4 Ways to Preserve Your Creative Energy as a Creative Entrepreneur
Are you feeling like your creative light is being way dimmed during your work week?
Like you are always “on” for everyone but your are completely “off” for yourself?
As a busy entrepreneur and a creative one at that, we know how draining it can feel when it seems like we are always working on the same tasks over and over again, working in our business aimlessly, or being everything for everyone. If we aren’t careful, that draining rhythm is a fast-track to totally depleting our creative spark - which is NOT what we want!
Here are some of our favourite strategies we use everyday when organizing our calendar that is helpful in preserving our own creative energy for life and work:
1. CREATIVE HOURS
Dedicate your most creative hours to heavier tasks (consulting, strategizing, creating) and leave your other hours for lighter tasks (emails, admin work). This ensures that we are maximizing on our energy and fuelling our creative sparks! For example, if you feel most creative in the morning, that could look like grabbing a coffee and doing all of your strategy meetings with clients first thing Monday morning and then later in the day responding to any non-urgent client emails. Whether you are more of an energy-by day or night person, that doesn’t matter. As long as you are doing your most creative work when you have the most creative energy!
2. BOUNDARIES
Set boundaries around specific times in your schedule that you will be “always on” because always engaging with others can dim your creativity! For example, this might mean putting 15 minutes in your calendar everyday to respond to social media DMs, having strict office hours when clients know that you are more available to touch base via phone calls, or even setting specific times when you are available to sound ideas off of to your team. As difficult as these boundaries are to set, trust us that once you are in a rhythm of protecting your energy, you will wish you did this way sooner!
3. BATCH WORK
Batch work your to-do list by choosing specific days to do specific tasks and do all of the similar tasks all at once. Bonus if you save a day just for you to be creative in a week! For example, one day you may always do those heavier tasks of communicating with your team members and managing projects, the next meeting with clients and then reserving a day for you to be creative with all of your client, team and business needs. But remember, whatever batch working task you are assigned to, you are ONLY doing that task!
4. CREATIVITY
Make time for your own hobbies, passions and creative work outside of your work-work, but without rules, algorithms or deadlines. Do what you love to do for YOU that sparks your creativity and make that little something a non-negotiable in your calendar.
We would love if you shared your favourite things to do that help preserve your creative energy, especially at this busy time of year! If you have any ideas let us know in the comments!
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Bonne Media