How to Make Time for Creative Projects, with Monique Malcolm

Struggling to make time for your creative projects?

If you're finding it hard to carve out the time to be creative...

Feeling like you're too busy to take action on your art or your creative goals...

You're in the right place!

In this video, I'm chatting with my friend & productivity expert Monique Malcolm. In this conversation, Monique shares insights on how to make time for creative projects.

We talk about the importance of taking tiny actions and breaking down big goals into smaller, actionable steps.

Monique also discusses the need to be intentional and realistic about carving out time in a busy schedule. She highlights the concept of prioritizing big rocks, which are the most important tasks or projects.

Monique encourages a long-term perspective and considering what will bring fulfillment and avoid regrets in the future. She also provides strategies for overcoming procrastination, including journaling and breaking tasks into smaller steps.

Takeaways

  • Take tiny actions and break down big goals into smaller, actionable steps.

  • Be intentional and realistic about carving out time for creative projects.

  • Prioritize big rocks, the most important tasks or projects.

  • Consider a long-term perspective and focus on what will bring fulfillment and avoid regrets.

  • Overcome procrastination by journaling, breaking tasks into smaller steps, and using timers.

Monique Malcolm is a seasoned productivity expert, writer, and the founder of Take Tiny Action.

She is dedicated to helping people achieve their goals in a sustainable way.

Monique’s approach involves taking small and consistent steps over time, which allows people to achieve their ambitions while maintaining a healthy, balanced, and fulfilling lifestyle. She lives in Florida with her husband and son. When she’s not working, she loves soaking up the sun at the beach or hopping onto her bike for a spin class.

Monique has also talked with me about How to Achieve Your Creative Goals Within 90 Days and her $173K Debt Free Journey with YNAB. She was also a guest on Episode 29 of the Badass Creatives podcast, talking about setting goals and taking action.

 

Video Transcript:

Mallory

Hi Monique, thanks so much for joining me to talk all about how to make time for your creative projects.

Monique Malcolm

Well, thank you for having me. You know, I have a lot of thoughts and things to say on this topic, so I'm pretty excited.

Mallory

Yeah. So I know you talk a lot about like taking tiny actions and sort of distilling the big, big plans into smaller, more actionable things. So how does that help us create the time to make our creative projects happen?

Monique

So I think that there is this feeling that for whatever goals and things we have, there has to be these big, giant tasks and steps that you have to take them, to take that goal down and actually complete the goal.

When I talk to people about tiny actions, my biggest thing is trying to get people momentum and sometimes getting started. Then you start to build that momentum.

Mallory

Okay, but what if there's still that friction of, oh, but I have so much on my plate, I have life, I have kids, or full -time day job, or whatever, how do we actually make the time to focus on creative projects?

Monique

Well, with anything, like, I don't think that you can make time. You actually have to specifically carve out the time. You don't have a magic wand, or you can just be like, bippity boppity boop: "I have an hour." Like, it doesn't work like that.

You have to be intentional. Anything that you, goals, projects, whatever you have going on in your life, anything that you want to do, whether it's an important goal or it's just having time for a hobby, you have to be intentional about making that time.

And I think that it's a two -part thing. It's one, you have to be intentional about making the time, so actually putting it on your calendar and in your schedule. But the other part of that is being realistic about what you have going on in your life and how that impacts your schedule. Because if you are somebody who has kids or a partner, you're a caregiver, you have responsibilities outside of like your actual work hours, well, that impacts how much time that you have available.

And so I find that a lot of people get really frustrated because they don't feel like they have as much time as they want to do whatever it is that they're trying to do. But the problem is they haven't taken the time to actually be really clear on like, what is in my schedule? Because once you know, here are the things, here's what I have laid out that I need to do. It's a lot easier to say, well, I can move this or I can cut this. But if you just go into it and like, all right, for two hours a week, I am going to paint pictures.

Great. Where are those two hours coming from? Have you considered like, do you have to do pick up and drop off for kids? Do you have to make dinner? Do you have a long commute? Like all of those things impact your schedule. So that's really the first thing for me is being really clear on like, what is in your schedule this week?

