8 Ways to Find Balance Between Work and Creativity
You know the feeling. You’ve worked hard all day —either at your regular job, with your business, or looking after the kids —and you’ve got a little bit of energy left. You sit down with your laptop and try to switch into “creative mode” so that you can tackle those big projects that you’ve been putting off for a while now.
But instead of making progress, you soon find your attention wandering as you desperately battle to keep your eyes open.
“It’s not happening tonight,” you sigh to yourself as you collapse into bed, resolving to try again tomorrow.
Here’s the thing, though. Those creative pursuits —may be things that you enjoy, but they also require a tremendous amount of energy and focus. For this reason, you can’t just save them up until you have a spare moment and then try to rush them through —instead, you’re better off carving out time when you’re at your most energetic and creative.
Making time for creativity isn’t always the easiest thing. Arranging for childcare or planning a day to work away from home can be a chore even at the best of times, but it’s absolutely worth doing. After all, those creative pursuits are things that make you come alive. And often, they’re exactly what’s required to move the needle forward in our business as well.
So let’s explore some ways you can strike a balance between everyday work and creativity —and see how you can ensure that those fulfilling projects actually get done.
1 - Identify Your Peak Creative Hours
Creative work is inspirational —but it also requires a great deal of energy. To help you perform at your best, you’ll want to identify when —exactly, you’re at your creative peak. When do you feel most inspired? When do those big ideas break through? When do you find the creative work comes most easily?
To find that time, try an experiment for a few weeks—and have a journal handy. Work a couple early mornings before the kids wake up. Try a few afternoons and test some late-night sessions too —just not all at once!
Pay close attention to how you felt during each work session. When did you feel most inspired? When did the big ideas start to percolate? When were you most productive?
Once you’ve determined the best time for you, claim it for yourself and your business.
2 - Create A Productive Environment
Want to function at your best? And be more creative? Then you need an environment that inspires creativity. And no, that abandoned desk and uncomfortable chair parked in the lonely corner of the room doesn’t count.
I recommend adopting a Marie Kondo approach. We all know she’d suggest creating a space that sparks joy (creativity in this case) in an environment that’s free from distractions.
So start by clearing out the clutter. It sounds overly simplistic, but when you have visual space —that’s not blocked by a mess, you’ll be able to think more clearly. Remove anything that doesn’t give you joy or worse, that reminds you of tasks you’ve neglected. Introduce things that inspire or motivate you, whether it’s a comfortable chair, noise-canceling headphones, a few plants, special lighting, or your favorite music; anything you need to get into that creative zone and do your best work.
3 - Be Okay With Imperfection
Yeah, sure, perfectionism can sometimes be a good thing. Like if you happen to be a surgeon or a professional golfer. But for the rest of us, striving for perfectionism in everything we do is futile, not to mention unnecessary and exhausting. It can also stifle your creativity and hold you back.
Why? Because when you’re worried about getting everything just right, it’s hard to move forward. And it’s even harder to start your own business or make decisions that’ll allow you to grow your company.
The desire to be perfect explains why women in business only apply for jobs we feel we’re 100% qualified for, while men apply if they meet just 60% of the hiring criteria.
Ladies, I think it’s about time we gave ourselves permission to be imperfect.
Try adopting a get ‘er done mindset. Allow that first draft to be good enough or even sort of crummy. Accept that you can’t make dinner on those days when you’re working. And of course, remove the concept of mom guilt from your life altogether. You’ll find it liberating and your business —and family life, will be better for it. Remember, done is better than perfect.
4 - Eat The Frog First
Eat a frog, grab a bull by its horns, the early bird gets the worm —why does seizing the day involve harassing animals?
Anyway, Mark Twain is credited with this bit of inspiration: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Of course, your “frog” is your most important —or challenging, task on your to-do list. Deal with it before you’re pulled in a million different directions. After you get that out of the way, everything else will seem a million times easier. And you’ll be able to relax a bit, knowing that your day will only get better from there on out. Save that valuable energy that you’d waste dreading “the frog,” and channel it into your creative pursuits.
Try choosing your frog the night before and decide how you’ll reward yourself once it’s been taken care of. Whether it’s a vanilla latte, some chocolate, or ten minutes to unwind and listen to your favorite tracks, choose something that brings you joy and a jolt of motivation to tackle your next task.
5 - Create A Good Morning Routine
Whether you’re someone who leaps out of bed before the alarm goes off or you sometimes hit snooze, establishing a morning routine will help you to have a more productive and positive day.
