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Tasks are waiting, requirements need to be mastered and time is short. Time management can then be the answer. However, many creative, impulsive people have their hard work and hardships with their solid structures. Time, therefore, for a bit of creative time management. After all, it is not just a matter of standing up to its tasks. In addition, your creativity will thank you so won free space.
Creativity and time management do not seem to go together. Creators are in chaos and time managers are completely organized.
In addition, indeed there is a spark of truth in all clichés in this statement: Creative, that is, associative, imaginative, impulsive people often struggle with traditional time management methods. Many people cannot begin with the ubiquitous lists and tables any more than with a meticulously planned daily routine.
However, there is no reason now to think that you are unable to do so or to miss out time management. It just looks a bit different.
Do not try to make out what you are not, to turn yourself into an accurate planner if you throw these plans off again. Better, use your creativity and look for your own solutions whenever possible.
Tip 1: Analyze your handling of time.
Time is not a constant quantity, but subjective sensation. Each one of us perceives his time differently, judges it differently. For some, it may be a mediocre disaster to need more than an hour a day for their mail. For the other, it may be a well-spent time in interpersonal communication.
That is why not everyone is able to get a grip on time management. Going nuts because colleague X gets his mail done faster than you cannot be the answer.
Instead, observe yourself and analyze how you deal with time. Only where you are dissatisfied or for example, professionally bound you should look at your time management and act. Not in competition with others or because that is just fashion.
Then do not just look for time-eaters or optimization options with yourself. Be aware of people who handle their time differently than you. Learn from the differences and creatively transfer them to your own time management. Adapt the new impulses to your own preferences and needs.
Tip 2: Concertize and anchor your goals.
Time and goals are closely related. With clear goals, you can better judge your tasks, separate the important from the unimportant, throw out unnecessary ballast and thus save time. So the more specific your goals, the better your time management.
In this sense, harness your imagination and view your tasks and goals from a different perspective.
For example, imagine yourself hovering above your targets like an eagle. Time closer, sometimes further away. You can thus change the focus once more sharply go into detail, once a large-scale overview control. On the other hand, imagine, you would look back at your goals at a distance of ten years. Did they help you with your wishes? Do they fit with you and your life pattern? And so on.
Then go one step further and anchor your goals in your subconscious. For example, you can repeat it several times just before going to sleep, so that you can process it subconsciously while you sleep. Alternatively, try to give your goals a visual form. We can better keep pictures in mind and use them as a highlighter because of abstract formulations.
For example, if you want to win a 100-meter run, then you will form a picture of how you, with your arms up, are the first to cut through the target band. Keep burning this image into your subconscious mind. Until you can easily see it in your mind’s eye at all times and then be able to assess your tasks, your time account.
Tip 3: Visualize your tasks.
Not only shape your goals for pictures, but also your tasks. The effect is the same. Various aids can help you:
Capture tasks with Mind Map
Keep more tasks that are complex in one. This way, you can not only structure and structure tasks in a meaningful way by drawing subtasks as branches of the actual task in the middle of the map. Above all, you can visualize this mind map as a whole, as a whole. At the same time, you can keep track of relationships and target individual tasks.
Create with Post-It’s to-do lists
Use Post-Its to bring life to your to-do lists. Write each subtask on a post-it and stick it visibly on, for example, a pin board or a large piece of paper.
First of all, this is how you record everything here at a glance. Secondly, you can also push the small notes back and forth flexibly, restructure and adapt your tasks repeatedly.
Not to mention, you can literally throw away your tasks once you have done them. If you feel like me, then this haptic process, meaning the meaningful crumpling of the notes, is a lot of fun.
Label with symbols
Another variation to escape the list and allow a bit of “creative chaos”: Write your tasks on a piece of paper in a disorderly way and then number them out. You can pick colorful colors and label them with icons to show the order and priority of the tasks. It also stimulates your visual thinking and creativity without losing its effect.
Tip 4: Plan your tasks generously, with room for free phases.
Too tight task planning can give you the feeling of being locked up, of having no freedom. Everything is planned where should the fun of the variety, of surprising moments come from, that the creative spirit loves so much?
Therefore, work with timelines rather than fixed dates. Do not force yourself to post at 9 o’clock in the morning, just because that is what your task list says. Keep rough time windows such as “mornings post”. Then you are flexible enough to do a little different every day and yet get the job done properly.
Following the same pattern, you can also handle larger tasks and goals.
For example, I think that I keep my projects in a logical order. At what point in time I will address it now, I will leave it open. Whenever I have a free moment, the next step is on it.
If you only formulate the goals in this way, or at best plan for the long-term with monthly and annual goals, you increase your scope and have enough space for one or the other spontaneous element.
Do not plan your entire time, but consciously incorporate free phases. For example, during these hours, you can work on a “creative lover’s activity” that any time management expert would recommend dropping them into the trashed trash.
Productivity is not measured by activity. The important thing is that your head is free and your creativity is stimulated. Then flashes of inspiration and productive results come from alone.
Extra Tip 1: Use this freedom to put an idea into action as soon as it appears. New ideas usually bring with them considerable energy potential and enthusiasm. To put them off then would make some of it fizzle out.
Beware: This is best done only with ideas whose impact you can overlook. That is, with ideas whose consequences are not too risky and therefore need to be tested.
Extra tip 2: Use your creativity and try to combine your activities as meaningfully as possible. So you not only avoid idle or “loss of friction” when you are completely different tasks follow each other. Sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone and get more out of your tasks.
Tip 5: Give yourself aimless, relaxed moments.
Do not just budget free phases. During your normal working hours, treat yourself to moments in which you aimlessly dangle your thoughts or enjoy a little game. Close your eyes and dream, hunt grouse or whatever.
Both help you to relax and relieve stress. With the result: Those who can work stress-free can also work concentrated, accumulate to their maximum and save time. In addition, anyone who allows distracted moments can let his subconscious voice and benefit from its higher processing potential.
For tasks that you consciously brood over, your subconscious mind can have long ago taken apart and solved. Only that you did not notice much of it dogged into a problem.
Tip 6: Experiment.
If you cannot cope with classic time management tips, then do what many creative people like to do: just try something out. Experiment. Be playful and not under the dictates of discipline.
An example: For some unknown reason you cannot handle a follow-up folder. The good piece rests in your roll container, and the papers it should pick up pile up on your desk. You are also a made-up wine lover.
So how about this: Put a small bottle shelf, label it (alphabetically, numerically, “still to do” and more), roll up your papers and fill your new task shelf with them. From now on, every grasp on your tasks will give you a quiet pleasure.
Look for new ideas and trust your instincts. That is what you can do. So use it.
Tip 7: Keep balance.
Try to find the right size for you. Use systematic and tight time management where it can be beneficial. Let the reins of spontaneous reactions and a bit of chaos release the reins where they can do no harm.
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Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash