How to Get a Bird's-Eye View of Your Creative Workload
I'm taking a course called Building a Second Brain (BASB) course with my colleagues and it’s changed the way I approach my schedule and creative projects. I wanted to share some insight and an activity from the course because I love to help my fellow creatives prioritize and prevent creative burnout. (I’ve also written about this recently.)
BASB is ultimately about developing processes and systems that work for you, and being able to always know at a glance what your bandwidth is and where you're spending your time and energy. It's not about over-optimizing or over-organizing your life and day. In fact, it’s making it MUCH easier for me to turn down offers for work, which is something I have struggled with a lot in the past.
One main takeaway I've learned is the idea of a "project" and redefining what that means for me and my creative and personal workload. Lately I’ve been studying the PARA system as a method for organizing, well, everything. In the PARA acronym, the P stands for Projects — but in summation, a project is something that both can't be completed in one sitting (so it's not a "task" or simple to-do) but also has a specific end date or time frame (so it's not a recurring thing that goes on indefinitely) and likely has some subtasks within it that need to be completed for the project to be resolved. Ultimately, a Project list is not a to-do list but rather a current overview of what's on your agenda.
For example, the recent April Poetry Challenge was one of my Projects from February through April. It had a set end date but wasn’t something I could complete in one sitting. There were also numerous tasks that had to be completed for the project, including:
designing the graphic assets
creating the booklet
scheduling the month’s worth of emails
updating the email list every day
etc.
Now that the month is over, I can take that Project off of my list and move it to my Archive. That way, if I want to reference anything from it — like use the same graphic templates for a new writing challenge — I can still access it but it’s not hanging out on my to-do list haunting me. This gives me plenty to work with so I don’t have to start from scratch for the next creative challenge. I did this once already by using the Flash Fiction February asset templates for the April Poetry Challenge. (Stop starting from scratch — read Principle #3 there — and give your brain a break by re-purposing what you’ve already created.) It was important that I documented that as a Project because I needed to factor those tasks and must-dos into my schedule.
In the course, the instructor recommends not having more than 10 projects at once. PARA is for organizing both professional AND personal tasks, so personal tasks should be included in this. Although 10 is not a hard-and-fast metric that you absolutely have to stick to, it's definitely at the higher end of what we're capable of doing well.
I'll give you an example of my current projects:
NDA book project (End date: May 2020)
2020 Taxes (End date: April 2020)
BASB course (End date: May 2020)
Cotivation course (taking alongside BASB) (End date: June 2020)
Capstone project: Identifying Your Creative Heartbeat (End date: June 2020)
Tales from the Mists Season 3 (End date: May 2020)
RPG Writer Workshop 2020 courses (End date: December 2020)
Minor medical procedure (End date: May 2020)
Flash Fic Feb (May 2020) (Although this ended in February, I still have an outstanding task to finish before I can remove it from the Projects)
GLOBAL PANDEMIC (End date: ???)
And, of course, I have ongoing things that are always part of my schedule (like my day job, social media, family, and Patreon responsibilities.)
You can see here by my list that I have quite a few things ending or resolving in May 2020. I've included things that require my time and energy, like taxes and medical stuff, because I can't ignore those or pretend that they won't affect my life or workload in some way. And, yes, I added the pandemic because that IS affecting, well, everything. It's actually helped me to have that listed on my Projects list.
That means that my current bandwidth is pretty much full, but in June, that will change. That doesn't mean that I'll fill up my plate with a bunch of new projects, just that I will be capable of taking on something new should I want to. For me, the project list shows me that I want more personal projects in the mix. My summer garden will be on the agenda soon, for example.
Just for "fun" (relative term) I went back and made a Project list of last October when I was feeling REALLY stressed and burnt out. Well, no wonder — I had around 20 projects on my list. !!! Even though some were small and "easy" it was just too much. I think my happy place will be having around 7 projects. Having a number to set as a goal is helpful for me but may not be helpful for you!
The BASB course includes this super helpful activity called the Project List Mindsweep. The best part of the activity is that it should take ten minutes maximum to complete. Students in the course actually do it together in ten minutes, and it's not designed to be agonized over. I encourage you to do it sometime this week if you have some time to spare! I just scribbled it all out in my bullet journal.
I hope that this helps you get a hold on your life and schedule! What are your go-to systems for organizing and reflecting on your life? Comment below!