I believe that to be working independently in the creative field one needs to be highly organised, especially when you have a part-time or sometimes even a full-time job that isn’t related to your artistic career but allows you to pay your bills.
If you aren’t organised, time can easily slip through your fingers and this bastard never stops, you cannot recoup what you have lost. That is the only commodity we cannot buy back, no matter how much money we have. I noticed that after a few weeks of repeating certain activities every day, those activities become easier to do and become a part of the daily, weekly or monthly routine.
For years I was devoted to only making daily lists. However, recently I decided to change my approach and to divide my planning into daily, weekly, fortnightly, as well as yearly tasks. You know, operational, tactical, and strategic approach.
The activities/tasks I want to accomplish in a year I write down on post-it notes. One task per note. I pick up one of those yearly tasks’ post-it notes, and it stays with my workload throughout my daily and weekly assignments, until it’s done and finished. I never start on the new task, until the first one has been accomplished.
If I take on too much, I become too overwhelmed, which means that I’m distracted and start feeling anxious about having so much work to do and that is a slippery slope for my working and creative life.