Importance of time management

We all live our lives to an extent under the eye of the clock, and the importance of time management cannot be underestimated. Artists have a tendency to see themselves as a race apart from the norm, when it comes to managing certain aspects of their lives, as if the rules of everyday living somehow do not, or cannot be applied to their own life situations. This fallacy, like other forms of erroneous thinking can be fatal to your work and totally counter productive.

A couple of good time management tips learnt and integrated into the fabric of your everyday life can reap invaluable artistic dividends. The time management tips that I advocate here might be considered a less conventional reading of the importance of time management, because they are not geared toward hard productivity, but rather aimed at ensuring that attention is also given to the other important aspects of life, which ultimately feed into your art.

Time management tips

The three time management tips I’m about to outline make little sense without first a understanding of what exactly is time and how do we ‘use’ it. Its probably stating the obvious when I say that time is not a ‘thing’ as such that we can capture and hold and manipulate, but the language we use around the concept would reasonably lead to that conclusion and our language on a subject such as the importance of time management, does dictate how we form our thoughts. So let’s clear up our language first as a prerequisite to how we understand time.

Time as Gift

Instead of relating to time as a tool which we use, I prefer to call it a gift which is freely given. We are all given this gift equally; no one has more or less of the gift than you or I. We have done nothing to earn it, and as with most gifts the more we attempt to hold on to it and ‘own’ it, the more our lives become frustrated. The old adage that the greatest gift that we ourselves can give is our time rings very true in this context.

So my first tip is to change how you relate to time, understand it as gift, a very valuable gift which only you can share with another.

Time as Productive

Another fallacy which is even more prevalent about our lives is that we have to have something hard and solid and real to show for our time. If there is nothing to show, well then its obvious we have just wasted our time? As artists, this can be a very dominant stream of thought which can actually block a lot instinctual creativity.

We are tempted to believe that we have to at all times be creating and manifesting things, or else we are doing nothing at all. We forget that part of the whole process is sometimes taking the time to sit and be quiet, to refill the well that we are always attempting to draw from as if its some endless reservoir that doesn’t need replenishing.

The second tip I would suggest is to not equate time with hard and fast production. Just because you managed to start and complete two paintings one week, doesn’t mean you can do that at a whim every week, and beat yourself up if you fail this standard. Art of real integrity and feeling doesn’t come off a treadmill, a lot of living and waiting and doing other things make up a work of art. Treat time as a friend not a slave that has to be brow beaten into service.

Present Moment time

The third and final unconventional time management tip which I’m going to impart is the importance of making peace with the fact that all you’ll ever have, in terms of time, is the present moment . The irony being that how you live this present moment dictates how your next moment is going to unfold and so on ad infinitum.

We as humans, it seems are programmed to be continually planning ahead, and our minds and thoughts are constantly playing out future scenarios, or reliving a past which is now gone. As a result we miss out on a lot of what is going on right now around us which can lead to a sense that time has passed us by. We were doing something else when life was going on.

When it comes to art and art making this can lead to a feel of emotional bankruptcy. We can all relate to, for instance, trying to find the time to paint, and when we get that time and are standing in front of the easel we’re off doing something else in our head, sorting out all the problems we temporarily left behind.

Finally, these three tips tie in together. In relation to time and time management, all we have is the present moment, each moment is a gift, and don’t feel you always have to have something to show, in order to prove that you’ve earned that gift, just learn to enjoy what your doing when your doing it. Admittedly not easy, but that’s what we journey toward.