Are you struggling to set your daily, monthly, and yearly goals? I know that feeling well! It can be overwhelming to figure out where to begin, but don’t worry, I’m here to help.
Have you ever heard of the book Getting Things Done by David Allen? If you have, perhaps you’re looking for a refresher. Or, if this is an entirely new concept for you, you’re in the right place – I’ll explain everything in detail. Getting Things Done aims to engage in natural planning: noticing and working with the way your brain naturally wanders.
We begin by capturing: brainstorming with enthusiasm to find ideas that already exist in your head. Then, you can organize: divide your ideas into types of tasks and notes for future reference. Finally and most importantly, you can then identify the next action: the next step you need to take to get your project moving. Planning can be fun and easy!
Making decisions can be daunting. Use this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style strategy for making the creative process less stressful:
Get It Done Process Poster: Based on the Book Getting Things Done
Capture: Write down all of your ideas
Write down all of your goals-related ideas and keep an ongoing list. Use an app or paper and pencil, whichever works best for you. As you capture your thoughts, remember that the goal is to keep them out of your mind and free up mental space for new ideas and inspiration.
New Skill, No Time? You Might Still Find Ways to Pick Up a New Hobby
As creators, trying new things is a big part of the creative process. Whether it’s experimenting with new tools or techniques or exploring new styles and ideas. Join me as I add game-making to my never-ending list of hobbies!
While the focus of this article is making games, I hope the story of how I made room for my interest in making games can inspire you when you’re thinking about making room for any interest.
In today’s Q&A Monday, methods for organizing your ideas that make it so much more convenient to act:
How do you store your ideas to be organised and easily accessible to use as raw material in different projects? Anonymous (via Quora)
I find ways to make storing ideas fun and rewarding. I have little “rules” (ie guidelines) that help it feel like a game. The basic outline of my system includes sketching, lists, and a calendar. I keep as little in my brain as possible. Delegate remembering any thoughts and ideas to the system.
Getting Things Done
I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen and base some organizational ideas on that. One of the main ideas of Getting Things Done is to write down anything you think of. Then put it in a place where you can remember it. The other principle is separating an actionable task from reference material. Actionable items are broken down into small tasks and included on project task lists.
Then the only habit I have to have is to check the lists or calendar. It’s a lot more freeform than it may sound, basically just write things down. I have designed this “Choose Your Own Adventure” style Getting Things Done cheat sheet that I’ve hung up at my desk at work:
Getting Things Done Process Poster
The system shown here helps with my graphic design work as I decide how to accomplish all of my daily priorities. At the same time, when thoughts drift to personal tasks and ideas that could be distracting I can quickly make a note on my shopping list.
I keep a Google Tasks app on my phone to keep lists of various thoughts, quotes, and links to articles I’ve found. It’s a pretty simple system with some basic categories like painting ideas and quotes. Within each category, a lot of what is captured is in random order.
Step 1: Brainstorm using a trigger list
A trigger list is a short list of keywords that helps with brainstorming even more thoughts. It reminds me to write down ideas I may not have written yet: Boss, Painting, Bills, Important Dates, Weekly Events, Projects, and Unfinished tasks. The words themselves jog memories. I jot downanyl thoughts that come to mind when reading my list. Then organize them into the above systems
Sketch when you can
Sketching and doodling are fun ways I get ideas to paper. I like to get ideas out of my head where they can seem perfect and large onto paper where they’re small and can be thrown away. I scribble sketches. I like cheap spiral notebooks. I have sketchbooks where I move up to a different level of finished artwork and design. The cheapness of the notebooks helps me feel less precious and anxious about whatever I’m putting down.
A study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that doodlers remember more than non doodlers when told to tediously delivered information (via Time.com). Participants had to listen to a fake voicemail filled with rambling information. We’ve all had to do this at some point. Even after they were removed from their papers, doodlers were able to retain more details. The researchers conclude that doodling helps focus and prevents daydreaming.
