is to give you a non-intrusive indication of when you should be thinking about taking a break or moving onto the next task. If you've become too good at reading analogue clocks, and three o'clock is three o'clock even without a number, turn the clock upside down, on its side, or get an anticlockwise gimmick clock instead.

For more help on improving your time management skills, get Creative Time Management for the New Millennium - Become More Productive & Still Have Time for Fun, by Jan Yager, from Amazon.com

Time Management for the Creative Person - Right-Brain Strategies for Stopping Procrastination, Getting Control of the Clock and Calendar, and Freeing Up Your Time and Your Life, by Lee Silber, from Amazon.com

Organizing for the Creative Person - Right-Brain Styles for Conquering Clutter, Mastering Time, and Reaching Your Goals by Dorothy Lehmkuhl and Dolores Lamping

Make your planning fun with some Post-It Notes in ultra colours from Amazon.com