How to ‘get things done?’ - the distraction of ‘pending’, ‘creative time’, the importance of clients & task based working

Talking with my access support worker about how I ‘never feel like I can get anything done’.

The distraction of ‘Pending’

The feeling that something is ‘pending’ is such a distraction.

Urgent tasks are pressing on me, like my tax return or some show copy I need to write for a venue. I can’t concentrate on anything, until those things are ticked off. Its tempting to ‘just get it done’ and ‘focus on the creative work later’. But the reality is, there is always something ‘pending’ - when the tax return is done, it will be paying the bills, or writing a funding application, sorting out my public liability insurance, or getting a new pair of glasses.

Unexpected things seem to come up every week and hijack my time, like the burst pipe in my kitchen, having my wisdom teeth removed and needing to recover, or just a few days of bad mental health. 

If I have a meeting or a cleaning job to go to at 14:00, from 10:30 or 11:00 my brain can’t settle because of that thing coming up later on. So I can only do little tasks like emails or cleaning the house, I can’t get into ‘deep focus’ like doing my tax return or creative work.

Empty space

You would think having empty time would solve this problem.

If I have totally empty days though, that is a surefire way to get absolutely nothing done. For some reason the time stretching out in front of me is just too intimidating and I end up feeling really bad, and achieving nothing.

All of this adds up to finding it very hard to spend time actually doing my art practice.

‘Creative time’

Sometimes I would try to designate time, like one or two hours, to just ‘do my practice’ and protect that time from admin or other tasks. But somehow it never works out - that unexpected thing happens, the tax return has to get done before the deadline and so it gets pushed into the time I reserved for my practice, and ultimately because I am scared of the financial consequences it wins.

Then I feel double bad, because I had to do my tax return when I didn’t want to, AND I’m a bad artist because I let the tax return eat up my ‘creative time’.

But what really is that ‘creative time’?

I always feel like it should be totally free and aimless, and also totally pure. Like the only valid things to do in that time would be free writing or sketching with charcoal. Audio ecology listening exercises on a walk in ‘nature’, or touching soil and journalling about my physical sensations, and then turning it into a movement improvisation and videoing myself.

What are the things I always get done?

The thing is , I don’t miss deadlines. If something has to be done, I will do it - just usually it won’t be finished until right before. If there is a deadline or someone is waiting on it, I will produce it.

Unfortunately, as a solo artist, that means that the people’s stuff takes priority over my own work. HMRC or funders or promoters get better results from me than I do from myself. And ultimately I pay the price, when my own work becomes stressful or doesn’t live up to what I wanted it to be.

The things that don’t get done, are usually a) not tasks, and b) have no ‘client’. No-one else cares right now if I do them or not. (Although they might care 2yrs down the line when my show is shit).

‘Clients’ and task based working

I am thinking, maybe I can create the situation of tasks and clients for myself.

For instance, early stage prep for a show. Can I ask my collaborators or commissioners to be ‘clients’, and create a deadline to produce some information for them?

The next thing I want to do is ‘storyboard’ the episodes of the show. I also need to do this, to share with the creative team so we have something to refer to. Can I turn this into a more concrete task with stages that I can put on a to do list? Can I create a deadline which isn’t just ‘for motivation’, but actually is when I will present this info to the team?

Doing that task will probably involve lots of the things I want to do in the dreaded ‘creative time’ - drawing, writing, using visual software, creating and re-making images, editing sounds. Maybe for me this task based way of working could be a clearer, less daunting way of putting aside consistent time for my practice and early stage ideas?

Also, fluid time

I also think it would be ideal to have some space to just flow with ideas. I am interested in doing this workshop by Yumi Sakugawa, ‘Systems, Structures, Containers of Time, Magical Seeds: How to Grow and Maintain the Ecosystem of Your creative Practice’. 

It seems like they find it important to show up for creative practice as a ritual (which could be the opposite approach to what I’m saying above).

But I wonder if its possible to have balance, to pursue both?

Weeks instead of days

Finally, for me I realised that the idea of fitting so many things into each day feels, well ridiculous. But also oppressive.

How on earth do people eat 3 nutritious meals, exercise, meditate, stretch, go outside, get life admin done, do work tasks, and go out to other commitments like a cleaning job or a social engagement, all in one day?

Seeing things in the container of a 24hour period just feels totally oppressive to me.

If I try to think about all those things, honestly I just immediately want to cry and/or die.

I am going to try out seeing things in weeks, instead of days. My Access Support Worker had that idea, like just saying ‘I would like to meditate once this week’. That seems waaaaay more spacious and realistic, and actually true and tempting, than saying ‘I want to meditate for 1min each day’. 

