On Inspiration: Make The Time

My out-of-office message reads: My office days are Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Monday through Wednesday, I’m in the studio creating. I’ll return your email at the end of the week unless it is urgent. If this is time sensitive, please contact my team.

I set it a few years ago, and initially I was surprised that it would come up in conversation. People admire the boundary, wonder how I do it, or say they want to do that too.

First, I should say, it doesn’t happen this way every week. There’s an ebb and flow to my business that means sometimes I’m more head down in business strategy and planning, end-of-year and mid-year being prime moments. Other times, a special project like my book takes my focus away from my visual art practice. So, I balance what I say yes to. It must be something I feel passionate about. Then, of course, there are school breaks, a pressing work issue, team member transitions, work trips, and photo shoots. But my creative time is a priority, and despite these other things, I want the routine. I’ve worked hard to create it. I give up other things to make it happen.

I’ve had a lot of bumps with this recently, so it feels like the perfect time to revisit how I made my routine happen and why, so I can reset again. Most of all, this is about planning my days in a way that allows me to feel the slower pace I want.

The biggest challenge in making this happen wasn’t—and isn’t—external; it’s internal. I often feel pulled by everyone else’s needs and want to say yes, to help. Other times, the part of me that worries is loud, and it’s hard to let go. And that is real. Sometimes those things need to be prioritized. But more than that, it can be tempting to do what feels easy in a day—does it feel productive to answer all your emails and get to inbox zero? Checking things off a list can be incredibly satisfying. But spending a day working in the studio and not making anything you like? Not “finishing” a piece and coming up against frustration? Spending a lot of time just looking? Creative work—and I’d say this is true of deep thinking, planning, and strategy work—doesn’t always have an easy timeline. On top of that, it doesn’t move in a linear way, so your finished result isn’t always what you want. But it is essential if you’re going to do work that makes a difference.

This makes me think about the book The One Thing. I read it years ago, but there are some great little graphic drawings in it, and one stuck with me. It’s of two zigzagging lines, one regular and balanced, the other wider and deeper. The former represents your personal life, and the latter represents your important work. The lesson is that you need to regularly tend to your personal life and allocate deep time for important projects. You aren’t going to make progress on deep work by just answering emails, scrolling on your phone, and completing easy tasks.

This seems somewhat basic, but it’s not. Our culture doesn’t make this…what’s the word? Clear? It’s more, more, more—and faster, too. But it doesn’t feel abundant. It feels rushed. You need to slow down to recognize what you have and take it in. That feels abundant.

Creating a system or routine has helped me tap into that good feeling and do better work. I’d love to help you do this too, so I want to take you through how I started doing it. Because the biggest challenges with carving out this solid time to do your work are internal, the first thing you need to do is understand specifically what you want so you can make it happen. By specific, I mean clear so that you understand what you need and why you need it.

For me, the seed for this came at a time when I felt underwater. I had been struggling postpartum. I was good at telling myself I was okay when I wasn’t. I looked for things there were answers to, things that could be “tasks” to do rather than feeling how I was feeling. Right around when COVID hit, I finally realized I really needed some help, and I started therapy. I also started thinking about what I wanted my life to look like because, frankly, it was not working. Somewhere along the way, I started to identify a lot with the word entrepreneur and not artist. Motherhood cracks you open, and as you put yourself back together again, you realize you’re just not the same person anymore. (Side note: I feel a lot more connected to my childhood self now than I did in the years leading up to becoming a mother.) I started journaling a lot about what I wanted my life to look like—scratch that, feel like. I’m very visually oriented, which is no surprise, and I believe in the benefits of the aesthetically beautiful, but I pay a lot more attention now to how things make me feel. This feels vulnerable to share, but the reflection and journey is an important part of making change stick.

What became clear was that I needed more creative time—which, funnily enough, I was finding because of the pandemic. On days where my husband watched out daughter, I went into the studio solo, walking 30 or 40 minutes to get there, and spent time creating alone. When I realized how much I missed this solitude for creative work, I talked with my business coach, Holly Howard, about it. She suggested setting aside three studio days a week, and I honestly didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think I could be that unavailable to my team. I loved the idea of three days because it takes me time to get into that creative work. Sometimes, I can spend the day just warming up. Other times, I can sink right in quickly.

