7 Productivity Hacks for Creative Business Owners

Being a self-employed creative in this day and digital age often means that you need to have the skills of a website designer, graphic designer, marketer, sales person, blogger, social media manager, customer service guru as well as someone with a life outside of business, so this post is totally dedicated to every creative who gets super bogged down keeping on top of everything.

This list of 7 hacks are so easy to implement and are super handy for getting rid of distractions as well as increasing the number of things you can get done throughout the day.

1. Use a timer

This works every time! How many times have you logged into Twitter or Facebook to post a new piece of work then wasted an hour browsing? If you can’t even begin to count how many times this has happened to you, then you better get yourself an E.ggtimer and start allocating your time. This means time for creativity, right? (Bonus tip: Bookmark the timer)

2. Top 5 Tasks

Sit down for half and hour every week and decide what your 5 most important tasks of the week are, then break these down into smaller tasks. If you only have small tasks get them listed out of the way so you don’t have any little tasks festering at the back of your mind. If will free your mind and make you way more productive on the bigger things. Don’t forget to grab your free planning sheets below – these will help you with creating your top 5 and task breakdowns)

3. Turn off your notifications

Yes that may sound like a crazy one because you know, you might miss something, right? But what if you are in the middle of a brain wave or you are on an absolute roll with your project then your hourly email notification pops up to say you that you have just been hit by 47 emails or social media is going wild, you are likely to get distracted by it and lose that amazing bit productivity that you just had. So save the excitement of new emails and social media to allocated times of the day and you will find that you are flying with your creative work which is what it is all about, right?

4. Tidy your workspace

I am pretty sure everyone has been guilty of this one. You will feel much better if you put them away, plus you’ll gain a little bit of extra space inside that creative brain of yours as you will no longer have to look at the mess and procrastinate on getting it sorted out! Woohoo, high five!

5. Eat often and drink water

Take a time out and grab some food and have some water. This can be tough when you are really immersed in productivity so make sure you always keep some snacks and a drink in your workspace – that way your creative brain will be fed and you won’t need to worry about cooking until you actually feel like you can put down your paintbrush. (Please don’t put off eating for hours and hours though – a productive brain needs fuel)

6. Use a planner

This one goes hand in hand with point two. Organising yourself so that your creativity can flow easily can be tough but once you get into it, you will really start to fly. So… bunch smaller tasks together so that you can sweep them out of the way in one go (this is likely to be much faster than if you were to complete them spread out over a week or two) Plan ahead – Don’t just plan out your tasks as they come each week… Map out your 90-day goals, then organise them to fit into a monthly plan, then expand on your big goals week on week. This process will really make you think about what it is you want to achieve in the months ahead.

7. Make all of the above a habit!

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Hey, I’m Gem! The tech, systems and planner nerd behind Create & Bloom.

I work with creative business owners and entrepreneurs to craft, develop and crystallize an online presence and voice for their products and services as well as going deep into integrating systems to make their businesses run smoother.

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