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Balancing Work, Life, and Art

If you are like me, a part-time artist with a full-time day job, you know how hard it is to balance your art, work, and in general your life. With all the responsibilities and limited time in a day it can be difficult to feel like you are getting things done which can take a toll on your mental health.


You might be working a day job that has nothing to do with art, but takes a lot of your energy throughout the day, and you have 2 pets to care for, a social butterfly spouse, and a house to take care of. Maybe you are a stay at home mom with a new baby and take care of most of the chores around the house. Or perhaps you are a student, living on campus, and participating in sports or clubs. Regardless you have to find a balancing act between the three areas: work, life, and art. 


Without a balance, your mental health and productivity can suffer.  Mental health can be a huge catalyst for the dreaded art block. Which is why I’ll be going through how you can balance your life, day job, and art so you can pursue all aspects of your life and feel like you have a handle on it all. 


a person sitting in a window

Understanding Your Commitments


One of the key steps to balancing it all is to identify your priorities. Determine what the demands of your full-time job are, what you are pursuing as an artist, as well as recognizing your personal commitments and obligations. 


These may be prioritized differently depending on what is your biggest time commitment, or what is most important. For me, I need my full-time job in order to make ends meet and it is my biggest time commitment. I spend 45 hours at work, and 7 hours commuting to and from in a week. That’s about a third of my week right there. When thinking mathematically, I really only have a third of a week for my other areas of life, if I take into consideration that I sleep for about 56 hours a week. So now I only have about 56-60 hours a week to dedicate to my art and other life priorities like my pets, my partner, chores, cooking, friends and family, and other hobbies.  It’s a lot to try and squeeze into that time frame. 


For me, my priorities depend on the week and my spouse’s traveling schedule. I decide to be more social when he is home and mainly sketch while we watch tv shows, and in general create as much as possible when he is gone. Our pets, chores, and house are more consistently needed, and it's easier to tackle them quickly, one at a time, rather than all at once.  The business side of my art is tackled as it comes up or is dependent on a deadline like an upcoming event, tax deadlines, etc.. 


Effective Time Management Strategies


If you are someone who has more of a set schedule, or can alter your schedule to your liking, creating a time-blocking schedule is a great way to allocate your time. Alternatively you could also divide your week into different days to focus on one thing per day; it all depends on what works for you. Keep in mind that things can come up out of the blue and throw everything to the wind. When that happens, take it in stride, figure out how high on your priority list it is, and adjust your day or week as necessary. 

a clock

Setting smart goals can be great for both work and artistic endeavors. It can help give you determine realistic goals and when you want to achieve them. SMART goals are:


Specific: What exactly are you trying to achieve? 

Measurable: How will you know when you’ve achieved it?

Achievable: Is it genuinely possible to achieve?

Relevant: Does it contribute to your overall goal?

Time-bound: When do you want to achieve it by?


By setting SMART goals you can help yourself prioritize your goals, and give yourself some direction. If you find your SMART goals to be too overwhelming, break them down into smaller ones and then create small steps and tasks you need to take to complete those. This can make them feel more manageable to take on, and easier to feel productive. 


Maximizing Productivity


Utilize your downtime! There’s plenty of time in the day where you can take a few minutes here and there to make some progress. On my lunch breaks, if I have some extra time, I use it to brainstorm or start planning a project. 


Infusing creativity into your routine can be a great way to maximize your time too! If you set a mini goal to draw everyday but struggle to feel inspired to create or having a hard time brainstorming, then find a prompt or challenge that will spark some creativity! Lately I’ve been using my copy of "Sketch-A-Day Art Challenge 2020" to find study subjects, as well as explore different subjects, and putting my own twist on them. 


a working space

Another way to increase your productivity is to minimize distractions. Stop texting your best friend, opening social media, and just draw! I have a hard time with auto opening social media apps when I meant to look for a reference photo, and an hour later I’m still doom scrolling with a blank piece of paper in front of me!


One of the most beneficial things I have started doing is utilizing the focus mode on my phone. I can set a schedule or just do it for a short period of time. It silences and hides all alerts from selected apps and prevents you from opening them up too. 


Another tactic I’ve found to be helpful is not to use Pinterest to search for reference photos. I love Pinterest for creating inspiration boards, but it’s too easy to fall down the rabbit hole. An alternative is Pexels, a great website to find creative commons photos. 


Nurturing Creativity and Self-Care


Getting and staying inspired may be easy to you, or perhaps it’s a struggle. One of the biggest challenges for artists is art block, and it can rear its ugly head amidst a busy schedule. I have a separate blog post about coping with art block. In short, two key factors of art block are a lack of inspiration and a lack of motivation. If you can avoid lacking in either, it can help you be more creative when you need to be.


a balanced stack of rocks

Self-care is a huge way to get out of and prevent art block. Check in with yourself often to make sure your overall health isn’t impacting your art, or other aspects of your life. If it is, you may need a break to do some self-care. I have another blog about self-care for artists if you need some pointers on different ways you can give yourself some self-care.


Setting Boundaries


Prepare for your villain era, we are setting boundaries! In America, work can easily flood outside of your designated work hours, especially if you are salary, or often get asked to cover someone else’s shift. Maybe you live someplace where there is a great work-life balance, but you struggle to say no to going out with your friends every night. One of the biggest things you can do to help yourself is by setting boundaries. 


It can be hard, and feel terrible in the moment, but it’ll help you in the long run and allow your priorities to not step on one another. Additionally, it can aid in preventing you from taking on too much at once and allowing your goals to slip to the wayside. 


Leveraging Resources and Support


a group of peers meeting

A great way to tie together some of your social and art life is to build a support network of fellow artists. A benefit of this is being able to go to your peers for feedback or tossing around ideas. One of the more creative times in my life was when I had a small support group, made up of filmmakers, comic writers, and artists, that would meet weekly during the pandemic to go over each other’s work. My only suggestion would be to have a more niche group if you are looking for a specific type of critic from people who are more experienced in your medium, or genre. These groups are also a great way to collaborate, which can lead to enhanced creativity and growth.


Sometimes we all need a little more help than our network can give us. Workshops, mentors, courses, and resources to improve different aspects of your life can be helpful as well. 


I recently created a discord group specifically for artists looking for growing their artistic skills, group feedback and critique sessions, challenges and more. If you are interested in joining, comment "Star Guild" below and I'll provide an invite.


In Conclusion


There are many ways that you can bring balance to your life, to foster productivity and creativity in all areas. Having a balance can help you prioritize and avoid feeling overwhelmed when you have a lot happening at once. Setting schedules and goals, altering your environment to better suit your needs and taking care of yourself are the most important things you can do to give yourself the best chance at success and being your most creative. 


Do you do something that was mentioned in this article? Or do you utilise a different tools? Share it in the comments! Not everything works for the same people, and you might help someone else out. 




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