Productivity is about how you prioritize your focus and attention during the time that you have. It’s time to work smarter, not just harder.
Transcription:
Okay, gang, here we are. Tip number 10. So these are the things that I put in the book that took me years in my own artistic practice to develop and learn. So, 9 and 10 are a pair that were called planning and productivity. So, this is the last tip that’s if I looked at the book and I divided it into the 10 things that I learned that we’ve been using for 10 years to help thousands of artists, this is the way it is.
So, number 10 is productivity. And it’s productivity because things are going better now, right? You’re making money, you’ve got customers, you’ve got things, the business is happening, it’s kicking. So now, there’s a lot more to do. And it feels like it’s getting a lot harder to do. That’s okay. So now it’s about increasing your productivity, learning to work smarter, not just harder. So, really productivity comes down to priorities, that you have to make some choices now. You can’t just do whatever comes up. You have to make some choices. So it’s about how do we make these choices, how do we set those priorities for yourself, that says, “This is what’s important. This is what I need to do.”
So, there’s a whole bunch of different things in these chapters in the book, but for this quick, short, hot tip for artists, I try to give you one little simple thing to do each week. So the thing I want you to do this week is decide, is this what I should be spending my time on? Your time is way more valuable. Hey, Marie. We’re talking about time. Your time is the most valuable thing. The customer, the money, all of that is great, but it’s your time that’s the most valuable. So, to increase your productivity and improve your productivity, it comes down to what are you spending your time doing. Because the most important thing you could be doing with your time is making the art.
The next most important thing you could be doing with your art is sharing it. Letting people know that it exists. So marketing and message, and the production of the art kind of work together, they’re hand-in-hand. So the thing I want to talk about this week is, that when you’re looking at all the stuff that you have to do and you’ve got your to-do list, and most important thing you could you is to look at that list and decide what’s just merely urgent and what’s important. So the challenge for this week is to look at your to-do list. Make up complete list, we call it in, you know, artists that go through the artist transformation school with us, we call it the mother list. Every single thing that you could possibly need to do. And then make sure that in your stuff that you’re going to do today and this week, you’re using the 80/20 rule, which says 20% of your energy is going to produce 80% of your result.
So you look at your to-do list and you say, “All right. What’s the important stuff?” What’s the stuff that’s important? It’s not necessarily urgent but it’s important. That if I did this thing, I would make, I would improve the business, right? So it’s again, it’s this concept of working on the business, not just in the business, right? So that’s the idea. I want you to look at your to-do list. And I want you to count the number of things on that list. I want you to find what’s 20% of that and give yourself on your list of things to do, important things. That number of important things, these are not urgent things, they’re important things.
So that every week, you’re spending your time on the thing that you need to spend your time on. The thing that’s going to get you the best result. And it won’t be all the urgent stuff. Be very careful. In the book, I talk about the four quadrant to-do list system. Marie knows this one very well. And it’s good for us right-brain artists, because we can lay it out and we can see what we have to do in a grid, rather than just a left-brain list. So it’s kind of a right-brain methodology of to-do listing.
But it’s important to look at those things that are urgent, but important to someone else. You’re gonna have to start eliminating some of that stuff, or delegating some of that stuff, or saying to people, “Look, I can’t. You know, I’d love to help you. This week is really busy for me. Can we do it at a time that’s more convenient to me to help you.” Right? So, think about that. Try to find the thing that’s really, really important to you. That’s the real key to productivity. Is deciding that you’re spending your time on the stuff that’s really important to you and your business, okay?
So, in the book we go through a lot of different things about looking at managing your emotions, we look at managing your tasks, managing your time. So there’s various things that we look at in the productivity realm in the book, but I think as a takeaway, and the challenge for this week, the focus is really on think about, look at, where you’re spending your time. Is it the stuff that’s really important to you? Okay. Have a good week. Twenty percent of what’s on your to-do list needs to be important stuff. 80% can be urgent stuff, that’s fine. But 20% needs to be important stuff. Okay. Cheer for now.
Share with:
