Calling All Creative Entrepreneurs Who Have No Time To Be Creative

Business. Family. Endless to-do lists. Client/family emergencies. Obligations and responsibilities.

Such is the busyness of “normal” life.

And then, one day you wake up and realize you haven’t done squat for months (or maybe even longer) to nurture your own creativity.

You cling to the hope that, once you overcome whatever obstacle (family/business/health/etc) currently requiring your time and energy, you’ll finally have the time to nurture your creative side.

How’s that been working for you?

From someone who has absolutely lost her creativity in the sea of requirements that keeps me in perpetual motion, I thought I’d share a few tips for working creativity into your life, so you can nurture your artistic passions regardless of what’s happening around you.

1. Change the energy around “being creative.”

If your definition of creativity involves working on a specific project, like a book or a painting, I invite you to shift your perspective.

Aren’t you creative when you come up with a fun way to get your kids to stop crying, or to better understand their homework? What about when you magically pull together dinner even though you haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks?

If you expand your definition of creativity (maybe even in a creative way), you may find you ARE a creative entrepreneur who absolutely IS finding time to be creative—just perhaps not according to our  “normal” idea of what that means. The idea here is that, by recognizing ways you are being creative, you’re opening up new ways to be creative.

2. Figure out what’s really stopping you (because it’s probably not what you think).

Let’s say you have a creative project in the works that you haven’t touched in a while.

First, do a little exploring as to WHY you’re stalled on that project.

If your natural instinct is to say, “I have no time,” I’m going to ask you to dig a little deeper.

Yes, there are absolutely days that get away from you. Maybe you are so busy, you lose track of time and the window you set aside to work on your project gets consumed by something else. Maybe the you-know-what hits the fan, and your project is the furthest thing from your mind. Or, maybe you get sick, and you aren’t able to get anything done.

All totally understandable.

But, when those days stretch into months or years, there’s something else stopping you.

Maybe you’re no longer inspired by the project. Maybe you’re experiencing a creative block. Maybe you’re so busy listening to the voices in your head, you can’t focus. Maybe you have some other limiting belief that’s keeping you from working. Or maybe it’s not really your project to work on, but you haven’t figured that out yet.

Whatever it is, I suspect it’s not the time aspect at all.  The lack of time becomes a convenient excuse.

And, if you find yourself protesting right now that it truly is a lack of time, keep reading.

3. Start making progress by committing to just 15 minutes a day.

My friend Samantha Bennett, author of Get It Done: From Procrastination to Creative Genius in 15 Minutes a Day, advocates for working on your creative project for 15 minutes a day, every day. (Skeptical? Yeah, I was too. But it actually worked for me! I was able to write both a nonfiction book and a novel using the 15-minute day approach.

Give it a try for a week or two, and see how much you actually get done (you’ll probably surprise yourself).

I’d love to hear your thoughts on finding more time to be creative. Comment below. And I’ll keep you posted as I continue working on fitting more creativity into my life.

And if you’d like more on this topic, you may want to take a look at my Love-Based Goals book.