#23 Making Time

Show Notes

This week’s show is all about making the time you need to produce your creative works. Well… it’s mostly about that. I get to that point by briefly talking about how I read an article on The Digital Reader about a super-cool eink device called the reMarkable. I’m extremely excited about seeing how this device fares when it comes out at the end of the summer next year (2017, if you’re reading this in the future). I’ll be talking a bit more about the reMarkable and my forays into putting Arch Linux on a Surface Pro 3 later this week on the Linux Lugcast show (you can listen or participate live this Friday evening).

Oh, and Krita 3.1 has been released, go update!

After that digression, though, my main focus this episode has been on productivity… making the time to work on your projects. I break it down thusly:

• Figure out your personal create/consume ratio
• Make the necessary sacrifices of consume time to make room for creating
• Optimize that time so you’re as productive as possible in it
• Squeeze out extra minutes in seconds where you didn’t think you had time

Of course, even though I’ve listed out the rough basis here, you should still listen to the show because I go into each bit with more detail (and digressions, of course. Wouldn’t be me otherwise, right?)

My question for you this week: what kind of things have you done to make time for creating? I’m always looking for new things to try out.

And as a small second, what do you think about these show notes? Do you prefer the list-style that I’ve used on previous shows, or is this in-line format more to your taste?

See you next week!

6 Archived Comments

dave hingley, Dec 15, 2016

I started thinking about finding time back in uni. at the time my university day was 7.30am to 6pm with an hour for lunch. I worked out if i worked on extra projects durring my lucnhbreak, I could spend 5 hours a week on somehting else.

when i got home at 6pm, I would be tired, I would sleep for an hour, then eat, then from 8pm till midnight my time was pretty much my own. I could prep work for the next day

in a week (monday to friday) I would get a days work for free

these days I do something similar- I sacrifice my lunch times to give me 5 h ours a week to spend on various art projects. I used to draw the line at not working in the eveneing to spend time with my fiance, but recently I have gotten a tablet to work on, so we can both be watching TV and i can be drawing/animating on the tablet.

Every other weekend My Fiance works, So i am able to do either DIY jobs around the house or work on projects.

eventually, though, the number of extra hours I will be able to commit to personal projects if/when I become a parent will reduce rapidly, but I think then its time to really start smaller short projects, make a drawing, do a comic strip etc I wont be ablet to keep the pace forever, maybe we should think about working in bursts? would that make for a better work/life balance?

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

That’s a good approach… really big on squeezing out those moments when you can find them. Do you have trouble getting yourself “into the zone” on your work? Some folks take a half hour to an hour to warm up before they can really put their nose down and get it done. Are you in that camp, or have you found a way to simply sit down and get right to work?

And yes, the addition of having kids has certainly forced me to think harder about how I manage my time for creative projects. Fortunately, as kids get older (and if they have an interest), they can start doing their own creative stuff when you do your own. It’s a great feeling.

Light BWK, Dec 15, 2016

I’m not always productive. If I’m experimenting with new stuff I am mostly certain that I will stumble for days.

As for making time for creating, I cut off a lot of time wasting activity. 2 years ago, I stopped watching TV, unsubscribed to a lot of Youtube channels, don’t listen to not important podcasts (this means your codpass is important XD ). Only read the 1st or 2nd paragraph to a news article or post, if interesting and important then I read further. Plus I have been using text to speech (reason why I’m on windows most of the time, TTS in Linux sucks) to consume more important articles while I do my things.

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

Ooooh… the text to speech thing is something I hadn’t thought of (probably because I’m exclusively on Linux ;)). That sounds like a really helpful way to go. I think that the Mycroft project was doing some stuff on that front. Maybe I should devote a little bit of time to investigate that a little further and see if I can make it useful.

(Also, thank you for the kind words about my codpast. It means quite a lot and I really appreciate that you consider this show valuable to listen to.)

Light BWK, Dec 17, 2016

Ohh so it is codpast and not codpass. I will remember that. :D

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