Hello friends,
I thought I’d share a glimpse of what my typical day has been like over the past 3 months.
Finding a schedule that worked for me was harder than I ever thought it would be. It took 6-8 weeks to make it work. Turns out that scheduling, just like engineering, sounds perfect in theory, but isn’t so applicable to the real world!
I’ve found that I work better in blocks. Working on one project at a time is also the best way for me to do things. I try to limit my number of tasks to 2 or 3 a day so that I don’t get overwhelmed. I was struggling for the longest time to find a way to organise my day until I was recommended to use a Kanban system to organise my tasks (thank you Diana!). It’s been so helpful – I can organise my tasks by type or project and can see my progress on each project (as well as feel good when I see projects in the "Complete" bucket).
I am not sure as to how long I will be pursuing art for, and I am curious to see where this journey will lead me. I hope this blog inspires you in some way if you are also working from home or looking to work from home.
Enjoy!
5:00am - 7:30am
I am an early bird and love to start my days quite early. I generally wake up between 5:00 - 5:30am and spend about 30 minutes getting out of bed and freshening up before I either head to the gym or go for a 5 - 7km run. My workouts generally take an hour to do.
Why work out so soon after waking up? I find that it works best for me, as I generally get very lazy by the afternoon or want to keep working on art instead. I also find working out the hardest task of the day so it feels great that I can tick it off early in the day, and to not have to worry about it again (until tomorrow that is).
By 6:30 – 7:00 am, I’ll have returned home and will take a quick shower before I head into the rest of my day – primed and ready.
7:30am - 10:00am
This part of the day I dedicate to mindfulness. Meditation was something I wanted to bring into my daily routine when I left my job and I now dedicate 1.5 hours to meditation every day. I am working on another blog post about my journey with meditation and how life changing it has been for me. It is a task I consider as non-negotiable and have missed meditation 5 days out of the last 120 days.
I'll usually finish meditating by 9am and move onto journaling where I write down what I am grateful for, my intentions and goals, positive affirmations. After this I will look at my projects list and plan out the tasks for the day accordingly.
I have recently started a 12 Week Course from a book called 'The Artist's Way' which has added an extra 30 minutes to my morning routine. As part of Week 1 I am writing morning pages, artistic affirmations and a few more writing tasks.
10:00am - 7:00pm
By 10am, I’m usually at my desk. I split my working day into two 4-hour blocks – one block for painting, and the other for computer work. 10am-2pm is dedicated to painting alone. I have a list of projects that I am working my way through and because I am quite a slow painter, I've allowed 4 hours so that I can make good progress on my paintings. By painting in the morning, I make sure I am practicing and working on my watercolour skills every day.
I used to schedule computer work in the mornings, but I found that due to technical difficulties or how time consuming it is to edit paintings and update my shops I found myself sacrificing time to paint. So I put painting earlier in the day. This way, if computer work does end up taking longer than I expected, it wouldn’t take away from my painting time.
I generally have a break from 2pm - 3pm. During this time, I work on my Patreon posts, blog posts or make paint. This helps me break up the day and I find these tasks easier to work through.
3pm - 7pm is dedicated to computer work. Computer work for me will include anything from the following:
⦁ Scanning and editing my paintings on Adobe Photoshop
⦁ Generating seamless patterns from my paintings on Adobe Photoshop
⦁ Creating multiple colour ways of my paintings
⦁ Updating my Print On Demand shops with new prints and designs
⦁ Working on my Patreon
⦁ Updating my Website
⦁ Recording footage for social media or scheduling social media posts
7:00pm - 9:30pm
I use this time to clean and wind down. From 7:00pm - 8:00pm I'll have dinner and clean a section of the house. I have a cleaning schedule and like to tackle different sections of the house during the week so that my weekends are free. From 8:00pm - 9:30pm I'll shower and read a book before I sleep. And that is my day.
Thank you for reading ♡.
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