Achieve Your Art Goals in Just 3 Extra Hours a Week

“I don’t have enough time”

We all say it and sometimes it feels true, but honestly, it’s a bit more about intentional choices made every day to support what you most want, within the time that you have available. If you are ‘too busy’ do you really want it? (whatever it is) sometimes the answer is no.

That’s not to say you don’t have a lot on, but ‘too busy’ has become a catch all excuse. Being ‘too busy’ requires scrutiny if we ever want to get out of the “I don’t have enough time’ trap.

I spent a lot of time juggling a corporate career and an exhibiting artist career, and I even undertook some pretty intensive training on the topic of productivity. So much so I wrote a book for artists called Create Your Own Time: a guide for visual artists (you can find it in our shop here).

Artists always want more time. We do.

We are creative and the world – and our studios – are full to the brim of possibilities to explore.

And then there are all the non-art-making tasks that artists manage. One of the challenges is managing our own expectations.

“We Overestimate What We Can Do in a Day and Underestimate What We Can Do in a Lifetime”

I want to help you to find 3 hours a week to give to your art goals. OK. Now to be clear, that’s not 3 hours in total (surely your dreams deserve more than that) but it’s three hours more than you are giving to your art at the moment.
But if right now you are giving it Zero hours then lets at least start with three, deal? And push comes to shove 2 hours is enough to mnake a big difference when you spend those hours wisely.

Five Steps to Claim Back Time

Here is a process that will help you identify where your reality and your assumptions collide. All of the steps are important.

Step 1) Get super clear on your specific goals and priorities – this is so you can quickly choose which activities will get a Yes / No / Not Now in your day. (BTW I want to be a full time artist isn’t quite specific enough)

Step 2) Document EVERY single thing you do for one week, using a sheet of paper or an app. We are going to call this your time log.

Standing in front of the fridge deciding what to snack on – log those minutes

Scrolling social media – log those minutes
Updating your website – log those minutes
Going to the shops – log those minutes
Eating meals – log those minutes
Reading
Watching TV
Creating art
Contemplation in the studio
Watching cat videos
Driving your kids around
Mowing the lawn
Everything……

One other thing I challenge you to do is notice how much time you spend a) thinking about how you must do a certain thing and not doing it, and b) saying to yourself or others, outloud or inside your own mind – I am too busy, I am time poor and similar. These are both true time wasters. They also reinforce confirmation bias – what you already believe, and being ‘too busy’ can be a great subconcious procrastinating excuse to avoid things that are scare – resistance is rife.

Step 3) Review your time log. There should be a healthy combination of time devoted to doing as well as being

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. – Annie Dillard

– Are you spending the time you need on your goals and priorities?
– Where are spending time that you didn’t realise? How much time does that add up to?
– Check the things you do that aren’t either helping you to achieve your goals or are not interesting, necessary, inspirational, or educational.

(BTW necessary includes family needs and self-care, not just the art things). How much time have you spent on those?
– Check things you do that you don’t really have to do and you really don’t like to do – how many of those things do you let sneak into your day?
– What are you spending time on that you could easily let go of? How much time does that add up to?
– How many times did you unnessecarily put the wants and needs of others before your own?

By now you’ll have a clearer idea of where you may have opportunities to redirect your time.

Step 4) Schedule all the non-negotiable, necessary, priority things into your month, week and days. Schedule them to fit YOUR lifestyle and working preferences.

Step 5) Remove – check all the things on the list you haven’t scheduled and make a plan to eliminate, reduce, outsource or automate as much as you can of the rest.

Bravo! It is very likely that you will have found three hours a week of time savings. Three hours a week equals less than 30 minutes a day – 25.7 minutes to be exact.

This might sound like a no-brainer, but when was the last time you really checked in? Trust me, you will always find something from this exercise.

Question: What changes can you make to give you three hours a week to devote to your dreams?

If you want more tips and advice, grab my eBook and use coupon code Time5 to get it for only $5AUD

And here is the bigger question – What will you do with those three hours to achieve your dreams?

If you want to share what you will do with the time you find, comment below or send me an email

Now that I’ve shared a tip, can I plug our program and how two hours a week can make all the difference?

The Artists Business Lounge Success System Program
Have you been putting off getting all the business tasks organised for your art career?

Does the idea of ‘business skills’ give you a headache, or sound like a drag?

What if I told you that learning and applying business skills can be fun and that it can help you to achieve your art goals in as little as 3 extra hours a week?

Here’s how to do it.

1) Join The Artists Business Lounge Success System program
2) Devote 1 hour a week for the coaching calls and Q&A calls (alternating weeks)
3) Commit at least 1 hour a week to working through course content (see you can even do this if you can only find 2 hours a week)
4) Put the things you learn into practice during the regular time that you have already committed to your art career.
5) Spend the extra 1 hour connecting, reading, more time on the courses – whatever you like

Do this and you will have greater clarity, be more focused on your plan and more effective in your use of time for just 3 more hours. Plus you will be able to shortcut trial and error to get to your goals so much quicker and we will help you eliminate time-wasting admin.

And the fun part?
The artists inside The Artists Business Lounge Success System program tell me they have fun! Just look at the testimonials on our website to see.

Here’s part of what Rachael Lee, one of our first participants, had to say:

“I find the ongoing support from Amanda and the rest of the participants in the lounge via regular zoom meetings fun, very encouraging and it keeps me motivated. I have learnt skills to help with my mindset, setting goals, prioritising what’s important, creating new habits and learning new technologies.

And Peter Brook just shared that he was able to schedule 6 whole weeks of social posts in one sitting – using what he learned from our program.

Fun? Three hours? 6-weeks of posts in one day? That sounds too good to be true!

Well of course you can’t achieve big goals if you ONLY spend two hours in total on your goals, so here are the caveats:

– I assume you already do some kind of art business admin – socials, websites, writing applications or similar – that we can help you be more efficient with. So some of this time will be exchanging what you do.
– If you do no art business at all – nada, zero, zilch – and are simply ignoring it, you will need to build in more time. Sorry I am not a magician.
– If you don’t already spend any time making your art, you are going to need some more time for that – you can’t achieve art goals without making art. #truth
– Some weeks you’ll need more implementation time e.g. setting up a new automated system will take you time at first – there’s always a learning curve – before you can reap the benefits. But you get to decide when to fit that in, and you can skip course content to a later week.
– If you want to, you CAN absolutely spend more time in the lounge. You can do the courses at your own pace, there are plenty of articles to read, recordings to watch, and you can chat with other artists too.
– If you want to clump time together and have weeks off, that’s OK too because the calls are available on replay whenever you want, and the course content is accessible in your own time 24/7.

See? Just three extra hours a week more than you spend today.
Click here to find out more about the program. Join us and make your career dreams a reality.