Honor Your Personal Clock

If you follow Monkey + Seal's personal art pages (ie, not Monkey + Seal but Eve Skylar and Rick Kitagawa), you'll know that a lot of posting happens around, say 1-3am. Why? Is it because of optimum web traffic? Definitely not. It's because that's when we have time to work on our personal stuff.

When people ask us about our working schedules, we get a lot of people surprised that we often sleep at 3-4am, and don't get up until 10 or 11 (or noon, if we can help it). However, we find that it's really important to honor your own personal creativity clock.

Some people are night owls, others are morning people, and there are others who nap a few times a day but work early and late. Whatever your personal creativity clock tells you, if at all possible, try to follow it. If you're a morning person, don't try to stay up late to finish something, get up early to tackle it. If you're a night person, waking up early is going to kill you, so maybe you should try and power through into the wee hours.

"But Monkey + Seal," you may be asking, "what if my job/kids/whatever" gets in the way? Well then friend, you need to do some moving of stuff around. Honestly, it is possible to turn into an early riser. If you are strict with yourself and keep waking up at the same time every morning for a month, regardless of when you get to bed, you can train your body to wake up at the same time each day. However, if you are the most creative at night, you will be doing yourself a disservice. Perhaps your work schedule will fall more in line with a majority of the people you might be doing business with, but you'll be losing out on your optimal time for creating.

No matter how well rested Monkey is, while he is more productive in the mornings, he doesn't really get creative until around 9pm. What this means is that it's pretty pointless for him to wake up early if he doesn't have to. He performs better by doing a lot of his brainstorming and creative work between 9pm and 2 am. Also, naps completely mess up his sleep schedule, and he can only nap when he's extremely sleep deprived. Seal, on the other hand, has two creative spurts: one in the morning and one late at night after dinner. For her to keep focused and creative, she needs a nap in the late afternoon to keep fresh since she's working early and late at night.

Because we freelance, we're able to shift a lot of things around to fit our own personal schedules. But if you're in school or have a set job, a lot of times your schedule might not be as flexible. In this case, the trick is to move around what you can do to make time for your own personal work. If you're a morning person, maybe that means waking up extra early to put in an hour or two before work, or making sure you don't stay out too late on Friday night so you can put in an early Saturday working on your art. Whatever it takes, we encourage you to prioritize your creative work and carve out some time during your optimal creative peak and make some magic.

Hacking Your Own Timeline

For everyone out there who found this because they thought they were going to hack their facebook timeline, many apologies. Today, what we want to talk about is hacking your own personal timeline..you know, as in your actual life outside of the digital madness that is facebook.

You see, many of us, artists especially, have this imaginary timeline in our heads. Lots of it are socialized stuff that we grew up or had put in place by our parents or relatives. These are things like "getting married by 30," or "retired exactly at 65," or "graduate college by 22." Stuff like that. By indirect (and sometimes direct) messages, we've trained our brain to have these specific landmarks in time where certain things need to be achieved. However, we never stop to ask ourselves if these markers are really valid or even realistic.

While Monkey + Seal always encourages people living their dreams, dreams also need to be tempered by reality. If your dream is to be a world-class photographer, chances are you won't have the opportunity to really develop your skills if you're a freshman in art school. Now this is not to say that schooling is necessary, because it isn't, but the point is that if you are just starting off in pursuing your dream, your dream isn't going to come true on day 1, or even day 600.

When we set goals with timelines, we have to make sure that we temper our sometimes crazy-high expectations of ourselves with what is humanly possible. Going back to the 10,000 hour rule - if you want to be an amazing painter, you seriously need to log in thousands and thousands of hours painting. Assume that you have just started painting and your goal is to be a famous fantasy book cover illustrator, do you really think it's realistic that you can achieve your goal in a single year? It is possible (as we think anything is possible), but is it realistic? Say that you only need maybe 5000 hours to get your first illustration gig - that's still about two and a half years, assuming that you're painting 40 hours a week. Bump that up to an amazing 80 hours of painting a week, for 52 weeks out of the year, and then you're still at over a year. Is painting 80 hours a week - more than 11 hours a day - realistic for you? For more than a year?

We live in an age where we want everything now. With downloadable music and movies and TV, we don't need to wait to drive to the video store or to wait for shipping. We're conditioned to want everything now. We want to be millionaires today, to be successful today, to be famous today. We want our business to be profitable yesterday, to be scheduled for talk shows a week ago, and to be invited to conferences as a special guest a month ago. These things take time, and in order for us to be successfully sustainable, we need to set realistic timelines for ourselves.

So how do we do this?

Step 1: Figure out how much work, on average, you'll need to put in to your goal.

