Five Magic Hours: A Creative's Guide to Focus and Flourishing
The School Day Hustle
I've spoken before about working within the parameters of a school day—five magic hours to get everything done. You'll relate if you have children and are responsible for school drop-off and pickup. I say five hours because once the token gesture of perpetual life laundry is attended to after drop off, dishwasher dealings, washing whip-round, floor foraging for all those things that have homes yet get hung up on the floor, message management, and general daily duck row wrangling, it's inevitably 10 am before work gets going. Then it's tools down again at 3 pm for pickup. Five tiny but mighty hours to get all the things done, and believe me when I say there is lots to do!
The Creative To-Do List
The creative to-do list is long and always varied. I'm talking studio time, admin time and the business of business time. That's time for painting current collections and developing future ones, writing lovely letters like this one, content creation for social media, workshop planning, video recording, video editing, exploring marketing opportunities, exhibition prep, email replies, artwork record keeping, financial record keeping, photography taking, material ordering, research and development, training, post office posting, the list goes on and on!
So, how does it all happen?
The Secret Sauce: Focus, Determination, and a Dash of Workaholic Tendencies
First of all, I'll let you into a secret. I'm a workaholic! The hard truth about owning your own business is you NEVER stop thinking about it. Maybe it's different for others, but it's certainly the case for me. The good news is there's a simple way to help parcel up the many facets of a creative business/life. Is that a sigh of relief I hear? But I'll get to that in just a minute. The secret sauce, the glue holding a creative business together, boils down to focus and a generous serving of determination.
Having a vision for where your creative practice is going is such a help in maintaining focus. It means the difference between making good decisions rather than drifting off in a direction that doesn't serve you. Focus is key, and I have a simple system that helps me use my time effectively. The clarity that comes from it is so valuable and means the difference between perpetually firefighting each day and cracking on the task at hand
The Creative Dyslexic Focus: Squiggly Knots and Flowing Paths
If this suggests a somewhat linear way of working, let me dispel that myth right now. My focus is a very particular type of focus. It's a creative dyslexic type of focus. The kind of focus that starts in one direction, diverts into three or four tangents that get tied up in squiggly knots before unravelling themselves into flowing paths of conscious thought and action. It might not sound like focus, but a laser-sharp determination and a daily planner get me through. Good old-fashioned paper and pen and a logical list is my go-to system for making things happen.
The Planner: A Simple Piece of the Creativity Puzzle
My planner is a simple piece of the creativity puzzle that parcels things up in an easy-to-follow daily system that I can't do without. Apologies if you were expecting some wizzy new app or tool that would magically bring focus and determination to your day. Ask artists how they get through the day, and paper and drawing tools will inevitably be in there somewhere.
Before you get too despondent that there's no magic wand for focus and determination, there is a super simple way a daily planner can be used to get the job done. A piece of paper is one thing, but a piece of paper with a week's worth of information laid out in lovely logical order is quite another. After years of trial and error with different diaries and notebooks, I love using a weekly planner and wholeheartedly recommend giving it a go if you don't already.
Visual Functionality and the Power of the Written Word
If you're anything like me, you'll know that visual layout is critical to just about everything from how your home looks and functions to the layout and functionality of your wardrobe, right down to workspace set up and knowing at a glance where all the important stuff is. For this reason, my weekly planner must also have visual functionality. All the big-hitting things, the cast-in-stone dates, and the must-remember items are noted in bullet fashion under the corresponding days. The logic is that something becomes an actionable thing when it's written down. An intention that is set requires action, and once it is complete, there's the immense satisfaction of crossing it off. Truth be told, that's my favourite bit.
This planner involves a bit of ceremony, and I'd encourage you to treat yours similarly. The reason is it's just for me and my BRIGHT work. It's not for family activities and after-school clubs, and it's not jumbled with coffee dates and favourite weekly walks, I use a digital calendar for all that with handy weekly recurring activities and helpful emojis to tell me at a glance what's happening that day.
Mindset Shifts and Concrete Markers: Claiming Your Creative Space
Using a planner marked a significant mindset shift in how I saw myself develop professionally. The other unforeseen strength was that it gave a cue to my family that what I was working towards was real and needed a separate space of its own to grow and flourish. It might seem odd that a piece of paper could do all these things, but remember, "the pen is mightier than the sword." Thank you, novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for these wise words.
Suppose you are the primary looker-afterer of your family and home while in parallel establishing a creative career, with no tangible things to show for it other than a stack of heartfelt paintings, a beautiful Instagram page, and a sporadic income. In that case, putting down concrete markers that show you mean business is significant. 2025 is my sixth year of using a weekly planner, and while it started out with just a handful of appointments and key dates, it's now a vital part of my working day. Fortunately, my family are super supportive of what I do, but I know it's not always the case with creative aspiration, and I've seen friends and family struggle to stake their claim.
Creative Mindset: Confidence, Courage, and Self-Belief
When all is said and done, the lasting thought I have while writing this post is that focus and determination are key components to success and well worth getting comfortable with, but so are confidence and courage needed for self-belief. As an independent creative, so much of what you do must come from your own inner drive. It is a career purely fuelled by self-motivation, so putting concrete, easy-to-use tools in place, such as a weekly planner, is a potent reminder that what you do is real, worthwhile, and of value. In any other profession, you would likely have an office, a login to a network and a payslip reminding you and others that what you do is serious and should be respected.
Having your own tools and systems to enhance a serious and respected art practice is so helpful in boosting confidence and courage that you have chosen the right career path. I do, of course, encourage fun along the way; it always makes things so much better! But I remember all too well, while establishing my art practice, how my work could be unintentionally ignored or overlooked by others who did not get what I was doing.
Hubby would be asked how his career was going, but I distinctly remember no one asking me that question for the longest time. I was the stay-at-home mum, painting to amuse myself during Little Bird's nap time, so there couldn't possibly be anything interesting to ask about. Bit by bit, that changed, but only as the visibility of what I was doing became more obvious. It's hard to be on the fringes of something, so as far as I'm concerned, give yourself every boost you can to make the difference between working in the margins of life and growing a thriving creative career. A planner was one of my first concrete steps to making my dreams come true. Yes, I know that sounds very corny, but trust me, it's true.
Photograph by George Groves
The BRIGHT Weekly Planner: A Tool for Thriving
I've made a simple printable BRIGHT Weekly Planner to help you on your way. Click to download and print it off at home. Keep it handy by your desk or the kitchen counter so you always know what's going on with your work day. I like to do a round-up of tasks before making dinner, so I know what's what and can switch off from work and move into family life.
Photograph by George Groves
Would you like to see the fruits of what a weekly planner can achieve?
Please pop into the shop and browse a carefully curated selection of BRIGHT paintings, prints and cards, all made possible through hard work, confidence, courage and self-belief.
