Time Efficiency for Creatives (17 time management styles)
You have 24 hours: 8 hours for sleep, 8 for work, 2 hours spent commuting, an 1 hour for self care and another just to relax. These are just averages, but this still leaves you an extra 4 hours to work with (assuming you don’t have a family, second job or other obligations).
This quick math highlights something interesting — we have a lot of extra time to build something, whether that be a creative project, a personal brand, a blog or a solo business. The problem is sometimes just poor time management.
It was for me, at least.
Time efficiency means optimizing your schedule based on your lifestyle, preferences, goals and needs. So these are my favorite time management styles I like to use as a solo creator, artist and digital nomad.
Alright, let’s not waste any more time — let’s do this!
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What Is Time Efficiency?
Time efficiency is the art of optimizing your projects, tasks and goals so you get the most done as smoothly as possible.
Everyone’s ideal time management will look different. It’s based on your personal preferences, bottlenecks and lifestyle. The right time management style is the one that best complements those things.
So choose the time management strategy that best matches your goals and don’t be afraid to try out a few (or mix and match them to create a custom solution).
Explore more:
➤ Create a Custom Time Management Plan
Do Stuff Better (17 time management styles)
1. Time Awareness
Time awareness is understanding your current habits, lifestyle, preferences and issues and how you want to improve.
It’s a mixture of self awareness and goal setting. And it’s a great place to start.
So consider these questions:
Do I waste time on unimportant things? If so, why?
What are my time-wasters and distractions?
What would my perfect creative schedule look like?
Why do I want better time efficiency?
How will better time efficiency impact my creativity and creative life?
How do I define “time efficiency”?
2. Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s law says that your work will take you exactly the amount of time you give it.
For example, if you give yourself one week to do something, it’ll take you one week to do it. But if you only give yourself one day, it’ll only take you one day.
So if you give yourself no deadline at all, then you may never get it done. I think creatives are especially vulnerable to unfinished projects and starting new things rather than finishing old ones.
So Parkinson’s Law can help. This law tells us that by simply setting a strict deadline for yourself, you will get it done.
To use it, first focus on choosing just one or two projects to complete. Then, set a shorter deadline.
3. The Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle is the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of our results comes from just 20% of our actions.
So, that means you just need to figure out which (20%) of your efforts make the biggest splash. Focus your time on those things that actually move the needle.
Here are some questions to help you figure things out:
What are your creative strengths or your strongest creative habits?
How could you better prioritize these things?
What stuff do you spend too much time on?
What are your biggest distractions?
4. The Flowtime Technique
The Flowtime technique is when you work on a specific task in timed intervals, but breaks are not scheduled.
It’s a productivity systems that’s optimized for flow state, mood and creativity. It’s an alternative to the Pomodoro technique (which works better for clerical, non-creative stuff).
With Flowtime, you’re more likely to enter a “deep work” state and accomplish more. The important part is to avoid interruptions during this deep work focus. Clear your plate so you have nothing else to do.
Your focus should be on the task at hand. You simply work on that thing (with the goal of getting lost, losing track of time and entering a flow state), and then stop when you get tired, bored or lose focus.
It’s open-ended, but it’s one of my favorite methods for creative work. I usually save this strategy for the end of the day, since I have nothing else to do (this way, I can totally get lost in my art and not worry about taking a break at any specific time).
So, schedule a time each day to get completely lost in flow. Some days, it won’t happen, but it’s always worth a try. Have nothing else but your creative work to do during this time block.
Explore more:
➤ How to Do the Flowtime Technique
5. Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering is deconstructing a big goal or problem into its smaller component pieces. As a creative, it’s normal to have big goals, epic projects and exciting ideas.
But looking up at that tall mountain from its base is daunting and leads to inaction, procrastination and bad time efficiency.
Reverse engineering lets you focus on the small steps instead.
Here’s a simple framework I follow:
Identify one main goal or task
Identify the core micro goals and tasks required to meet that main goal
Identify the core nano tasks needed to meet each micro goal
Solid time management comes down to focusing on the right things at the right time. And this strategy helps a lot.
Explore more:
➤ Reverse Engineering Goals 101
6. A Perspective Change
What if you reframed one day as actually being made up of multiple “mini days”. It’s a subtle change in perspective and mindset, but it helps me become more productive. Here’s how I do it:
Split up a typical day into three parts
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Treat each segment as its own separate “day”
Each “day” has different types of work and tasks I focus on
I plan each mini day based on my typical creative mood and schedule.
For example, I’m usually more creative in the mornings and evenings. So I plan a lot of my personal creative work for these times. During the afternoons, I’m less creative, so I schedule more clerical stuff then (like sending emails or doing client work).
This makes me feel like each day is longer than it actually is. It’s pretty cool.
7. Know Your Peak Performance Times
Your peak performance times are the times during the day when you’re most motivated and creative.
Like I said just above, I’m most creative during the mornings and evenings, so these are my peak performance times for important creative work.
Knowing your ideal focus times helps to solve a lot of motivation problems and improves your time efficiency as a creative. It’s self awareness for creative productivity.
So when are your peak performance times? Identify those and then optimize your schedule for them.
8. Slow-Motion Multitasking
Slow-motion multitasking is working on multiple projects at the same time, but moving between each one based on your mood. It can be a good strategy for creatives.
