February 28, 2022

I Scheduled My Creative Time For The Last 4 Weeks, Here's What I Learned

Reading Time: 10 mins

Scheduled creative time is something I read about but never thought to try until recently.

I noticed I struggled to work on anything outside of my primary recurring tasks each week. I wanted to try my hands at building a Notion dashboard or creating a website, but tasks like writing and scheduling my newsletter always took priority.

Re-reading my notes from The Accidental Creative, it struck me that scheduled creative time might be the answer.

So, over the last 4 weeks, I scheduled 1-3 hours on a Friday into my calendar for scheduled creative time.

Here’s what I learned about the process, about how I work, and my key takeaways from this experiment.

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Background - What Is Scheduled Creative Time And Why Should I Care?

The idea of scheduled creative time as I learned about from The Accidental Creative is where you set aside dedicated time each week for the sole purpose of creating.

The reason this works is a regular practice of creation will exercise your brain’s creative muscles. So, when it comes time to put together that mockup or presentation you have the creative mojo to produce something great.

Having an outlet like this for your creativity is a great way to try new things and see where your curiosity leads you.

If you want to learn more about how to establish a scheduled creativity routine, I wrote an article you can check out here: Why You Should Schedule Time For Creativity.

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Preparation - Scheduled Creative Time Set Up

My goal for this little experiment was to try it out for a month, document the results, and decide whether to make this a regular part of my week going forward.

Here’s what I did to prepare:

• I decided on a day to do this: Friday mornings.
• I identified and removed any potential bottlenecks that would prevent me from doing this.
• I created a rough list of things to work on during this time. I took a look at my projects list in Obsidian for some inspiration here.

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Week 1

For the first week of scheduled creative time, I decided to combine my love of gaming with my passion for design.

I have no idea where the idea came from but I settled on creating a business card for a video game character.

Side note: write down every idea you have, you never know which ones you’ll use!

In this case, I picked Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher. The Witcher 3 is probably in my top 3 list of favorite games so it made sense to pick Geralt because I know a lot about him and this game.

I created the business cards in Canva, exported them into visual mockups in Photoshop, then shared the end result on Twitter:

This week's creative time was spent combining my love of design + gaming.

I thought it would be fun to design a business card for a video game character.

In this case, I picked Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher. I think the result is pretty fun!

What are you creating this week? pic.twitter.com/lb6ZwdLoUQ

— Michelle The Creative 💎 (@MishaCreatrix) January 28, 2022

What I Enjoyed

• Not having to worry about what I should be doing during this time. Because the time was scheduled in my calendar I didn’t have to think about doing anything else.
• I was able to get into a flow state which meant the time flew by.
• Doing something different and slightly random was a fun experiment. I still made use of my design skills but was able to create something I wouldn’t otherwise have created.

What I Didn’t Enjoy

• There were no strict time limits set at this point. This meant I worked on this until it was finished. While that can be a good thing, in my case, I would work better within a set time limit.
• I didn’t have any pre-defined ideas for what I would do with the results of my creative time. Should I share on social media or keep to myself? Should I publish on my website? Should I just share with my family and friends? I needed to decide on this going forward.

What I Learned

• I work better within defined time blocks as I know where the edges are in my day.
• I work well when a lot of the decision-making is already done so I can focus on simply creating. Taking time to plan my creative time in advance helps me to feel more free when creating.

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Week 2

For this week’s scheduled creative time, I wanted to create a Core Values page in Obsidian. This idea was inspired by this video from Nicole van der Hoeven:

While this might not be the most creative thing I could do with my time, I felt this was a good use of my time. Especially given how the results would help me in the future i.e. a list of my core values that would drive my future goals.

The end result was a note that outlined my top 6 core values and gave a brief description of each one and what it means to me.

I highly recommend watching the video above for some inspiration if you’re thinking of doing this for yourself.