Step 2: Sort Reference Material and Inspiration
For any thought or idea that isn’t related directly to an action, task, or project I keep on lists by various categories. Joan Rivers was known to use index cards to store every joke, as she explained in the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”. She would type each on index cards and file them by the subject of the joke. If it’s an idea related to landscape paintings, I have a list for that. I keep lists of quotes, articles, and all kinds of thoughts.
Blogging and social media can help!
As Austin Kleon wrote in his book Steal Like An Artist, “Do good work and put it where people can see it”. I’ll often write a short blog post combining ideas from various articles, studies, and inspiration. That way they’re available for me when I need them. Often others will have new points which help with my creative process.
Pinterest is a nice tool for storing inspiration. Anything inspiring me on the web gets pinned. I also use it to search for visuals. Anything that has an image associated with it gets pinned.
Step 3: Keeping lists of actions
Project Lists
When I have decided on a project, I sift through the lists and put the items in priority order. For example, if I’ve decided to paint any tasks involved in making the painting onto my task list. You’d be surprised how much putting things in a single place can create inspiration and motivation. It makes difficult and complex tasks suddenly feel easy
Actions include sketching out thumbnails, working out any drawings, and finally any ideas that might work through the painting. It’s almost magical how separating references from actual tasks helps me to focus. Suddenly it becomes convenient and easy since I have a clear next step to take.
It’s also worthwhile to set aside ideas that aren’t happening any time soon. It’s a relief to let them go here. When you have free time, having a bunch of ideas that might suddenly become possible or appealing is also a lifesaver.
Context lists
Another type of organizational tool I use is having lists based on location or context. This could be “When I’m on my computer”, which I’ll abbreviate @computer. This would have lists reminding me to read a website, pay a bill, or order art supplies from Amazon. Other examples of contexts: Home, Car, Work, Bathroom, TV, Microsoft Word, During Monday’s Meeting.
Step 4: Schedule what you can on your calendars
Some ideas belong in the realm of scheduling. If you can schedule it, then schedule it. Setting simple reminders of days that would be great to sketch helps me get on track. Google Calendar lets me set phone notifications, so I don’t even need to actively check for most things
Perhaps I have an idea to do plein aire painting. Not very useful in the winter. I could leave a note on my calendar reminding myself not to waste the summer and look back into this. Having a loose plan for your day, week, or year is an amazing way to spark creativity
Step 5: Forget the rest
In a recent episode of her podcast Happier, habits researcher Gretchen Rubin suggests instead not organizing and getting rid of clutter. Some ideas may never happen or won’t be useful. Learn when to let them go as you’re going through this whole process. If any ideas are timely or have a shelf life, make that clear in your system.
Readers, how do you organize your thoughts and ideas?
Brian E. Young is a graphic designer and artist in Baltimore, MD.
To focus on creativity I have several habit strategies including:
Act creatively now or as soon as possible
Make your habits convenient helps.
Change the external circumstances.
I find audiobooks and podcasts to be an incredibly inspiring habits. Listening to other creatives and being exposed to their work. That helps me want to create work of my own. Many audiobooks are free online via my local library. If your library offers this, I can’t recommend it enough.
I recently listened to “Happier at Home” by researcher Gretchen Rubin in which she focuses on changing her habits one step at a time. She makes her decisions based on her research into the science of human behavior.
1. Act creatively now
Don’t let life get in the way of life will always be in the way. Learn to face the fears that keep you from acting. In Happier at Home, Rubin discusses how easy it is to plan and difficult it can be to act. If we let it be difficult. “It’s so easy to wish that we’d made an effort in the past so that we’d happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.”
“The future depends on what you do today.” Mahatma Gandhi
So having a habit of focusing on how can I be my most creative self right now at this moment. We’ll imagine that after we clean our house, do our errands, and plan our project that at that point we’ll finally have energy. Of course, after that’s all done we just want to rest. New errands will prop up and we’ll be on a never-ending cycle.