It’s one thing to outline that idea, but I had to “systematize it”, as Holly says. I worked through the structure with her guidance. I landed on Monday to Wednesday because I need a few days in a row to find my flow. Putting them at the beginning of the week was important too; it emphasized that I was prioritizing that work over the day-to-day tasks that other team members had covered. During an ideal studio day, I do not respond to normal, business-related communication via email, Monday.com our project management platform, or Slack channels. Instead, I plan to check in with the team around 3 p.m. before I head out around 4 p.m. to get my daughter. I find that this little check-in comes at a time when I’ve naturally wrapped up mentally with the creative energy of that day and need a break. That said, I do still struggle with being offline. Then, Thursday and Friday are my “office days.” On Thursday mornings, I review work that I need to give feedback on. I have calls and meetings these days, many of them regularly scheduled. This year, we moved our team meeting to 3 p.m. on Monday. Because I don’t typically run them, this works for me. It is also a much better flow for the team, and there’s that balance.

One of the things I had to do to make the studio days happen was figure out what support I needed. Holly’s practical advice was to look at my job spec (yes, I have one written out even for myself) and team’s job specs and identify what might need to be added, clarified, or changed on theirs and my own. When did I want to receive work that I would need to review? What deadlines and timelines might need to change because of that? I saw places where I could take my time back. For example, reviewing work in a bigger chunk versus constantly was more efficient. For day-to-day sales and order fulfillment, I realized that I had very little to weigh in on anymore. Questions needed to go to my two VPs, and they could let me know if there was anything they truly needed me for. I found three areas that still require me and come up on a day-to-day basis, and we looked closely at those:

Product Design and Development: When it comes to design and the products we offer, I am really doing this myself. I don’t have anyone else on my internal team who helps me with the design work, and honestly, that’s how I like it now. I do need help with the development calendar, and that’s where Operations now takes the lead. I trained our team members on the ins and outs of our vendors, how I like to structure my design process, and where I need or want feedback from the team.

Custom orders: This is an area we can still refine. Due to limited bandwidth, we’ve done less here. There are a lot of complexities. Some requests might be quick and simple, but others, like recoloring or rescaling a pattern, can take hours. It really depends on the artwork and production method. It’s not straightforward because we work with many different vendors. For now, we prioritize bigger orders and clients with whom we’ve developed strong relationships.

Creative Marketing + Graphic Design: I still review all of our emails, website updates, product photography, and basically anything visual before it’s released. My team is amazing, but I’ll always have comments. It’s the collaboration that creates something better. Figuring out our calendar and cadence for feedback was important. We use a Monday.com board as a content calendar. It helps us stay on track, since I like to review things at least a week in advance. It helps my team work ahead too. The process is still a bit organic. We’ll continue to refine it further as we grow.

All of this happened a few years ago, and so it’s natural that I’m rethinking what it needs to look like now, for where we are today and where we’re going.

Every job and business is different, so it’s key to identify which areas are stopping you from taking this time or stopping your team from moving forward. Then, you work to find systems for making those areas smoother. I’m sure there are other areas I still need to work out, and I imagine this will always be the case. But I try to remember that this is the most important thing for me and my company. I am so fortunate to have an amazing team who are excellent at their jobs. When I’m doing my job, it enables each one of them to do their job better and me to be more clear-headed when giving feedback.

Like all things in life, this is a practice. You can slowly drift from systems and schedules you put in place. I still struggle with finding the right balance of involvement needed in the day-to-day of the business and the quiet needed for my creative work. The business needs change with the seasons, as does my personal life. That’s part of growth. But, I’ve been feeling off track, and so I’m looking ahead at my schedule and how I can come back to this routine again. Right now there are a few big projects I need to wrap up, and I know the structure of the school year will help as well.

I firmly believe that making time for your work is one of, if not the most, important aspects of staying inspired. I hope this has given you some ideas for how to make more time for the work that’s important to you. I’m here if you have questions or ideas you’d like to share.