To me, the idea of wanting and having to do anything every day, or even every day apart from Sunday, feels really crushing. But its true to say I would like to meditate, stretch, do yoga, walk outside, lift weights, have a bath, and cook a meal from scratch, once a week.

Its true to say I would like to spend one hour flowing in thoughts or writing or moving or drawing, once every two weeks.

So maybe I’m just going to try out what happens if I see weeks as the container, rather than days.

‘The boring shit’ #3 - running budget

This is something my dyspraxic brain has always struggled with. I think since numbers and dates and time confuse me, maybe money over time is just too much to get my head around. Oh wait thats cashflow? Okay never mind.

There’s a very specific feeling I get which I associate with my brain not being able to do something because of neurodiversity. Its a really fluffy, annoying feeling of ‘bamboozled’. Like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t compute the information. That’s what I get with the running budget, or even trying to explain what I’m recording and why I’m confused.

Anyway luckily I was able to share this with the amazing Pippa Frith (Exec Producer of Fierce Festival), who is someone I actually feel comfortable expressing my bamboozlement to. She showed me some examples of how her documents work, and I made this new system.

Here are some images of an example template:

[ID: a budget spreadsheet (see audio for full description) ]

• ‘Cash budget’ is the amount you have assigned to that budget area.

• ‘Spent’ is money that has actually left the bank account.

• ‘Committed’ is money you have committed to pay, but not yet paid - eg. fee instalments.

[ID: example of a formula in the budget spreadsheet. Remaining = Cash Budget minus ((SUM:spent column)+(SUM:committed column)) ]

• ‘Remaining’ = Cash budget - (Spent + Committed).

• At the bottom of the sheet, the Remaining total should match the bank account.

• In order to ‘reconcile’ the bank account, you need to go through each bank statement and check that all the transactions are listed in the budget and have a receipt or invoice number.

• (Please please have a separate bank account for receiving grants - aside from being best practice it makes everything so much easier).

The spreadsheet should have several tabs, so you don’t have to look at too much information in one place.

My example has a tab for a list of invoices and receipts, this is where you record them and assign them a number, eg. when you buy something and there is a paper receipt, you can file it or take a picture and enter the data in the sheet, and give it a number. These can just be consecutive numbers for a list which includes both invoices and receipts. When an invoice comes in you can rename the file to include the new number.

Then a tab for the running budget, and a separate tab for the ‘original’ or ‘submitted’ budget. This is the one submitted in the funding application, so you have a record. When you start the project and probably need to modify the budget, you can just start a new one which will become the running budget and re-assign the headers there. When you do the evaluation then you can compare the original budget to the running budget.

‘The boring shit’ #2 - filing system

I have never had a good filing system. Working with audio and video, I am constantly saving source files and multiple versions of the same project. 

Sounds are so hard to file! How do you categorise them? Names like ‘crunchy 2’ are everywhere.

Then how do you deal with versions? Every single time I end up with ‘[filename] final final FINAL THIS ONE’. 

Then there are the random project files the software creates which I have no idea what they are and always have some extension I can’t understand, but I assume are necessary for something? And I always forget to set it up properly so the files are just saving to some completely inconvenient location and they all get split away from the project files and then when I come to put it all back together its just a mess.

Hoping to solve this, I worked with my Access Support Worker to research how other artists - like video and sound editors - deal with filing.

One major consideration was that I work in projects which span different media types - so the existing system of Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies on a Mac wasn’t really helping me. It would be better to somehow group those things together by project first.

This tutorial was really helpful (and quite short).

These were the main things I learnt:

Project name

• Use the project name in every filename

• Create a short code eg. the first 3 letters of the project name

• The aim is to make the files searchable - so if you search that code all those files show up

• (Often I don’t have a project name at the start, so I decided this): Choose a code at the start & replace it systematically later if the project name changes

Key words

• Choose key words for filenames & always use the same - this is to tell you without doubt what is in the file

I looked at the types of files I usually have for each project and chose one way to name them (to avoid having multiple words for one file type eg. audio, sound, samples, recordings).

v.1, 2, 3 etc and ‘Submitted’ are there to avoid the curse of ‘final final 2 FINAL’ :)

With the sound & video I decided to use the venue name to show it was a final version, and which performance it was for.

Filename format

• Naming every folder & file the same format eg.

So ‘ExP’ is the project code for ‘Example Project’, then it is followed by ‘proposal’ to show what is in the file, and v.1 to show the version.

Hopefully when I go to the folder, I can scroll to the latest file version just by selecting the highest v. number.

Then, when I send something off for instance a grant application, I should save that version as ‘submitted’.

This is how I named the folders.

The numbers are just there so the Mac displays them in the right order - this helps my brain somehow.