Take the time to write out your goal. How far away from it are you? This first step is extremely, extremely important. How many hours do you need to put in per week? Be honest with yourself. If you want that novel on the bestseller's list, how many hours does it take you to write 500 words? Multiply that by 80 and you'll have the amount of time you'll need to produce a 40,000 word novel. Now, how much time will it take you to edit that much writing? How many revisions do you think you'll need? Research publishing companies. What's the average time between an acceptance of a novel and the books hitting the shelves? Add all this together, and you will figure out how much time you'll need.

Step 2: Double that number.

We told you to be honest, and our bet is that you probably underestimated the time needed. Even if you don't factor in procrastination time, artist's block, and life emergencies or events, you also need to take into account sustainability. You're probably betting on some crazy, over-productive work schedule along with what it takes you to produce a small amount of work. However, as your probably know, larger scale projects usually just take way longer than you could imagine. Writing 10,000 words or painting 5 new portfolio pieces is very, very different from writing 40,000 words or painting 20 new portfolio pieces. If you thought it was four times as hard to do the larger product, you're probably mistake. It's more like 10 times as hard.

Step 3: Divide those hours by the number of hours you think you can manage to work on your goal per week. Keep in mind your day job (if you have one), vacations, weddings, sleep, your friends, family, and dates, your soccer team, etc.

Step 4: Divide that number by 50. Give yourself two weeks of a break. If not for sustainability, then for emergencies.

BAM. That's your realistic timeframe (in years) that it'll take you to achieve your goal assuming you're putting in the work and prioritizing your goal over most other things. We don't want to discourage you from following your dream, but we just want to let you know that your timeline in your head is probably unrealistic, and we don't want you to be disappointed when those deadlines come due and you haven't hit your mark there.

Since Monkey is very deadline oriented, he likes to set his crazy goal, then go back and set another "backup" deadline that is more realistic. He wants to be a Magic:the Gathering illustrator by January of 2013, but realistically? It's more like January of 2015. He's going to bust his little tail to make the first deadline happen, but after doing some research, art directors (specifically those at Wizards of the Coast) say that it usually takes about 2.5 years from when you start trying to go pro to make it to that caliber of an illustrator. Work like you'll do it in half the time, expect longer, and hopefully you'll end up ahead of the curve.

Set your goals today, whether it's looking for a new job, a specific achievement, or your end-all dream. Just make sure that they're realistic and true to you.

IT CAN BE DONE!

"It can be done within my time"

"It can be done within my budget"

I first saw these two signs printed in large colorful letters, at one of my old jobs, hung above the entrance to the conference room. It made such a huge difference to anyone present during those meetings in that room. Everyone had confidence in each other that the job would get done and whatever challenges that lie ahead were going to be accomplished. We has a sense of possibilities. The words "it can be done . . . " solidified, that there was no turning back. No second guessing. We simply ruled out excuses.

Sure I don't have a lot of time, but I can do a sketch on my 15min. lunch breaks. I can't afford art supplies, but I can draw on this found piece of wood. It can be done. Period.

Humans are often negative. Especially artists. We think it is impossible, because we've been told that all our lives. We think we need a lot of resources in order to accomplish the grand task of creating the big vision we have in our minds. Sometimes that's true. But most importantly, we often "fail to see the many small creative actions that we could make at this very moment" - Julian Cameron.

We dream of making the billion dollar blockbuster feature film when we haven't even attempted a 2min. flip book hand-drawn animation. We dream of the New York Bestseller novel, when we haven't even touched our writing journal in months.

It scares us to think that we can DO something today, at this very minute, that will take us closer to our creative goals. We would rather obsess about impossible things, than take clear small real actions towards possible tasks.

The great thing about being an artist is that we are creative, we are figures of capable imagination. We have 1) the ability to first visualize what we want and 2) to come up with the practical plan to achieve them. Now we just need to follow through.

What can you do right now, one tiny action towards creativity?

Making Your Stop-Doing List

While we all have our daily "to-do" lists, we sometimes advocate that people should come up with a "stop-doing" list. Just as important as getting the important work done is weaning oneself off of bad habits and reprogramming your brain to follow more productive habits.

While the occasional jaunt down the information superhighway is just fine and dandy, and thanks to Google a lot of reference is just a click away (although if at all possible, we recommend using your own reference), spending hours playing Zuma Blitz (*cough Monkey cough*) doesn't do anyone any good.

While we totally support fun little breaks and the like, we just want to address any major bad habits - and nowadays, many of these habits end up in the form of constant Facebook browsing or randomly selecting wikipedia articles to read.

Creating a stop-doing list is a good way to honestly evaluate what sort of behaviors and habits aren't working for you. If you're doing well and you're finding time to get everything done, then great. But if you aren't, it may be wise to evaluate how much time you're really putting into your work and how much time you're putting into reading Gawker or the Onion.

