How to Effortlessly Fit Your Creative Life Into Your Work/Life Balance

How to Effortlessly Fit Your Creative Life Into Your Work/Life Balance I get it. You’re tired.

You just clocked in overtime at 7-Eleven or Starbucks or some other lifeless, soul-sucking company. You look forlornly at your piano. Your notebook. Your easel.

Not today, y​ ou decide. ​I’m exhausted.

Familiar dialogue?

You’re not alone in this destructive cycle. But, you are capable of rising above it.

It is difficult to put in a long day at a mind-numbing service industry position and come home, sit down, and extend yourself even further. Especially because creative expression is an entity that doesn’t just require your time. It requires your soul, your emotions, your energy. Your livelihood feels as if it has just spent its entire day being stripped of its usefulness - it’s shine dampened.

I promise you this isn’t the case. You are a Creator, and that cannot be taken away by even the most inhumane of bosses or customers that attempt to darken your inner light.

You are more than that.

Understand that sacrifices have to be made. It is entirely up to you to decide what forces in your life are the most important and what can afford to be weeded out.

This requires discipline, cultivation, and sheer willpower.

If you are serious about your art as a vocation and not just a hobby, you have to treat it like one.

This means you must treat your creative time as a second job and be militant about it. This is difficult for people to do, because, after all, it’s not like you’ll be “fired.” However, what you WILL

miss out on is a projected future of success and abundance that is only there for you if you are willing to put in the effort.

So, we’ve decided you’re working two jobs. Now what? How do we balance ALL of this work?

You need to make time to take care of your body and your emotional well-being on top of all this.

You need to sleep, eat, exercise, socialize, make time for you, be effective at work AND be an effective Creator.

That is a LOT to ask. I totally understand the massive bomb I just dropped on you. Don’t worry, it IS manageable.

You need to have self-awareness of what your body can handle so that you are maximizing what you can get done during your waking hours. Do too much and you burn out. Do too little and you’ve most likely fallen into the self-destructive loop of tv, partying, gaming, or whatever it is that you do to kill valuable artistic time.

These four life skills can help you turn your potential into actionable, regimented goals.

Make a Schedule I repeat: MAKE A SCHEDULE. Spend just one day using a tool like Google Calendar to track how much time you’re spending doing what, no matter what it is. Track your eating times, your sleeping time, time you spend at work, the time you spend with friends, watching tv, whatever it is.

This way you have a clear idea of how your unstructured days usually go. Once you see how much time you spend doing what, you can restructure your schedule around your goals and see how you can most effectively utilize your time.

Everyone works differently, so scheduling takes trial and error to figure out the amount of time you need to accomplish things.

I know that if I’m sitting down to write, I like to have at least an hour blocked out for that, because an hour is enough time to get into creative flow, release something worthwhile, and come back out right before I naturally lose my focus.

If I’m making music, I need at least 3 hours. It takes time for me to set up my equipment, find my mindset, and produce anything significant.

Knowing little quirks in your personality and learning the best way that YOU work is the best way to utilize productivity.

It took a lot of trial and error to get to know my “worker personality” in order for me to discover how to work without feeling exhausted from burnout or unsatisfied from not giving myself enough time.

In fact, I still learn things about myself all the time. That’s why the only way to accomplish what you want to do is to do it. ​The “doing” is the most effective learning space.

Be Willing to Make Sacrifices This step was the hardest for me to do. My personal kryptonite is socialization.

I have a habit of NEVER saying no. Want to grab drinks? I’m there. Hit a rave? I’m there. Play video games with someone until our eyes bleed? I’m there.

Socializing less is the biggest sacrifice I made for my craft and it is difficult for me every time I say no. I socialize in little chunks of time at the end of the day and I make Saturday nights my party night. This is PLENTY in retrospect.

As humans, when we form habits, no matter how imbalanced, it’s hard to zoom out and see what we’re really doing. This is why Google Calendar is key because you can objectively see

how much time you’ve spent doing what. Think about the last time you binged playing video games for 12 hours and think about how much you could have gotten done INSTEAD. Time is a form of currency. You need to start treating it that way. Time really is money and we have a limited amount of time on earth. Use it wisely.

This is NOT to say you can’t have that time. You just have to find a BALANCE between work and life. Monitoring your time doesn’t necessarily mean restricting it right away. Having that self-awareness of what you’re spending time on will instigate change automatically because you are forming a clear conscious picture of what you’re doing, instead of living unconsciously.

Track Your Mental Health Most of the time the activities we reach for unconsciously tend to be anxiety/avoidant triggers.

Sometimes this can be connected with our art, which can be connected to our self-worth.

For a lot of artists, starting can be a BIG DEAL. Sitting down to write in the morning is the hardest part of my day, right up until I actually start. This is because the potential energy that is building up right before an artistic release can easily turn into anxiety, self-doubt, and negative thinking patterns. We’re afraid our art won’t be good. We are afraid to fail. We’re also afraid that we WILL be good and we WILL succeed and we don’t know what that feels like.

We are afraid of the changes these new habits will bring. All of this is normal. All of this is human. But you can’t allow these feelings to overpower you. You can sit with them, certainly, but in order to bring these feelings into the light of your conscious energy so that they can be transformed, you have to be in touch with yourself enough to know when those feelings are coming.

These feelings are just an uncontrolled form of your creative energy. You must harness and control these energies so they can be transformed into positive creative expression.

When these unchecked creative energies begin to build up as anxiety or fear, we like to numb it with something. Usually, it’s these brain-numbing activities that are eating most of your day.

The best solution is to work through it. Write even though you’re anxious about it. Draw through the fear.

I sometimes start my creative day with anxiety, but I guarantee you that it never ends that way.

In fact, creativity is an emotional outlet. That’s one of the biggest reasons why we do it. Anxiety likes to trick you into believing that it’s not worth it, but in reality, it is one of the quickest natural cures for anxiety.

Start Small and Work Your Way Up Start with an hour a day. Or 30 minutes. Or even 15 minutes. See how you feel.

It’s easier to build a new habit if you start small because your reptile brain knows it will be over quickly and is more likely to obey. Once you’re comfortable, you can start making that window of time larger until you are in a habit that feels comfortable.

Remember, this is all about YOU. There is no clean-cut formula. There is only a self-awareness and a determination to find a balance that works for you.

Others can only reveal their own path in the hope that things resonate and you get a positive takeaway. Only you can decide what amount of work feels good to you. I tend to put in long hours, but I have a slow and methodical workflow. Others like to work in quick bursts for shorter periods of time. The choice is yours in how you create the most efficient work.

The price that creatives pay for having the best jobs in the world is that they have to work twice as hard. It takes so much work to start building that success for yourself as you are simultaneously trying to pay bills and escape the service industry trap.

For me, eating healthy, sleeping well, and having a therapist is the foundation for my ability to work. When you feel good, things are a lot easier to accomplish. So, take care of yourself.

Taking care of yourself is taking care of your art. The more work you put in, the more you’re

going to get out of it. That’s why the most successful people say it’s work ethic, not just talent, that is the key to success.

Actionable goals get you where you need to be.

If you can stare at a screen for hours after work, or go out and grab drinks, you have the energy to make some time for art.

Don’t let limiting beliefs and negative self-talk get in your own way. After all, only YOU are in your own way. We like to blame society, we like to blame a bunch of other things, and sure those things suck, but all you have is the tools you are working with, no matter what they look like, so YOU make a choice to let those things stand in your way.

Rise up, master yourself, and tackle those goals! You are more than capable and you are good enough.