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” C.G. Jung
We tend to attend to our present. We trust that we will handle your needs in the future. This is demonstrated by a procrastination study published in Psychological Science. By framing future events as days instead of months or years, they helped participants perceive future events as more imminent. Those studied who have presented retirement in terms of days would estimate planning 4 times sooner.
2. Make your habits convenient
David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done (GTD), has a solution. Make creativity a priority right now by setting smaller activities and sticking to them. Rather than “cleaning” and “drawing”, decide that you’ll do specific small tasks:
“I’ll fill a piece of paper thumbnails in 30 minutes.”
“I’ll run to the store and pick up a specific list of items.”
Note how each task is as specific and least sprawling as possible. I’ve found this method useful and less stressful in many situations. Small tasks are less overwhelming and more convenient. Gretchen Rubin refers to this as the “Strategy of Convenience”: “70 percent of long-term gym memberships are mostly unused, but a dog needs walking every day.”
Setting priorities is key here for me. I must get that dishwasher loaded. I must make it to the store. It’s also important that I find ways to be creative as often as possible. Breaking life into small and manageable tasks makes finding a balance that much easier.
“I firmly believe that everyone deserves to live within walking distance of either beauty or convenience, if not both.” Victoria Moran
Living within Baltimore City makes many errands and events very convenient. My gym is even close by and I stick with the group classes because that lets them determine the schedule. Letting go and allowing external forces to control certain aspects of my life is just embracing the inevitable. I can’t control many or most things, so I might as well make a conscious choice to focus on what to let go of.
“There’s just one way to radically change your behavior: radically change your environment.” Dr. B.J. Fogg, Director of Stanford Persuasive Lab
If you’re the kind of person who is motivated by external goals, then find ways to set them. Explore and test ways to collaborate, interact, and include others. Create your best work and share what you create. You might figure out all of your friend’s birthdays and plan to make birthday cards.
If you need something more concrete, take a class. Craigslist is useful for finding art shows, classes, and related events. I’ve found many free events related to art and culture in the events sections of Yelp and Facebook.
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” Barack Obama
Putting yourself in the position to have to tackle your goals. Volunteering whether directly related to my work also helps me structure my time and creates a feeling of overall well-being, which is always a good thing!
If you’re anything like me or the rest of the human race, you have put things off that in theory you would want to do. Yet the time to act is never right now. You haven’t decided when. Even if you did know when, then we have to figure out how. Trying to move an idea from imagination to completion is really tough!
I always tell friends or even strangers that I’m waiting for my roommate, Lamont Montgomery, to do all the things. Lamont doesn’t wash dishes, load laundry, or vacuum. Laziest roommate ever, I lament. I’m not doing it until he does! Unfortunately for both of us, Lamont is just my Cabbage Patch kid that I’ve had since I was a child.
The story starts in the boom of the 80s. My mom wanted to get the uber-popular toy for her three kids. Sold out everywhere, she took advantage of a local bank that traded the toys in exchange for opening a bank account for kids. In all these decades since, he doesn’t have much to say for himself. No matter how long I wait, nothing seems to get done. Maybe a few of these tips could help me and Lamont out?
Write it all down, don’t memorize
DON’T be too quick to judge your ideas as good, bad, or impossible.
DO write thoughts in the most convenient way possible. Tweet this.
In one of the most popular productivity books out there – Getting Things Done, David Allen sets forth the basic principle of productivity: Write it down. Rather than stewing in worry, find a place to write all things down. We can make it a habit of writing down the next step rather than worrying. The “next step” is a doable task.
Write your task where ever it makes sense. It might be on your calendar, on your to-do list, just in a strip of notes. I keep endless notes in the “cloud” using Google Tasks and an Android app. I save all articles, thoughts, and titles that come to mind. When I sit down to paint or draw, I already have all of my ideas ready for me to act. This isn’t the time when we ask if an idea is important, good, or bad. I keep track of the terrible ideas as much as I do with the good ones. That’s something I can figure out in the next steps.
