Time Management: How do you do it?

[Julie Deane]

Here's what I have been doing this school year - getting too little sleep, leaving the dishes for the morning because I am too busy with projects at night, not putting away the clean clothes so that they are on every open space in my room while the dirties go to the floor, never getting around to washing the car, paying a neighborhood child to walk the dog these last ultra-busy weeks of school, buying fresh foods meaning to cook them but not getting around to it so throwing them out, eating too much fast food, getting charges once on a credit card because I lost track of the bill in my mess and paid it late.

Here's what I plan to do - work only 4 days a week next year, with an agreed cap on how many kids I see per week (I'm a speech-language pathologist in a public school system). Before this I had to take however many were thrown at me, and it was always horrendous numbers. It means a 20% pay cut at the same time that certain bills, like insurance, are going up, so I am dealing with fear, but feel it is necessary for sanity. Plan to supplement income if possible by renting out a master bedroom that I am transforming into an efficiency apartment. Maybe do some supplementary contract speech therapy if things get too rough financially. Watch my expenditures more carefully. Certainly hope to sell more portraits, and hope that the gallery owner who took me on this year can sell some commissions like she did for other portrait artists in the past.

I need some balance in my life, including taking the time to exercise and eat right. Adding art to an already stressful life messed me up physically to some degree, too. So - enough already - I am wanting to paint, but not to the degree that I kill myself. With another day free, I hope to use that time wisely, which will include painting/drawing time.

[Jimmie Arroyo]

My turn, my turn.

Wake up about 7am to get my daughter ready for school. At 8:30, I check my mesages and other online stuff. Then either squeeze a few minutes of painting time, cleaning, or take a half hour nap. Shower at 11am, get to work by 12noon.

Stab and make people bleed until 9 or 10pm. Most of the day, wish I was home painting.

Get back home around 9-11pm, eat, read my daughter a story (she stays up until I get home), make my wife watch cartoons. About 12am, I'm ready to paint. Paint til at least 2am if I'm really tired, 4am if I'm not tired or on Fridays and Saturdays.

Sundays are family days, I paint at 12am to 3am. When I'm done painting or drawing, I have a glass of milk.

[Kimberly Dow]

Jimmie - I can't help but wonder if you and I have matching bags under our eyes?

[Michele Rushworth]

Quite a thread! Seems people have been wanting to talk about this for a long time!

My "time management" tips, if you can call them that, are as follows:

First, get a couple of commissions with hard and fast deadlines. There's nothing like an unveiling that HAS to happen on a certain date to make you paint your little behind off, seven days a week, until the piece is done.

Second, "just say no" to almost everything else. About three years ago I decided I could only do two things if I was going to do a decent job of either one: family stuff and artwork. If anything comes up that's outside those two things, I pretty much don't do it. (That includes just saying no to housecleaning too. I hire a cleaning lady whenever I can.)

I try to keep my internet time to the hours before 7 am and after 7pm. I also need frequent breaks during my painting day (typically 9 am to 5 pm) so I pop online for a few short minutes here and there. Otherwise I make a few phone calls or do other paperwork stuff when I take my breaks out of the studio. Before 9 am and after 5 pm I'm Mom again.

I do keep time sheets, of two different types. I track how much time I work each week, and how much of that time is spent on painting, doing marketing, admin stuff or teaching. I average about 40 working hours a week. I also track, separately, how much time I've spent on each painting.

I've never been a night owl but I keep thinking how much more I'd be able to accomplish if I could work til 2 am. Of course, my family would disown me because I'd be a raving lunatic (more so than I am already).

[Patt Legg]

What a thread and a common one indeed.

I have been asking myself this very question and anyone else who would stop to listen.

Julie, I can relate so much with the "flavor" of your post. Particularly with the part about needing balance in your life and the forgetting bill time. I am at a point in my life when I should be very much in control and have plenty of time but I am busier than ever. Not that I didn't intentionally plan it that way but somehow I have allowed it to get out of control.

My 5 adult kids are all on their own now and my time was better, the last one out and ok over 15 years ago. Unfortunately, my hubby has been ill now and home all of the time for over 10 years. He has been able to take over the meals in the evening that has been a blessing and sometimes the laundry (although it is scary sometimes). Also, within the last 1 1/2 years I have opened my own Gallery and Gift Boutique -Tues- Sat. My intention was to paint on location within my shoppe. Well my left brain has plenty of battles with my right side of the brain -finding it very difficult to concentrate on serious work (commissions)

I proceeded to only paint still life, whatever I could to demo for my incoming customers. Now I have my easel (the Sorg here on the sideline) set up in part of my dining room at home with my serious portrait setting there. Now here is where I thought putting Michele's theory to work was for me. I have 5 commissioned portraits with their deadlines (sort of) . What I have found is that most of my clients will say "whenever" I finish is ok with them. So what do I do-----procrastinate.

Meanwhile I am working on my web pages myself, yes Kimberly I cut my hair myself for over 2 years now, manage my 4 rentals we have had for 10 years as extra income, clean our 10 room 2-story house (sometimes), go to some outside interests for the interest of my in-town business, on occasion sit with or play with one of our 12 grandchildren, do a yard sale, meanwhile my hubby is admitted to the hospital usually 3 times a year for 3-15 days, yadda yadda yadda.

I had better stop now as I feel I am hogging space. I am totally out of control of my life - painting life at least-feeling so distressed that I cannot paint and at the moment, I am flat on my back most of the past 3 days due to stress and problems in my back that I cannot walk.

