There are 6 time traps that artists fall into. Learn what they are and watch out for them. Your time is the most valuable thing you have to manage.

Podcast:

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Video Transcript:

Hi, welcome to this week’s hot tip for artists. I’m John Paul Fischbach, the CEO and Chief Alchemist here at the Auspicious Arts Incubator, and I have another hot tip for you. So this time I want to look at time traps for artists, because valuing your time is absolutely essential. We have worked with thousands of artists, and we have seen six time traps that catch artists over and over and over again. And once you learn to navigate these traps, you make massive improvement.

Okay, so, what I want you to do is look at these six ways that artists get trapped and waste time, and see how you score. Maybe, sort of look at these six and give yourself a rating from 1 to 10. Let’s say 1 is “I rarely fall into this trap,” and 10 is, I am currently, presently right now in that trap.” So, here are the six, so you might wanna pause so you can write these down, but here are the six.

Number one is perfectionism, number two is multitasking, number three is procrastination, number four is interruptions, number five is looking for things, and number six is second-guessing your decisions. All right, so let’s dive in. We’re gonna talk about each of these traps and you’re gonna give yourself a score, you know, 1 to 10. One, “Doesn’t happen to me,” 10, “Yep, it’s my problem.”

So, let’s start with number one, time trap perfectionism. Now, I call this time trap perfection paralysis. We don’t move, we don’t complete because it isn’t perfect. Now, remember that in business we say done is good. Perfectionism is the number one time loser for artists, we can spend way too much time trying to perfect something, trying to make all the fine adjustments, but at a certain point, get it to market. Done is good. So give yourself a score, how trapped are you by perfectionism?

Number two, multitasking. Now that should make sense to you as a place where we lose time because energy flows where attention goes, right? If your attention is moving multiple things, they all get a little bit of energy, you know. Often you waste time because you’re just shifting focus, all right? So multitasking, how do you score?

Number three, procrastination. That’s something you need to tackle. Your first job is to find out why you are procrastinating. So look, how does it serve you or how does it hurt you? You have to figure the why and the how it happens if you’re gonna check this. Now, you might wanna look at Hot Tip Tuesday number 114, “The Power of Procrastination.” There’s a lot of tools out there to overcome procrastination. So, if that’s a time trap, if you scored high on that one, let’s tackle that.

Number four is interruptions. Now I’m talking about both external and internal. Internal interruptions are close relative to procrastination, and sometimes externally you allow yourself to be interrupted. You allow people to derail your day, to derail your time. Well, don’t allow that. What’s your score on the trap of interruptions?

Number five, looking for things. Looking for things loses a lot of time. Are you continually losing time because you don’t remember where something is kept, where you put something, particularly on your computer? It’s important to set up good filing systems. Now, I don’t mean filing like putting things away. I mean, what’s your system for where you put things so that you don’t waste time looking for them over and over again? So, what’s your score on that trap?

And finally, number six is second-guessing your decisions. We second-guess our decisions. Make a decision and move on. You can always course correct, so stop second-guessing your decisions. All right, so how was your score on second-guessing decisions?

So that’s the six. Those are the six time traps that we see artists falling into over and over again. So how did you do? Perfectionism, multitasking, procrastination, interruptions, looking for things, second-guessing your decisions. Pick one that is a trap you fall into, and get on top of it. If this tip was helpful, please share it with someone else. Please share the wisdom of this with someone else. And when you’re looking for real practical help for your arts business, contact us, www.auspiciousartsincubator.org.