Mallory

Yeah, the putting it on the calendar is so important. And I think too, there's that whole thing about that for everything you say yes to, you're saying no to something else and vice versa, right? Like when committing to things.

Monique

That's exactly right. And sometimes we don't really think about it like that. We're just like, somebody calls and like, hey, can you do this thing? We're like, sure, I have time, I can do it. But every time you say yes to something, you inherently have to say no to something else. Even if like in that moment, you didn't mean to say no to this other thing, you committed. So you kind of are saying no to something else that you could have done.

Mallory

Yeah, yeah, and I'm thinking too about that kind of famous analogy about the jar filled with the different sizes of rocks and sand. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you want to explain?

Monique

The pebbles, rocks and the sand. Yeah, so there's this story that they talk about this professor, like a college professor, and he's trying to teach his students about how to make time, like productivity. And so he gives, he puts a glass jar on his desk and he fills the jar with sand and then he fills it with pebbles and then he fills it with rocks. But by the time he gets to the rocks, the students realize like everything can't fit in there.

And so the idea is that... You take the rocks, the biggest things, you put those in there first because they take up the most space. And then you take your pebbles and the pebbles will filter in and fill spaces where the rocks are not. And then you have the sand and the sand will go and settle into the rest of those spaces. And so how that relates to productivity is like your rocks are like your big important tasks, appointments, things that need to get done. Pebbles are also important, but they're less important than the rocks. They don't take up as much time and maybe they can be moved around a little bit more.

And then sand, like all the stuff that you just have going on in your life that you have to do. You gotta cook, you gotta pick up the dry cleaning, like stuff like that. But if you plan your week, filling the week with sand, you don't have time for the rocks or the pebbles. So the whole idea is to think about big rocks first, pebbles second, and then sand last. Because somehow we always find time for the sand.

Mallory

Yeah, when I think the big rocks, like those things in our life, it's so important to kind of think really like long term when possible, right? Like I like to really, you know, maybe this is morbid, but kind of think like, what would I regret on my deathbed? Look, looking back, right? Having not done, because that's the thing that most people regret is things they didn't do, not things they did do. And so it's like, those to me should be like some of the big rock.

Like what are the creative projects that will bring me fulfillment or what are like the bucket list items that I want to try to accomplish and try to like work backwards instead of just focusing on like the minutia of the day to day of like dentist appointments and whatever else.

Monique

Yeah, and I think, you know, sometimes I don't even zoom that far out for the big rocks. A lot of times I'm just trying to think about like, what can I do in this week, this day, in this moment that's gonna be most impactful? And a lot of times, if I have a to -do list, the big rock things stand out, but those are usually the things that like I feel least inclined to do. Because maybe they take more effort. Maybe it's something that I don't want to deal with.

Because the sand is like easy stuff. You do the sand all the time. So it's a really easy, like, you know, this won't take that long. Let me just take care of this real quickly. But you will find that like you can spend days just trying to clear the sand items off your list. They keep coming back because a lot of that is like recurring tasks that you have to do over and over again.

So I really think that the perspective of even if you can just pick like one big rock a day, because I know that a lot of conventional productivity wisdom says, pick your top three. I've told people that I made a planner of today's top three, but sometimes it is just a top one. And if I'm having a really good day, it might be a top two. But three is pushing it. So really, if you can achieve one big rock a day, that's seven rocks a week. That's not anything that seems that.

Mallory

Yeah. Yeah. Well, but you mentioned that sometimes even with those things that we know are like the big rocks or the important things to us, there can still be that internal friction of like, is it procrastination? Is it like some perfectionism?

Can you talk more about maybe how you kind of try to overcome some of that or how some of your clients that you've worked with kind of overcome the not like not wanting to focus on the big rocks when they know that they want to and should be?

Monique

Mm hmm. So I mean, it can be a combination of things like you say, it can definitely be procrastination. It can definitely be perfectionism. There can be some fear there. There can be overwhelm.

I like to think that a lot of our feelings of discomfort, what we recognize a lot of times as fear, is disguised a lot of other things. So it can be disguised as procrastination, disguised as perfectionism, a host of other things. So when I talk to people about procrastination, because that's the one I'm going to tackle because this is the one that everybody is trying to beat all the time... Like we all feel guilty that we are procrastinators and we're not doing as much as we believe we should be able to get done because we're procrastinating. At its core, procrastination is an emotional regulation tool. So basically, when you have a task that is causing you discomfort, you don't feel comfortable doing it for whatever reason.

