Getting things done!
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Being in charge
As an artist, you’re the one in charge of your career. That’s both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because there is no one dictating what you should work on. You don’t have someone behind your back making sure you meet deadlines (“What?! But this <insert name of project> was meant to be ready for yesterday!”), and you don’t have to spend endless hours in brainstorming, planning and retrospective meetings. A curse, because all the things I’ve just mentioned is what makes companies move forward and grow slowly but surely. That means that, apart if you are exceptionally self-organised and self-driven, it’s very likely that there are currently projects you should be starting, loose ends which should be tied, and commitments you made and have no idea how you’ll fulfil. And the more you have on your plate, the more stress you experience, and the less you manage to do. Instead, you spend a few hours on Instagram or on Netflix to alleviate your stress.
Luckily, other people have been in the exact same situation before and have tried to figure out how they could implement a simple system to get back on track. At this point you might think: “Well, yet another complicated system, involving tools I will have to pay for, which will introduce some overhead and will make me even less productive”. Not so fast!
As I’ve started my own consultancy company, I’ve been faced with this very same challenge, and with the first clients coming in and the multiple projects I wanted to start at the same time, I must confess I was at a point where I couldn’t see how I would be able to “pull it off”. So, I spent some time on Google to see if I could find a good business book which could help me with organising my time and be more productive, and I chanced upon this book which had good reviews: “Getting Things Done”, by David Allen (which you can find on Amazon). Of course, I was sceptical at first, having a deeply ingrained mistrust of “self-help” books. However, I decided to go ahead and read the book. I was actually compelled by the simplicity of the method. I’ve stuck to it for a few months now and I can tell you this has done wonders to my productivity and has helped me get my company off the ground, while working another full time day job.
However, as all non fiction books, the content is quite diluted, because it’s hard to convince people, and publishers, that a life changing method can fit in as little as five to ten pages. Therefore, I don’t recommend you read the book’s 250 pages. What follows is a summary of what I believe are the key points you need to remember and put into action.
