mastery training | how to plan your time as a freelance artist
Updated: Sep 20, 2022
Here is your Virtual Mastery Training for the month of January! As requested, this month's topic is: 'How To Plan Your Time As A Freelance Artist'. We will show you how to find the balance between work, training, building a business, personal development, your social life, and down time. For example,"Focusing on goals is great, but how much is too much, or not enough?" We've got you covered! Grab a pen, a notebook, your diary, and enjoy!
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HOW TO PLAN YOUR TIME AS A FREELANCE ARTIST
“How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
1) FINANCES
Quite often, the reason we struggle with the ability to manage our time, is because we don't feel like we have the freedom of time, and we don't feel like we have the freedom of time because we feel the need to spend a lot of our time making money. So let's speak about that first!
Do you know your bare minimum of what you need to cover your basic necessities?
Part of the reason you are stressed out about how you are spending your time is because you don’t know how much money you need to make to cover your monthly costs. Your homework is to figure out what this number is (a rough estimate).
You are used to constantly not having enough, so you hustle within that state of lack mindset. However, if you acknowledge the amount you need to cover your basic minimum, this will afford you the peace and freedom to not live in a state of anxiety or restriction.
If you know how much you need, you will know how much time you need making that amount.
We often inherit our relationship with money from how our parents, and how they navigated their relationships with money. Starting today, begin to address and rebuild your relationship with money. People shouldn't teach or influence you on how to spend your money. Start by...
Writing down the three things you will unapologetically spend your money on.
This will allow you to spend your money in these areas guilt-free, thus beginning to shift your money mindset from a place of lack to a place of abundance. My (Christie) three are: food, education and travel. If I had a fourth, it would be convenience. Acknowledging these three things begins to abolish our state of lack and guides us into a state of abundance.
The way we spend our time is ruled by our finances and how we spend our money. You get to choose how you afford what you value spending your money on. The only person you need to have conversation with about your finances is you. As Ramit Sethi would say, "stop asking the £3.00 questions and start asking the £30,000 questions." A rich life is not not letting yourself buy yourself a coffee. That act of restriction is an example of lack, not abundance.
For more financial guidance, I highly recommend Ramit Sethi and his book,“ I Will Teach You To Be Rich”.
2) SET UP YOUR WEEK
Our minds are set up to work in weeks. For most of us, there is a subconscious reset on a Sunday evening. If you are someone who does multiple things, the more you do, the more you won’t be able to fit everything into one day. Instead, you have to filter it all into a week. If you are doing more than one thing, not everything can be a priority at any one time.
Take a minute to write down the things that you are doing that you have to do (the necessities i.e work), and then write down all the other things that you would like to give yourself time to do.
Every single week can be different, but the one thing we believe you must make time for (to continue setting up your week for success), is dedicating time to reflect on how you spent your previous week, and how you're going to set up your next week. Sometimes it's not Sunday (aka the end of a week for most), but for this to work you must give yourself a morning, an afternoon, or evening to reflect on your past week, and see whether you ran your week or your week ran you, before setting up your next week.
Make a list of priorities for the month & then bring those into your weekly set ups.
Book Recommendation: 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen R. Covey
Stephen speaks about us existing in one of four different quadrants he calls them...
Quadrant #1: The Busy Work
Quadrant #2: What You Want To Be Doing
Quadrant #3: Procrastination
Quadrant #4: Procrastination 2.0
We all acknowledge that we tend to live in Quadrant #1 or #3/4. Very rarely do we live where we want to live, which is Quadrant #2. So, what is the thing you are most resisting? Remember, no one is telling you what to do. It is incredible how much stress we create for ourselves when we are in charge of our own lives. You have the power to do whatever you want, whenever you want. The only thing in your way, is your own resistance.
3) SET UP YOUR DAY
• Do not look at your phone first thing in the morning.
The minute you let the world in first, is the minute the world becomes the first thing that has a say in your life. Get up, give yourself an hour (be flexible with your time) and decide what you want to do first.
• Practice consistency over quantity.
It is not the action and/or the quantity of that action that is important. It is the fact that you are building trust in yourself that you can build a new habit.
• Organize your priorities.
Make a list of the needs, musts and wants. From your want list, prioritise them, and here's a tip: It would beneficial if you placed the thing you resist the most at the top of your priority list. When you are building your day, and when you have the ability to choose how you spend your day, tackle your top priority first.
“Beating resistance is not necessarily doing the thing, it’s doing the right thing.”
Work your day in order of your priorities. If you weeks are so busy, find the consistency and remove your need for quantity. If you can’t find the time to give yourself the quantity, do not use that as an excuse. Your soul is craving the thing, not the quantity of it. It's craving the consistency of the thing, not the length of time you spend doing it.
If you have the luxury to design your entire day something that can be implemented is…
Work until lunch
Learn until dinner
Play after dinner.
How much time are you going to spend working? How much time are you going to spend learning how to do your work better? How much time are you going to spend playing and recovering?
• Rate your days out of 10.
Acknowledgement is key. If you keep showing up and you keep having consistent days that rate less than a 6, you're doing something wrong. You're not setting yourself up for success.
Have goals, but it's how you achieve those goals that defines the true measurement of success.
“You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your physical, financial, or mental health to do the things you want to do.”
We are obsessed with finishing things once we have started. But the question is, is finishing the task worth the suffering that you choosing to endure by finishing it? Implement this question before you start: “What is going to make me feel the most accomplished today?”
If you are driving six cars, you have to get really realistic about how long those things are going to take to get to their 'destination'. If you are unwilling to give up any of those cars because the alternative is impossible, you have to accept the result that your speed will be different to those driving one. Finally, continue to ask this question to keep yourself accountable: Is this something I actually want to do or is this something I wish existed?
Thanks for tuning in!
Christie Lee Manning
House Of Jazz Company
@houseofjazzcompany