How to design a creative day

Creative work is not like regular work. You can’t just do it all day long.

I’m sure some of my fellow creatives are thinking: actually, I?do?do creative work all day long.

Nope, you don’t. You do a few hours of true creative work (if you’re lucky), then the rest of the day is lighter work that doesn’t require much creative thought.

Creative work is brain-intensive, ultra-demanding cognitive work.?You can only do it for 1, 2, 3, maybe 4 hours per day. Everybody’s different. And every day is different. Some days you’ll be capable of more or less.

And yes, you can crank day and night for a while. But not consistently, not sustainably.

Once you understand this you’ll understand those periods in the day when you’re struggling to write or solve tricky problems. Your creative fuel tank is empty.

The key to designing a creative workday is scheduling your creative work in your premium work slot, then scheduling everything else around that.

Here’s how to do that.

1) Figure out what your creative work is

This isn’t necessarily obvious. For me, I make videos but my creative work isn’t just “making videos.” Lots of video work doesn’t require much creativity. For me, the true creative work is writing and creative direction. Video editing is (mostly) not creative work. I can do that all day long. That’s craft.

2) Figure out when your best time is to do creative work and timeblock it

When are you most creative? When are you most focused??This shouldn’t require much thought. You know the answer. Schedule your creative work then. Time block it. This is private time when you are not disturbed and can focus.

For me, I do creative work in the morning and sometimes at the end of the day. I used to be a night owl and did most of my creative work past sunset. That’s how I made the original Everything is a Remix. I had a day job so it was evenings, weekends, and whatever else I could grab.

3) The rest of your work day is regular work

The whole rest of your day is regular work.?This includes chores like fixing problems, doing technical stuff, proofing, admin work, filing things, replying to emails and messages, and more. But it also includes seemingly creative work that is more straightforward in nature. For me, that’s stuff like video editing, photo editing, and sourcing media. I do regular work from about noon to 5 pm or so.

It’s as simple as that.

1. Determine what constitutes your true creative work
2. Schedule this work during your most productive hours
3. Allocate the rest of your day to less demanding tasks

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