Why creatives suck at time management. 😭 ⏱️

So I found over the years that the key to getting more time back to do the things that you love to do, like being creative, making your art. The key to doing that has nothing to do with a bullet journal or a Google Calendar. But if you feel like you have a whole crapload of things that you feel obligated to get done, like, your to do list is really long and it's starting to make you feel like you don't have enough motivation, you don't have a lot of energy. You get home from a long day at work and you're just like, I just don't want to deal with this right now. If that's the kind of time management, if that's what you want to get rid of, that is not a Google Calendar issue. That is not a bullet journal issue. So we're going to talk about that in today's video. I like to ask the right questions that get you to the answer rather than giving you some one size fits all sort of thing. Okay, so let's dig into it to introduce this idea. There are three things that we'll be using here. We have our time, we have our energy, and we have our tasks. So time is the thing that we never get back. You've heard people say it this way, that once time is gone, like it's our most valuable thing because we never get it back once it's gone. The tasks are the things that never go away. You've probably heard people say that before. The third thing is your energy. And I feel like this is the thing that nobody really talks about. Energy is a finite resource. I want to think of it in this example in today's video. I really, as a currency, put energy and money in your brain as kind of the same thing. So lock those two things in there. Energy is your money maker. So you've heard the phrase, like, you gotta spend money to make money. Well, you gotta spend energy to make time. And I'm serious, like, you can make more time with this process.

Okay, so if energy is our currency, if energy is money, then why do people say things like, well, how do you spend your time? What do you spend your time doing? I want to think of time as the collector. So time is always coming and taking, right? So think of it this way. When you're at the DMV and you know you're in there and you're waiting in line, there's a certain kind of energy that you're showing up and you're spending there. And when I spend that energy, time Collects it. And in a way that everything feels like it's taking for flipping ever. I walk out of there exhausted and just like, annoyed, usually unmotivated, frustrated, like, oh, my gosh, now I got all this other crap I got to take care of. And how am I going to ever do that, right? I've just spent. I've just wasted all this time, really. We've wasted all this energy. We could have conserved that energy and put it somewhere else. So when we think of it this way, it really starts to open up our options. Because now if we want to buy a car, we raise more money. If we want to get more stuff done, we raise our energy levels. We give the right kind of energies to the right things. So let's break that down and talk about how you can practically see where your energy is going and how you can create more of this currency that is energy. More of this, like, I don't know, feeling. Money, I don't know, but like, more of this so that you get time back.

Okay, so the first thing I want you to think of is what gives you energy now, what does that mean? So when you are given energy, when you feel energetic, you a lot of times feel like joy, happiness, excitement, curiosity, like a fascination with what's happening. You walk out like buzz and ready to rock. Like, you're like, I could go all day, you know? So if you're doing activ that bring you that feeling, if you're getting that energy, you are creating the currency there. And a lot of times when you're doing those kinds of things that give you energy, time is gonna move a lot faster. So for me, that's things like writing the right kind of scripts or working with people in my community. When I'm working with clients to help them grow their creative businesses. When I'm like, in these group coaching calls and I walk out just jacked, I'm just like, I could do that all day long. I walk away tired, these things. But it's a different kind of tired. It's like a, you know the feeling. It's a good tired, right? You're like. You feel accomplished. So once you've mapped out what gives you energy, you need to know the opposite. So what takes away the energy that you have?

This is the stuff that leaves you feeling grumpy, depressed, tired, frustrated. It may be the fact that you feel obligated to. To go and post every day on social media, which you don't need to do, by the way. Lots of other things we'll get into that Time feels slow when you're doing this kind of stuff. It drags on and you can look at the second hand and it actually goes backwards. It's going to places like the dmv, working on all the little organizational tasks inside the business. You know, just all the little stuff that like, eats away and just feels. Just feels super frustrating.

So from here, it's pretty simple. Once you know what gives you energy and what takes your energy away, I want you to just think about the two. Like, what are you spending most of your time on? Are you spending most of your time on things that take away your energy? Or are you spending most of your time on things that give you energy? So you may say to me something like, lennon, well, I've got a day job and it takes a lot of energy. And so by the time I get home, I feel really frustrated and just a lack of motivation. So I can't do anything about that, dude. I gotta make money. What I would say then is, what are the things in your life that bring you big amounts of energy? And why aren't you putting that in the forefront of your free time? You know, Like, I'm not saying that you have to get up at 5 o' clock in the morning, but sometimes that's what you have to do. So I started getting up at 5, 5:30 in the morning to make sure that I had time to journal, have prayer time, like do meditation, you know, read. Really get just me time because I refuel, I get energy. When I spend time alone, every other week or so, I go and do something completely by myself. So like this Sunday, I went to a movie just all by myself, just to, like, get away from everybody and just enjoy it. And it gave me a ton of energy to come into this week. And what was that? Two hours? You may say, well, I don't have two hours to spare. I'd rather go and create during that time. But here's the thing. If your creation, like, if you're creating in order to start to make a living, that creating now has an obligation tied to it. You feel like, I have to do this thing. I have to. Obligation is a breeding ground for resentment. Eventually you feel like, I don't want to do this right? So I'm just going to, like, so I give up. Like, what's the point? I'm going to argue that if you do the things that, that give you energy, you are creating a currency that will buy you more time. And I want to challenge you, like, do this for two weeks and see what happens. Mark out 30 minutes or even 15 minutes a day to do the thing that brings you the most energy and see how your day plays out differently. Because of that, I want to really encourage you to take the time to map out what it is that gives you energy, what it is that takes it away, and what is the one or two things that you can add to your week right now, like tomorrow morning that would just get you happy again, like bring that joy and fulfillment and excitement into your life and see what starts to change for you. Because it may be that it's not a time management problem that you have, it's an energy management problem. I did a deep dive training on this very thing and how to manage this better. Some things that you can do to really start to organize this in a more cohesive way. If you'd like to see that training, it is inside of our private Facebook group. It's absolutely free to join. We'd love to have you there. Myself and Jacqueline are in there to help you out. The link to the Facebook group is in the description below. And if you want to know how I organize, like urgent and important things, check this video out right here and I will see you in that one.