Productivity & Time Management Tips for Building Your Illustration Career

If you’re like many aspiring illustrators, you’ll be working to build up your illustration career on the side. Perhaps you have a full time job or maybe you already work for yourself - whatever the details, the common challenge is finding the time to do this.

This is one thing that Jonathan really struggles with alongside his day job of co-running our business, as well as the joint responsibility of looking after our 1 year old. When you add our work anywhere lifestyle & travel into the mix, the time he has to do anything illustration-related has to be carved out very carefully!

If you’re anything like he is, you’ll know that getting started on an illustration piece can require a mammoth amount of focus and concerted effort. It’s not surprising that many people just never quite get over that initial hump…

You’ve got so much to do before you even start getting commissions and jobs:

• Create portfolio pieces
• Build a website
• Research potential clients
• Market yourself to potential clients

And then once you do have clients, there’s all the business stuff to manage too, like:

• Invoicing
• Contracts
• Client management

If you then add a job, children and family time in to the mix then it’s not surprising that your dreams of a thriving illustration career can easily fall by the wayside. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can try to overcome this challenge…

Carving out more time

The first piece of advice focuses on how to carve out more time to work on your illustration career. Most of us could be a little more productive and selective with some of the things we do - and if we want to “make it”, this is where we have to show self-discipline. Here are a few ways you could carve out more time:

Watch less/no TV - this may be tough for some of you but how much do you really want to get paid for doing something you love?

Cut down on socialising - another toughie but when you’re socialising you’re also often spending cash…which itself could be invested into your illustration career. A new computer? Upgrade your software?

Leverage the time you do have

The second part of the strategy is to do more with the time you actually do have. It’s easy to get distracted and end up wasting an hour with nothing to show for it but if that’s the only time you have to work on your illustration career you have to make it count. Here are a few ways to do that:

Imagine you’re working for a client - if you treat your work like it’s for a client then you’re not only getting good practice for when you are working for a client, you’re creating a good environment to take your work seriously and get on with it. If you’re easy on yourself and always think “Oh it’s ok if I let that slip, it’s only for me” then you’re never going to get anything finished. Practice self discipline when you least need it and it will be easy when you most need it.

Set clear tasks & deadlines - to do lists are great but sometimes you can fall into the trap of making them but never crossing anything off them…or ignoring them and doing something completely different. This often happens when the items on your list are too big or too general. For example: “Get more clients” is nowhere near specific enough for you to action and can easily feel overwhelming. You need to break this down into smaller, more manageable tasks such as “Design promo mailer”, “Compile list of target clients”, “Research printing costs & get promo mailer printed”, “Send out promo mailer to list”

Turn off all distractions - this is an absolute must if you want to get anything done with the little time you have. Jonathan can easily waste half an hour reading other peoples’ blogs and before he knows it, the hour he has before our daughter wakes up from her nap is gone and he’s got nothing to show for it. Combine this tip with the one above and have a clear task you need to get done in a specific timeframe. Focus on nothing but this task with everything (including the TV and Twitter) switched off.

Try creative approaches to GTD (Getting Things Done)

We’ve recently been experimenting with a 7 days on, 7 days off approach. It’s not something that will work for everyone but if you’re really serious about getting your illustration career going, then a hard core approach like this might work for you.

The basic premise is that for 7 days straight, you put all your focus and effort onto a specific task. For illustrators, this may mean things like completing 5 new pieces for your portfolio or getting a professional-looking portfolio website up and running or contacting x number of art directors/agents every day…whatever task it is that needs your 100% focus and effort to move you to the next level.

During your “on” week, you may stay up later than usual, switch the TV off, cut down a little on family time (if you have a willing partner or family member who can help with childcare) and basically put as much focus and attention as you can muster on the task at hand.

When you hit an “off” week, you then put as much time, focus and attention as you put into your on week, on to your leisure time - so that means spending as much quality time with the family as possible, learning a new skill that you’ve always wanted to learn, taking up exercise and getting as much quality down time as you can.

As I said, it’s a pretty hard core approach but it’s worked for us over the past few months and is the only way we’ve been able to complete some of the things we’ve had on our to do list (like completing the 12 Week Challenge Kit and other things we’ve been meaning to do for ages!).

Unfortunately, despite the above advice, there’s no magic bullet when it comes to managing time effectively to help you make progress in your illustration career - it really boils down to this:

• How much do you want it?
• How much and what are you willing to sacrifice to get it?
• Are you really as productive as you could be with your time? Really?

What’s stopping you from getting more done with the time you have? Let us know in the comments and we’ll see if we can come up with creative solutions to help…