Help!!!! I do actually accomplish most of all that I set out to do , believe it or not, but my body, my health and my painting is suffering.

I feel sometimes like I am racing against time but not sure why.



I will stop

[Patt Legg]

Oh and I almost forgot, ( I said my memory is failing too) I also do 3 to 5 six day workshops a year in beginner oil painting.

Any suggestions as to how to actually orgainize my time -beginning with organizing my thoughts?

Thanks
Patt

[Michele Rushworth]

I'd suggest one thing: priortize. Sounds like you do a lot of different things and maybe some of them have to fall by the wayside.

[Patt Legg]

Michele, I totally agree on the priortize thing. I am very high energy and if I were to use todays' jargen, maybe a little ADD too in that my mind works the same way. It doesn't stop until I can finally sleep. Although I do not have trouble sleeping.

Please know that I am not really complaining but more asking for a 1,2,3, kind of list of how one goes about the priortizing thing. What do I liminate here. Believe me, my house has suffered because it definitely is not my prioity anymore like it used to be. It's not bad now you know but just not perfect, that lived in look.

Hubby says all of the time that one thing is that I am a perfectionest and that is probably true. So I over-do.

Thanks for reply at least acknowledging that someone out there read it.

Have a good day
Patt

[Julie Deane]

Patt,

I can relate to a lot you wrote, especially the "racing against time".

After years taking care of family, we have time to do more for ourselves. But how much time is left? 10 years? 20? 40? That mortality factor....

When I was young I assumed I had plenty of time. Now I know better. I had better get what I want to do done before it is too late.

The paradox is: if artwork is done to the exclusion of basic health, potential painting time is shortened by default.

The priorities: enough sleep, taking time to cook right and exercise. Certain household basics. That takes care of the physical. Then the emotional/spiritual. For me, emotional needs include the need to create.

[Debra Jones]

I am jumping in here, as I use internet time to walk away from the art stuff.

Reading the above posts, I guess I do sort of have a rhythm, if not a schedule.

I am in life limbo but the only cohesion is painting. I had to move out of my home of 13 years in January and am rooming in a very nice place but under emotionally impossible conditions with an ex-boyfriend whose recent divorce made an extra bit of cash very attractive. The digs are very temporary and very far from my sphere of influcence. I have begun to live in my car and it is not pretty.

Since I have restarted painting, I have always kept supplies in my trunk and I got a big rolling suitcase so I have a little shop on wheels. I do as many demos as I can anywhere they will let me. Presently I paint probably 4-6 hours on weekends at a pet friendly coffee house 20 miles from my present living quarters, but have added a fancy resort hotel to the list at 2-3 hours a stint a couple of days a week and it is only 30 miles away. When I drive I think and listen to the radio so I am becoming political! The painting demos are my real advertizing. The paintings I do there have rarely been commissions but I will paint anyway, so if I do it in public, I am widening my range of visibility.

When I hit home, I print brochures. I always include 10 with my commissions and feature the painting I just did on the cover! That way when the client is spreading the word on my work, they are doing it with DOUBLE pride! So that means more computer time. That is as much fun as watching paint dry because I have a very old machine.

I also have a day job, also 20 miles away and I have tried to limit my days there to three. I can set my own schedule but when you DON'T want clients, they can't leave you alone. I have tried this week to to a demo in the morning and am moving the clients to evening and afternoon. It is exhausting but I feel better about my miles on the road, adding the extra ten on top of the first 20!

I paint when I get home and mostly on the weekdays off. The roommate situation has made me a cave dweller. I seem to have odd rituals that include pacing from room to room, piddling about sort of like winding a spring. After hunting for lost things, looking in the refrigerator for nothing, wiping counters, balancing a check book, all the while, forming the image in my head, I sort of LEAP into work and paint. The other night, I had three pieces roughed in for the demos (NEVER go totally blank, always look good from the first stroke or I lose the audience....) I found myself finishing two and literally locking myself out of the room so I would have at least an hour of time to do! I have to schedule life in between painting and it makes it hard to find the people to buy the work when I prefer to be making it than selling it.

Today, I am going to go out in two hours. I have nothing ready. There are two LARGE animal commissions looming, that I have sent layouts to the clients, but have not gotten confirmation to proceed. I will not touch a canvas until I get a committment. I have plenty of good things in my head without speculating on art I cannot resell. SO I will play with a few of my own photos for a half hour and pick one. Then I will sketch and do an underpainting in acrylic so I have a start. Then I will paint for three hours and chat. Hopefully I will pass out enough brochures and ONE person will either get a picture out of their wallet or actually email something to me so I can start a long distance relationship.

When I get permanent digs, I will have sitters. I have worked from life for so long, that photos are seriously cheating for me. I like doing all my composition in the computer before I paint and then disengage my brain and just paint.

This was about time management.

I have a priority and whenever I talk to people, I point out that I have an excellent work ethic but a rather nebulous job! Under all this perceived chaos is one goal: Make enough money to have art as my job. This means putting a shingle out in front of a studio and finding a home ALONE to sit my buns in when I want to watch Jon Stewart at midnight. That is when I crash now . . . until the roommate's garage door opens at 6:30 and lets me know I can start wandering the house again.

Well, the brain is wound, I have to put the painting together now and maybe meet a few members at the Scottsdale Princess today!