Like you, I usually have more than one creative project that I’m working on at any given time — I have three blogs, music, art and some entrepreneurial endeavors.
So one way I like to manage things is by hopping around each one based on where my mood is flowing. For me, this means relying on my creative intuition.
But there is one important caveat.
Being able to focus and push through unmotivated moments is crucial to actually finish stuff. So it’s smart to pair this strategy with another one that supports discipline and finishing what you start.
9. Gamification
Gamification uses typical gaming elements (like rewards, timers or challenges) to complete tasks or goals. And it freaking works!
Gamification creates a sense of urgency, improves your time management habits and makes the whole process of getting things done more engaging and fun.
For example, in 2023, I did a song-a-day challenge where I wrote and shared one new song everyday for one year. This gamified my songwriting routine and forced me to improve my creative discipline and sharpen some important skills.
Gamification forces you to do the things when you really don’t feel like doing them. It improves consistency and time efficiency. It’s one of my favorite strategies for meeting creative goals.
So what are some creative tasks or goals that you could gamify?
10. The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix organizes things by their relative urgency and importance. It’s a way to visualize your stuff and prioritize things.
This is a great way to see your creative tasks in a way that makes the most time-efficient sense.
The matrix is broken into four main boxes, where you organize tasks based on their urgency and importance. Some tasks are moved to the top, some are scheduled, some are delegated and some are deleted.
Better time management means you know which of your tasks are most important and most urgent (and which are not).
11. Timeboxing
Timeboxing is when you plan ahead timeblocks to work on specific tasks a designated times.
Essentially, it’s the art of creating a schedule for yourself and then sticking to it. You can start by listing out all of your tasks and daily goals you need to get done, then organize them into a schedule.
From there, simply follow the schedule.
This is a good method to try if you have a lot of administrative work or if you struggle with focus and organization.
It can also help to pair your work with a good creative workflow, which is a personal system for getting stuff done.
12. The Do Something Principle
The do something principle is a motivation and discipline strategy, that focuses on just taking action and doing the thing you’re thinking about doing. It’s a concept I discovered through Mark Manson.
When plagued with issues of motivation or confusion for what to do next, sometimes it’s best to just take action.
Just do something.
Often, it’s our doing that creates motivation and insight for which courses of action are best to take (through trial and error and hands-on involvement). This is because mood follows action.
The do something principle is simple and a bit obvious — but effective.
It’s a great way to stop waiting for motivation and just start managing your time efficiency better.
13. Do the Hard Things First
Doing the hard things first means saving the easiest, funnest stuff for last.
This is effective because when you don’t have annoying tasks on your mind, you’re less stressed and therefore, more creative.
You’ll also ensure you do the hard stuff earlier on, when we tend to have more motivation and discipline.
Hard tasks usually require more focus and energy, so doing them when we have more focus and energy is just a smarter way to use of our time.
Even the easy stuff that personally difficult — like sending emails or administrative BS. Get that stuff done as quickly as possible.
14. Use Technology
Using technology means leveraging AI, apps, software, automations or tools to improve your time efficiency and automate your life.
And there are tons of resources available (with more coming online almost daily).
Here are some examples:
AI tools in your specific niche (video editing; writing; music; etc.)
To help narrow things down, consider your personal preferences, the type of creative work you’re doing, your time bottlenecks, your level of technical agility (for things like AI or automations) and your budget.
You can also just test different options out to see what works best for you.
15. A Time-Efficient Mindset
A time-efficient mindset is thinking and believing in a way that improves your time efficiency. This is impactful, because how you think and perceive your world dictates your experience of it.
The goal here is to cultivate a mindset that supports better time habits, thinking frameworks and perspectives.
Here are a few tips:
Practice a growth mindset (believe you can change)
Address your limited beliefs about your time management skills and habits
Hang around more time-efficient creatives
Don’t get discouraged and stay patient
16. The Hell Yea (or just no) Method
The hell yea (or no) method means only doing things that you’re absolutely stoked on.
It’s like this:
If the thing you need to do (or are invited to do) is a hell yea – then do it.
If the thing you need to do (or are invited to do) is eh, maybe – then don’t do it.
The hell yea (or no) method is simple and can save you time in two key ways:
It helps you make decisions quicker
I helps you avoid doing things you don’t actually want to do (which is a waste of time)
So the next time you’re plagued with an invite, a personal task or a creative opportunity, ask yourself one simple question:
Is it a “Hell yea!”? If not, maybe you should just say no and move on.
17. Do Nothing
Self time management means planing for and scheduling uninterrupted, zero-guilt you time.
Our time spent on productive things is only as good as our time spent relaxing. Because you can’t be 100% on all of the time. Being more chill about your time management is an awesome way to let go, relax and boost your creativity.
This is great to avoid burnout and stay more productive for longer (which is actually sustainable).
While workflows and optimizing for creativity is all well and good, don’t forget to schedule in some time for nothing. I mean, we’re not robots, right?
So go ahead and have that “garbage day”. Indulge in your guilty pleasures — get lost in Netflix and waste some time.
It’s cathartic. It’s necessary. It’s recuperation.
And it’s essential for creative self care, more clarity and, yes, better time efficiency.
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