If you aren't sure what needs to go onto your Stop-Doing list, perhaps you should try to take notes on your day. How much time are you REALLY spending on your painting? How much time are you spending on marketing? Playing video games? Watching TV? Once you start taking notes of when you start and stop doing things, the picture becomes a lot clearer, especially when you figure out that your break has lasted for an hour and a half.

If you're doing everything that you want to be doing, maybe try making a Do-Less-Of list instead. That way you can more properly realign your priorities. Maybe take the comic book reading down from an hour to fifteen minutes a day. Maybe take out watching that extra TV show that you watch just because it's after your favorite crime drama. That's an extra hour and a half that you could spend working.

Alternatively, if you're hustling non-stop, maybe you might need to take it down a notch so you can actually enjoy life. Instead of spending that extra fifteen minutes writing an extra blog post, you could spend that time catching up with a friend.

We're not productivity fascists that want you to overwork yourself. The main point about budgeting your time and making evaluations about what you're spending your time on is to really think about what is necessary and focus on that. Whether you're overworked or overplayed, finding the right balance in your life is what it's all about.

Savoring Time

(Illustration Friday Topic: Savour)

Seal here:

This week, Seal participated in Illustration Friday, a great online resource where artists can be inspired by weekly art challenges and build a creative community. The topic for this week was "Savour."

It really made me think about the idea of time: how to savour it. Time is used: to do what we enjoy doing (art), what we don't like doing but have to do (work/errands), resting (sleeping or taking breaks), or escaping (when you don't even remember what you did the last two hours, like video games, browsing the internet, or watching tv reruns - you can't even remember what you watched).

So how can we honor time? How can we savour it? How can we make use of it, whether we are creating, working, resting, or escaping, in the most effective manner? When I say "effective," I don't mean in a militant-rigid type of way, but that it's enjoyable, that you are present, and aware that you are DOING something. (Resting/breaking also count, they are also verbs, you are (do-ing) rest-ing/ sleep-ing.)

Time is flexible and pliable. Activities can either "take up a lot of time" or "we forget about time," something dreadful or dreamy feels "like forever" and other things go by in an instant ("where does the time go?" we ask ourselves).

In order to make use of our time, we need to take a look at the word: Savour.

Sa.vour. -
To appreciate fully; enjoy or relish
A distinctive quality or sensation
[to taste] (life)
The power to excite interest

Savour is a sexy word. How many of us appreciate our day and time fully? Actually smell and taste our morning coffee? Do you taste life? Are you excited? Engaged and interested in the work you are doing throughout your day? When we are creating, working, resting, or escaping, do you make the conscious decision: "this is how I will spend my next 15min, hour, half a day, a week on 'X'" ?

When we taste something and are aware of its specific distinctive qualities (a juicy, textured ripe orange), or when we are passionately interested in something, (painting the difference between the soft fur of a cat, the coldness of shiny metal, the exact curve and idiosyncratic expression of our lover's face), for that moment, we stop time. We are aware, present, enjoying, and savouring. We do not care what else is happening outside, we are engaged with life. Time is well spent.

How do you spend your time? Are you savouring it? Draw a circle. It is your pie/ pizza chart. You have 24 hours in a day: What percentage of your day is used for 1) things you like to do 2) things you don't like to do 3) resting 4) escaping? You can even draw a different chart with your own personal categories: I have one that divides: 1) Time spent on art 2) work 3) health 4) friends/ family 5) personal enrichment 6) break/ resting activities 7) entertainment. How much of your lifetime is spent on doing things you love?

Don't be alarmed if most of your pie slice consists of work or doing things for other people. (Most pie charts are unfortunately like this). The answer is to free up more time to do more of what you love. (hire an intern, a maid, a friend to do your busywork, say "no" to more workload, move into your career field, get paid to do what you love doing).

If you cannot free up more time, the trick is to savour the moment, even when you are working or doing something you don't necessarily want to do. In order to do this, you need to consciously make the decision to use that time in a specific way. "I am working from 9-4pm."

When you are conscious of the decision to use your time in a specific way, you give yourself the agency and awareness - you are choosing to do this. When it's time to work, you work. Don't daydream about your next vacation - you'll slow down the process. Get it over with and then when the time comes, you can fully enjoy your vacation. "I am resting for 30minutes before the next project." I am consciously fully resting for the entirety of 30 minutes, instead of juggling eating dinner while still working by the computer, I am enjoying and savoring my rest. You can work more efficiently after you have fully rested. Otherwise, your body will continue to run, but your mind and soul have already checked out- which is often why life feels like a blur.

When you name your time, you give yourself the permission to fully engage in that activity - you are savoring.

The last tip is you need to create personal goals in all aspects of your life.

"to contribute more at work meetings"
"enter more art competitions and craft shows"
"call friends more"
"surprise my partner, by taking out the trash first"
etc.

You can savour time, when you consciously engage to work for yourself, to mark changes in your personal growth, to choose to be present in life, no matter the activity or circumstances.