Each project should have quite similar folders, but they can also be modified to fit the types of files needed for that project.

‘The boring shit’ #1 - schedule, focus & energy

One of the major things I learnt from my first fully funded period of working full time as an artist, was that I need a schedule. For me, this is not actually so much about managing when I do things, but working with my energy and focus to make sure different tasks get done.

As a neurodivergent person I always felt like time was against me - I struggled with 9-5 working because I couldn’t direct my brain to focus on the right thing at the right time. I was consistently late for a 9am start, but working through lunch breaks or staying late to get things done. During my Master’s degree I was consistently the last one there being kicked out of the computer lab when they locked up at 9pm - my hyper focus would kick in after everyone left and I would get so absorbed in editing video I would wish for another hour every time.

When I got my first grant I felt so happy to be free of these schedule demands and be able to flow with my ideas. But it turned out, that totally unstructured time was equally as hard to manage and feel healthy in!

Over the time since then, and the pandemic I have been able to get curious about my own energy and focus and at what times, in what conditions it comes and goes. Slowly I have pieced together a schedule that works for me - so I wanted to share that here. Not because it would necessarily work for someone else, but because the types of questions I’ve asked in the process might be helpful to someone else trying to design their own schedule.

This is an example schedule of my week:

ID: example timetable of a week, colour coded (see audio for full description)

Here are a few key things to consider for scheduling:

• Focus - when is the best time for me to focus? Mine is 11am, so now I try to keep that time free every day for any cognitively taxing work, for instance writing a proposal or having an important meeting.

• Types of work - I know that I can be really effective at thinking around 11am, but not so much after 2pm. So I schedule ‘physical work’ in the afternoon.

• One thing feeds another - if I focus for several hours in the morning on a very detailed task, my mind needs to zoom out and my body needs to move. So the physical work I do in the afternoon actually supports the morning work.

• Social or connected vs solo time - I can’t work alone all day. I lose track and quickly lose motivation. I need to schedule meetings, and social types of work, throughout the week to keep me motivated and inspired.

• Energy - when am I tired? I used to push through using coffee or sugary snacks. Now I try to listen to my body and rest when I am tired, and come back to it in the morning. Usually now this is after 5/6pm. This might seem frustrating but I have found that the quality of decision making is so much better the next day, I can usually finish tasks in half the time it would take me at 8pm.

• Flexibility! even though I know these things as general rules, I still keep space and allow myself to flex when I do things as much as possible to work with my body and brain. Sometimes I do still work all evening, once in a while if I get into a flow. But then its important to rest later in the week or the weekend.

Tricks:

• Flex on, flex off - I used to try and get one task done and only focus on that, even for multiple days or weeks until it was done. Now I realise I often need to do a rough draft of something, store it away, and come back to it later with a fresh perspective.

• Mini breaks - if I am feeling tired or mentally overwhelmed, I lie down and wear an eye mask for half an hour. Or if I have something to do in the evening, I rest and try to decompress from the day first.

• Stretching, bath or shower - even if I don’t have the time or motivation to exercise, stretching, or having a bath or shower helps me to get back into my body and clear my mind.

• Mini tasks - like going out to post a letter or return something to a shop. I dread these when they are on my list, but when I use them to break up my day and refresh between focussed tasks they can actually be helpful!

• Split the planning and the doing - I read somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that for neurodivergent brains with poor executive function, this is helpful because the planning drains all your capacity so when you get to the task your focus is too depleted to complete it. It works for me - I do the planning and break the task into steps in bullet points, then come back to it next time I have focus.

• Breaking things into steps - often the problem is the task on the list, eg. ‘Write proposal’, is actually 5 or 6 tasks. When I break it down into steps first it really helps, eg. ‘Read guidelines’, ‘research costings’, ‘get a bio from person X’, etc.

• Support or ‘body doubling’ - my Access Support Worker helps me do things like breaking tasks into steps. Many neurodivergent people work best by doing ‘verbal processing’ - talking about the task until you realise what the next steps are. I really, really need this and have also found I can share this with particular friends (obviously checking in first to ask if they have space). Usually this gets me unstuck and bumps me onto the next stage of the task.
  ‘Body doubling’ is where you arrange to work with someone - for instance just sitting together on Zoom while you both work for a fixed period of time, or checking in by text at set times to see how each other is doing.

• Food - I am terrible at this but one thing I saw recently was an ADHD nutritionist recommending banana & peanut butter on toast as a quick snack which provides slow burn energy and protein. Stuff like this does help me when I’m feeling too overwhelmed to eat but need to be on good form. I also keep protein bars in my bag for when I get a sudden energy crash during a cleaning shift or when I’m out.