The key is finding a routine that works for your mind, body, and lifestyle. Ideally, it should be something that would work on weekends too. Start by writing down the five things you have to do every morning to be ready to take on your day, such as:
Wake up at 6:00 A.M.
10 minutes of stretching
Healthy breakfast, coffee
Five minutes of journaling, meditation, or reading
Shower and get dressed
Your ideal routine might look very different and that’s okay. What’s important is that you create a ritual that works for you. Try a new routine for a few weeks and monitor what it does for your energy levels and productivity. If it’s not working, mix it up. Make adjustments until you find something that will allow you to get the best of both worlds, enabling you to get enough rest, feel great, and function at your absolute best –giving you the energy you need to channel into creative pursuits.
6 - Be Okay With Sacrifice And Boundaries
Next up, if you want to find more time and energy —then you’re going to have to be okay with sacrifice and boundaries.
Learning to say no is one skill I recommend you perfect early on, particularly when it comes to protecting your workday boundaries and setting aside time for creative pursuits.
But first, you need to reframe what it means to say no to someone. It’s not about rejecting another person; it is about protecting your time. It’s about respecting the sacrifices you’ve made for the dream you’re working your butt off to achieve.
It can be hard to say no to friends. But once you learn how to do it respectfully and with conviction, it’s actually pretty easy. Your best option is to respond using the phrase “I don’t” instead of “I can’t.”
I’ll show you what I mean:
Say a friend invites you to lunch on Tuesday, smack in the middle of your workday. You might say, “Sorry, I can’t meet you for lunch today.” She might question why, feel concerned, or perhaps suggest another day.
But by saying, “Sorry, I don’t meet for lunch during the workweek,” you’re giving a respectful, clear, and confident response, one that can’t be disputed. It’s just not something you do. It’s that simple.
Learning how to say no with conviction makes those instances you’re able to say yes even more enjoyable. And know that all these small sacrifices you’re making now will pay huge dividends later.
7 - Find The Time
Yes, life is busy and full of distractions. But, here’s the hard-hitting reality, if we have no time, it’s usually because we’re prioritizing the wrong things.
Sure, there are exceptions to this: maybe we’ve just landed a new job, or had a new baby, or entered into a particularly busy season of life where we haven’t been able to create any sort of routine. But by and large, one of the main reasons we’re always short on time is because we’re not prioritizing correctly. We’re spending time on tasks that don’t really move the needle in any way, while attempting to juggle it all and hold everything together. But it’s important to be able to identify tasks that you need to be devoting your time and attention to, while outsourcing all those other things.
Stuck and not sure what you should be focusing your attention on? A small business coach can help you to identify areas you should be giving your full attention to and ones that you’re better off outsourcing –helping you to grow your business.
(Shameless plug: I’d love to chat with you if you’re feeling stuck. My passion is helping other female entrepreneurs to find fulfillment, happiness, and success in their life and business. I’d love to share strategies and ideas that will help YOU to get on the right track. Please reach out if you’d like to get started.)
Check out Into the Wild Podcast #32: Distracted to Delighted: How to say NO without guilt with Melanie Sodka
8 - Don’t Lose Focus
Sometimes we prioritize the wrong things –but often, our energy is wasted by pure and simple distractions. This usually happens when we’re tired or feeling especially drained.
Like when we stumble into an internet rabbit hole. It starts innocently enough. You hop on to check the weather to see if an evening walk is in the cards. But you see a headline about a tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean and you wonder if it might affect your upcoming travel plans. So naturally, you click on it and read the whole article. At the bottom of the page, there’s a gallery of photos from the last hurricane that made landfall. So you click through them all —argh! How did this happen?
Now it’s not the end of the world, but all of those minutes here and there add up to hours—hours you could harness to knock out critical tasks to get your business going. It’s time to reclaim this lost time. Even if it means disabling your internet connection!
One helpful technique if you’re doing long-haul work over the day is the Pomodoro technique. With this approach, you work for 25 minutes, then take a break for five minutes. After four “pomodoros” have passed, you take a 15-20 minute break. Short, frequent breaks will keep you focused and your mind sharp —saving you from burning out, becoming exhausted, and feeling tempted to succumb to mindless distractions.
It’s less about finding time to be creative, and more about making time for it. Don’t put all of those ideas and creativity on the back burner —it’ll only leave you feeling frustrated –like you’re not leading your most fulfilled life. Instead, look to reclaim your time —and energy, without guilt, and start channeling it into your creative pursuits; those things that you feel you were meant to do. I guarantee that you’ll feel better for it!
Share some of the ways YOU’VE made time for your creative pursuits. How have you achieved more balance between everyday work and creativity?
Header image credit: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
