
From words to moving images.
Three has always been my lucky number. Therefore, here is the third and last article of this series. Before I move on to tell you the motive for publishing these three articles and why the last one is called Priorities, I would like to address what prioritising is all about seen from my point of view.
As things are right now, I consider prioritising to be crucial. As mentioned in previous articles, I needed an overview of how to optimise on the work I wanted to do and this was where prioritising came in handy. The scenario about time was described in the first article. With the help of Evernote my thoughts and sketches where placed within a system, which then immediately also became a list of priorities. With the help of the application, I was able to work out what to do with which tasks and, most importantly, where to begin. I also made sure to dedicate enough time during evenings and weekends to work on these projects. I wanted to make sure that I made progress from one Monday to the following. One step at the time. However, my understanding of prioritising was shifted earlier this year when I came across this tweet:
“I don’t manage my time priorities. Priorities manage me.”
— Yoko Ono on Twitter in March 2018.
To me, this was a somewhat new way of looking at prioritising. Simultaneously as I was reading the tweet, I went through some of the replies, and not everyone seemed to agree with the statement and I understand why. Nonetheless, I found some truth in the tweet by eighty-five-year-old singer, songwriter, and peace activist. What Yoko Ono wrote made a small impact on me, and I felt it made sense with regards to how I was working on and how I saw these things progressing. This new perspective didn’t change the creative work, but it changed the way I looked at prioritising. Up until then, I thought I was the one pulling the strings of the projects I was involved in. It turned out to be the other way around. God damn.
When prioritising was all empty carbs
I also did some prioritising with regards to my three daily meals. This new terrible meal plan had nothing to do with an experiment. It had to do with prioritising and was an intentional choice I made to prioritise something larger than a healthy lifestyle for a little while. In the previous article Time, I wrote about sleeping less in able to create more. In this section of the article, it’s about eating cheap to pay off student debt. The way I see it; both sleep and nutrition were compromised due to a higher purpose.
As you’ll see in the imagery below, I’m certain that I wasn’t getting the recommended 400g of vegetables per serving per day. However, I’m pretty sure I was getting my share of carbs. The following three images are an example of prioritising. A choice about not prioritising a healthy diet but prioritising paying off my student debt quicker than first assumed. Of course, there were days with a variety of meals, but the imagery below pretty much sums up what the compromise was all about. I know it wasn’t an optimal move to make, but the alternate meal plan was also only temporary — it lasted around eight months.



Time saved shouldn’t be time wasted
Prioritising becomes interesting when looking into time-saving technologies. We’ve been provided with a variety of technology to help us save time and make our lives easier. How great is that! Now, what we choose to do with the time we save through the help of technology is interesting. Naturally, I can’t write on other people’s behalf and let me be honest, I’ve done a minimum of research into the subject. However, I assume that in most cases it is spent on things which are considered not to be significant to each individual. Of course, once again, it all comes down to individual prioritising but just think about it for a second.
Furthermore, as I wrote in the last article Creativity my smartphone is on airplane mode sixteen hours a day from Monday to Friday. The reason for this is that I need to be focused or sleeping during those hours, and here is where I truly appreciate time-saving technologies, because they make my life easier outside of those hours. The time I save by using these technologies is mostly spend on things I prioritise. Otherwise, if it wasn’t, what’s the point of making peoples lives easier? If we only save time to waste it on scrolling a bit further down the news feed, then I don’t see the point. In the first two articles, I was figuring out how to optimise on time to be able to create more. With prioritising I’ll be able to reduce procrastination on projects I’m working on and actually get things done.
Time x creativity = priorities
In the first article Time, I wrote about wanting to explore new creative territories and moving images was definitely one of them. Priorities is the title of a film I’ve created. It’s a documentary about what more or less went down between November 2016 and April 2018. Of course, the creation of the film took longer than first expected. From purchasing the first GoPro camera — and losing it at sea — to purchasing a second camera, obtaining the footage, selecting which recordings were useful, creating the poster, building the website and finalising the project in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Priorities is without a doubt the most comprehensive project I’ve worked on so far. Throughout my time, I’ve never recorded, not to mention edited, anything this long. Usually, my time behind the camera is somewhere between ten to fifteen seconds when Snaps or Insta-stories are recorded and published. This project was something else in so many ways. My initial idea was that Priorities would be a twenty-something minutes film about studying at the Queensland University of Technology, living in Brisbane and having beers in the pool with mates. It quickly turned in to much more than that, and I’m genuinely pleased that it did.
A few things I find interesting about this project are how some elements of it ended up exactly how I imagined them to back in November 2016, while other parts of course completely changed throughout the creative process of more than seventeen months. Changes are great as long as they’re for the better so overall I’m truly satisfied with the final result. I’m also kind of delighted that the project has come to an end.
It’s a wrap
The three articles were written to introduce this long-term project Priorities. In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone who in one way or another was a part of the project — on and off screen. I’m pretty excited about having recorded all these great moments. I captured a lot of moments but looking back I certainly also missed quite a few great ones along the way. Just imagine how many times I didn’t bring my camera with me. Not to mention the three days of footage I lost in Noosa when the camera was buried at sea.
Enough about Time, Creativity and Priorities. Go to priorities.studio and watch the film you don’t have time for. Do your prioritising, I’ve already done mine.
Thank you for your time.
