Balancing day job & creative side job
I started my art journey in 2020. In that time I’ve had a day job whilst building my creative business. This is the case for many of my fellow artists and other creatives. Balancing a day job and your side business can be tricky and doing everything else as well.
My goal - at least in the foreseeable future - is to have a part time day job and do art part time. So I find that learning to balance these two is important to me as it will be the case in the future as well.
Everyone’s situation is different; some have less time and more responsibilities or vice versa. So apply these advices to your life and to your situation. Some might not be realistic to you depending on your life situation.
I’m fortunate enough to have had jobs that have flexible hours and that I’m passionate about. My day job is very different from my creative job and requires different sets of skills and demands different kind of energy.
This creative job is the perfect opposite that fulfills my other passions. That said, it’s still two jobs. After the other one ends, the second one begins. That is why it is so important to know your limits and practice boundaries. I’m still trying out what works for me and I’m not always in balance with the two, but it’s a journey.
Here is my list of advices:
Be in the mindset that things will take you longer than someone who does creative work full time.
Be gentle to yourself; avoid comparing your situation to someone else’s.
Take care of yourself first; creativity is a state of flow and your wellbeing is connected to your creativity.
Be realistic of how much you can do.
You will never have enough time for everything; what things can you let go of, what should you prioritize.
Be brave enough to ask for help and say no when need be.
The building phase of anything is usually the one that demands the most time and effort and can require long hours, but don’t build your dreams on an unsustainable bedrock or tire yourself in the process. It defeats the purpose, don’t you think?
Practical tips on time management that I myself use:
List out how much time you actually have - Make a weekly or a monthly schedule of all the things that demand your time so you know how much time you have to use - realistically. I don’t do this every week or month. Once I’ve done it every once in a while, I know where I’m putting my time and know how to adjust accordingly.
Plan your time, or don’t - When I was starting out, I blocked a time for creativity from my schedule. It kind of taught me to actually give the time to art. Now, I don’t do it. I would find it too restrictive, but I needed to learn the habit first.
Be intuitive - After I’ve done the ‘minimum’ of tasks for the day, I ask myself, do I have the energy and mindset to do more. According to the answer I either do more or something else that I need at that time. Note: this requires quite a lot of self discipline and you should be familiar with your own needs and habits.
Take baby steps - This might be a cliché but breaking big tasks to smaller ones has helped me a lot. I would just get overwhelmed from ‘build a portfolio’. Listing it out to smaller chunks makes it more achievable. You can start by thinking what you need to do today, tomorrow, next week, a month from now and so on…
Schedule time for…nothing - Creativity needs freedom and boredom (another blog post about this coming up). If you have a tendency to schedule every aspect of your life, schedule this in there too. You can call it ‘me time’ or whatever. If you always fill your time and head with something, you won’t have time for just being, getting bored, doing nothing. That’s the seed of creativity.
My experience is that the more you push the more creativity will pull away from you. To me at least, creativity is state of flow that needs time, freedom and spontaneousness.
In order to meet your goals, build a business or finish a project, you can’t just do things when you feel like it. So it’s a real balancing act between the two. Find what works for you, but remember:
You cannot hurry art, you cannot hustle creativity.