Lamount doesn’t write things down. I can’t solely blame him when I know he has the memory of a doll. He’ll never be able to get anything done. Your memory is only slightly better than a doll’s.
“Rename your “To-Do” list to your “Opportunities” list. Each day is a treasure chest filled with limitless opportunities; take joy in checking many off your list.” Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You
Procrastinate, don’t procrastinate
DON’T deny your tendencies to procrastinate.
DO procrastinate on one task by doing another on your list. Tweet this
“If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it,” John Perry wrote in his 1995 online essay Structured Procrastination. “However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.”
I’ve definitely found this to be true. The path of least resistance for washing dishes, cleaning, or vacuuming is when I’m running late to work. I’m most productive at work when I’m trying to leave work and get to the gym. I get the most blogging done when I placed my podcast at the top of my list. We can exploit this idea just by making our top priorities the lesser tasks. If I made vacuuming every morning a priority, my procrastinating brain will tell me to get out of the house that much faster.
Except for time spent on meditation practice, it’s not true that you’re not sitting around doing nothing. Place the least important tasks and the smallest as the top priority on your to-do list. Plan to watch a few YouTube videos. Give yourself time to read on the internet. Apparently, you’ve already found time to do this by reading my blog, so thanks for that. Imagine that you’re procrastinating on those tasks, too. Either you’ll get a lot of quick dusting done, or you might just finally get to painting your next masterpiece.
Sure, I’m procrastinating on that talk I need to have with Lamount Montgomery (about how are rent is due and how he is not contributing). In that time, I might as well get some of my artwork done or at least sketch a little.
“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning, and you reach the point where you have to write.” Paul Rudnick
Work together, not alone
DON’T just get help, be a helper yourself.
DO include others in your creative process. Tweet this
This is often a difficult idea for the most creative souls. We get so used to doing tasks on our own. Get support from others in your network. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, sometimes we’ll work alone and other times we collaborate. We don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s frequently appropriate to seek criticism, ask friends to remind us, or just reach out and talk about our work. The point of productivity is to both keep moving forward and hopefully finish tasks. Build in ways to take care of each other, and both give and receive help freely.
As much as I enjoy waiting for Lamont Montgomery’s help with my chores, it typically makes a lot more sense to just take care of things myself and relieve my Cabbage Patch roommate of the pressure.
“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.” Dante Alighieri
Plan it out, don’t wing it, except when you’re improvising
While flying by the seat of our pants is a huge part of the process, giving it some structure actually helps! How do you color outside of the lines without knowing where the lines are? (tweet this) Set deadlines and make outlines. Let’s say I was typing a blog post. Which I am currently doing, coincidentally enough. It helps to brainstorm a few short phrases on the main ideas, organize them, and then fill in the blanks. Sure, when I research, read, and type it often turns out my initial assumptions were wrong. Making mistakes and successfully failing is where true innovation comes from. We can’t solve problems unless we have problems.
It would be naive of me if I decide to wait for whenever Lamont is ready. I know him well enough to trust that he won’t stick to any schedule I set up. Fool me once, Lamont Montgomery. Fool me once. As much as I’d love for the sun to set at midnight and for a doll to do all things for me, it makes more sense to allow for that possibility and plan accordingly.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And yeah, I procrastinated on writing a post about productivity and instead just wrote a passive-aggressive letter to my roommate. I don’t expect him to ever learn. I can only hope these ideas will help you experiment with how you look at productivity.
Brian E. Young is a graphic designer and artist in Baltimore, MD.
Also on:
Uncanny Creativity helps artists and designers do more with less stress
Get free art and design productivity tips and podcast episodes by email! We're here to help you get more made in less time.
Uncanny Creativity helps artists and designers do more with less stress
Get free art and design productivity tips and podcast episodes by email! We're here to help you get more made in less time.
