Creating Structure When There Is None

Remember when you were too busy to focus on your work? Well – look what you’ve been gifted; nothing but time. Now the opposite seems to be true because you have too much time to get anything done.

This is the number one concern we’re hearing from our creatives these days. “I have too much time, I don’t know what to do with it.” — “It’s hard to stay motivated when my industry is at a complete standstill.” — “I don’t know how to reshape a plan that feels purposeless.”

These are all valid concerns but we know that this will come to an end and you may wonder why you didn’t take more advantage of this precious time you so rarely get.

The days can seem endless and a lack of productivity isn’t going to help the overall frustration and confusion around the situation.

As always, it’s up to us to generate the bulk of what we need to, in order to move things forward. The challenge before us in this moment is creating the structure to allow for us to find value and parameters in the time we have in order to get our work done.

Creating structure during a completely structure-less time is all about immovable appointments. Immovable appointments create expectations which allows for us to get into “work mode” because others are expecting of us. Subsequently, we create workflow habits in the midst of this “nothingness”.

To start, this could come in the form of scheduled:

• Yoga / Workout Classes
• Friends and Family Zoom Catch Ups
• Therapy Sessions
• Home Organizing

Eventually, we can move on to:

• Networking Meetups
• Self Producing Planning Sessions
• Budgeting
• Overall Strategic Planning

Now is not the time to work from a general massive to-do list. Now is the time to take that to-do list and schedule pieces of it for 11 AM on Tuesday, 2 PM on Thursday and 4:30 PM on Saturday. Waking up to an empty schedule leaving you to your own devices is a recipe for a lot of nothing.

This is a challenging time in all regards but I encourage you to embrace the structure you can create in order to self motivate and follow through with your business that still needs to be operating one way or another.

This habit, by the way, will only help you when we get back into action. Creating boundaries through structure for yourself is a helpful habit to create in and out of a worldwide pandemic.

Also by Artist’s Strategy:

Artists: When Money is Tied Into Your Validation

Freelance Life is One Giant Paintball Fight

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