Maybe you're afraid you can't do it properly. Maybe you don't know how to do it. Maybe you haven't broken it down enough so you just feel overwhelmed that you even have to like get up the energy and the momentum to even get this thing done. You find like you feel internally uncomfortable. You feel discomfort. And we are wired as a part of like our survival mechanisms to seek safety and comfort. So safety is like one of our prime directives. Your brain is trying to keep you safe.

And so when your brain feels discomfort, discomfort doesn't feel safe. So your brain is seeking safety again. So it's seeking something comfortable. So that's how you end up procrastinating, procrastinating planning, scrolling on Instagram. Because in that moment, when you do that other task, you relieve that tension. You don't feel that discomfort. And it's just like, OK, I'm safe again. Like, OK, I can. Let me scroll because.

It was getting rough out here, but that doesn't help you move forward on the task. So a thing that really helps me is when I catch myself procrastinating, because usually I don't catch it the first round. I may be like doom scrolling two or three times before I'm like, up. You still haven't done that thing. I need to stop and ask myself why. So I do a lot of journaling. I have a notebook that I journal all kinds of things and whatever it is that I'm procrastinating about, I try to journal what is happening in this moment.

So I have a presentation that I need to do for something that I haven't done yet. So now I need to sit here and think about, OK, what is going on internally? Why have you not done this presentation? So that's the question I ask. Whatever it is I'm procrastinating about, it's like, OK, why have you not done your presentation? And you know that it's due soon. So then I start going through the list. I haven't made time to sit down. I'm struggling to focus on doing this.

Maybe I don't feel like I know where to start with it. Like whatever I have going on internally, I start asking those questions and I start writing it down and whatever comes to mind, usually I can work it out on paper because the thing will float up to the top and it's like, oh, you haven't done it because you've just been putting it off and you just don't want to do it. Or you feel like it's not going to be perfect enough and you don't want to do it. And when I come into like, when I hit the wall of like perfection, then I have to really like reign myself in and be like, okay, come back. Because you know how to do this thing, you would not have signed up to do it if you didn't know how to do it.

So then from there, another thing that I do after I come to the answer from journaling, I start writing down all the steps that I need to do to actually do this thing. Because sometimes it's just a momentum problem. It's feeling overwhelmed. So it's just like, okay. So to do the presentation, what do I need to do?

I need to make an outline. I need to come up with like the main three things that I want people to take away from the presentation. So that would be the thing. I need to come up with my three takeaways. I need to make that into an outline. I need to open up Apple Keynote and open a new presentation document. Maybe I want to decide like what colors are going to be this presentation. I just start listing it out.

And then from there, once I have those lists, that list of steps, I just start making myself build that momentum by going through that list. And it's challenging because I have ADHD. So my brain will be like, this is cute right now, but I don't want to do it no more. So I have a timer. I actually have like a visual timer. I use a digital timer sometimes, but this one here is usually when I catch myself procrastinating a lot and I really need to get it together. I use this timer and I do the Pomodoro method. I'm like, all right, set it for 30 minutes and write whatever you can about this topic for your outline on paper. And that's how I just try to get myself to do the process and get the momentum started. Because a lot of times, if I can get myself moving in the right direction, then I can ride that energy and keep going. But it's just like getting my brain to snag on that thing and actually do it is the hardest part for me personally.

Mallory

Yeah, that's yeah, that's so helpful breaking it down into those like tiny steps to overcome the fear. And you said fear. And I know that this is your book. Don't let fear have all the fun. If people want to want to read your book and learn more about you, where do they find you? How do they get in touch with you?

Monique

So they can go to my website, TakeTinyAction.com.

That's the best place to find me. If you want to find my book, it's also available there, but it's available on Amazon and a lot of online retailers. So you can find it there as well.

Mallory

Awesome, thank you so much Monique.

Monique

You're welcome.

 

Connect with Monique Malcolm

Like this? Bookmark it on Pinterest!