What I Enjoyed

• Learning about OKRs as opposed to SMART goals. This might be something I switch to going forward (I’ve actually made the switch and looking forward to setting next quarter’s OKRs).
• Seeing how my core values link to my goals was something I was really impressed with. At the start of the process, I wasn’t sure how impactful this process would be but I was definitely incorrect here.
• I had a more defined time to work in this week which was great. It did mean that my work spilled over as I couldn’t get this done in the time allotted. I ended up finishing this over the weekend which I didn’t mind.

What I Didn’t Enjoy

• It was difficult to not just copy and paste core values from other people online and use them as my own. I had to constantly remind myself that I was doing this for me and it would benefit me in the long term to do this in my own way from the start.

What I Learned

• OKRs might be a good alternative to SMART goals.
• Not everything you do during scheduled creative time will fit into a defined period of time. There may be weeks where something will spill over into next week’s creative time and that’s OK.

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Week 3

This week, I decided to build a Notion dashboard to manage my tweet ideas.

This idea was inspired by the Endless Tweet Generator from Ev Chapman. I highly recommend you download this dashboard to get you started generating more tweets than you ever thought possible.

The end result of this creative time was a new Notion dashboard I call: Tweet HUD. As you can probably tell, I wanted to incorporate my love of gaming into this dashboard so I themed it like an RPG.

This week's scheduled creativity time was spent creating my own version of the Endless Tweet Generator Notion template by @evielync

I had a lot of fun building in @NotionHQ. I forgot how enjoyable the process is 😀

Incorporated my own gaming terminology which works well 😅 pic.twitter.com/TZwTdtxQDQ

— Michelle The Creative 💎 (@MishaCreatrix) February 11, 2022

What I Enjoyed

• Building in Notion was a lot of fun.
• I didn’t feel guilty about spending time building something from scratch in Notion. This was my scheduled time for creating!
• I enjoyed adding my own spin to something like this. I included gaming terminology to make it more engaging and fun for me to use.

What I Didn’t Enjoy

• Can’t think of anything, really enjoyed this creative time 😃

What I Learned

• Not to simply copy and paste something, but to take what works for me and use that to make it my own.
• The value of repurposing content - from one tweet it’s not that hard to generate 4-5 new tweets or ideas.

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Week 4

This week I worked on a fun little website that came about from a pain point at work. It’s a character counter and character generator.

This was my most challenging project to date during my scheduled creative time. It required me to create a full web page from scratch and use my JavaScript knowledge to make it work correctly.

The stack I used for this project was: HTML, Tailwind CSS, Vanilla JavaScript, deployed on Netlify.

Here’s the web page if you want to see how it turned out: https://chartools.netlify.app/

What I Enjoyed

• Building in Tailwind and using my very limited JavaScript skills to make something from scratch.
• Trying out a dark mode implementation in Tailwind CSS. Turns out it’s pretty easy once you understand how it works/
• The challenge of figuring out the JavaScript needed to accomplish each task was just challenging enough.
• This tool solves a pain point I had at work which made it really fun to work on.

What I Didn’t Enjoy

• Developing the design was a bit of a slow process, or at least slower than I thought it would be. Going forward I would break down a project like this and work on it over a couple of weeks.

What I Learned

• It helps to vary what you do during scheduled creativity time each week. This keeps you interested and engaged with what you’re doing.

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My Key Take-Aways From This Experiment

If you’re still with me, here’s an overview of what I learned from doing this experiment over the last 4 weeks:

• Creating dedicated time for this practice will help you to stick to it and you won’t forget it easily.
• Some people work better within defined time blocks. Consider setting a time limit on your scheduled creative time to help you focus.
• Do as much planning as you’re comfortable with before you start your scheduled creative time. Consider any potential roadblocks that might crop up and how you can prevent them ahead of time.
• Don’t be frustrated if you don’t complete your project during one block of scheduled creative time. There’s always next week or you could just continue working on it over the weekend.
• Once you have the schedule and the preparation done, it becomes less about the process and more about creating. After 1-2 weeks, I could sit down and work on something without worrying about tracking my time, other work I needed to do, how long I should spend on the task.

As a result of this experiment, I’ve decided to continue with my scheduled creative time each Friday. I really enjoy this time each week and I feel that it’s a great creative outlet.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

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Creation