Creative Business Challenge #10 Create Time to Spend with Inspiring People.

I have just come back to the office this afternoon feeling so refreshed, excited and inspired after spending the afternoon with two great business women! It was a very last minute thing, and I very luckily was able to free up some time at the last minute to spend the afternoon painting some toy horses pink...

There was a very good reason for us to be painting horses, but that's not really what I would like to focus on just yet! What I want to focus on is how I felt whilst painting these horses and how I feel now writing this post. Inspired. Excited. Motivated!

You may be wondering why I find painting horses pink so inspiring or motivating and the truth is, I didn't. It was spending quality time chatting with two amazing and successful business women. I was able to have a peek inside an inspiring workspace, hear stories and news from these women, have a little glimpse into their world and briefly be a part of it. That is what I found inspiring! And that is why we need to spend time with these sorts of people. I have already written about finding your creative role model in a previous post, and this really adds to that.

I often talk about how important it is to spend time with people that inspire you and encourage you creatively, but one thing I hear many people (including myself!) say is that they just can't find the time! So clearly, what we need to do is create time. I mean, we're all creative right!?

If we are running a successful business, of course we are all going to be busy! But today my eyes were really opened to the possibilities of how we can create time to spend together. And it is simply by doing stuff together. Today, Naomi needed some help painting all these horses pink! And it was really great that we were able to help her and at the same time spend time together chatting about all things business, creative and interesting! And so much more productive than just meeting for a coffee ;)

So today Naomi needed help, perhaps next time I'll need some help! Let's all be more willing to help each other out and spend more time together inspiring and motivating each other, without having to take too much time out of our diary!

I would love to know what you think, or if you have a creative way to spend more time with creative people!

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Challenge #9 Stop Comparing Yourself to Others!

I cannot tell you how many times I get myself down or beat myself up after comparing myself to other people! Other business women, other photographers or just other women in general. For some reason we have this natural tendency as women (or just human beings) to be continually measuring ourselves against the other people in our lives or even our role models or mentors. But today I would just like to tell you (and me) to STOP! :)

And instead, I would like to start embracing our differences! We were not all created from the same mould, we were all born to be different and unique and we all have our own special reason for being on this earth :) So why spoil that by trying to be like someone else? 

Here are some fantastic reasons not to compare ourselves to others:

Most of the time, when we look at ourself we see worst version of ourselves, how we feel inside and all our faults and shortages. But when we look at other people, we only see the parts of them that they let us see! They are of course trying to project the best version of themselves whilst keeping all the real stuff inside. Which means it doesn't quite match up! Maybe if we all compared 'insides' it would be a more accurate comparison. But the main thing is, we just shouldn't be comparing ourselves.

We are all in different stages of this journey called life! Sometimes we forget that everyone is at different stages, walked a different road and are on a different journey! So it wouldn't make sense to compare where we start to where someone has already establishes themselves would it? There is also the point that we are all on different journeys! We have all had different experiences which will effect decisions and the way we handle some situations.

And finally there's this point! Do I need to say more? If we find the need to continually compare ourselves to others, it probably means that we are a bit insecure! Which is very understandable, but probably something that we all need to work on over coming. A challenge for me this year is to become secure in who I am. I believe this will significantly affect my business and allow me to be great at what I do and even be an innovator in the business world!

So, let's stop comparing ourselves to each other and just get on with whatever we have been put on this planet to do! I look forward to hearing your thoughts and how you have overcome the obstacle of comparison :)

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Challenge #8 Time Management - Make the most out of your time!

If we are anything alike, I would say time management could be one of our biggest issues! As a creative, I don't naturally want to stick to time limits, I just want to enjoy the process and be a bit of a perfectionist. But is that good for my business? Probably not!

Now please don't get me wrong, I am not asking you to change your personality or your natural creative flow. Because you need that, to be you! I don't want to disrupt your creative process, but I do want to fine tune it and in turn hopefully maximise your time!

I learn't a lot when starting up in my photography business. After a shoot I would spend days and days editing photos to perfection! I would experiment with up to 3 different edited versions of the same image to give myself options, to give the client options and to show off all that I can do with the wonders of Photoshop! But I soon came to realise that if I spent this long to edit  a shoot, I couldn't realistically do many shoots. So I made a plan to maximise my time so I can realistically fit more photo shoots into my diary! This meant dramatically cutting down my editing time, which was actually really helpful! It meant I really developed a distinct style in my photographs, I learn't more about how to get things right 'in camera' and relied less on the use of Photoshop after the shoot. I am certain this process has actually lead to my distinct Lorah Kelly style that is recognised in my photographs today! (Yay!)

Did I 'curb my creativity'? Absolutely not! In fact, I was able to learn to be not only creative but actually very skilled in what I did. Did I maximise my time? Definitely! By only allowing myself to edit for a certain amount of time, I was able to fit more into my week, more time to be more creative!

So what can you do in your business to maximise your time. Are there areas that you just spend far too much time on? How can you cut that down?

A great tool to find out how much time you are really spending on tasks is a time sheet! This can be in the form of a spreadsheet, a chart, a pin board - anything your creative mind can come up with! The idea is to track what you are spending time on during the day. Stop every hour and record what you have done. If you really want to get into details, stop every 15 mins! Record what you have done and then at the end of the week you can look at it and have a realistic view point of how you spend your time.



Could your time sheet look like this?

The next thing to do is make an action plan! What are you spending too much time on? How can you spend less time on this? What can you do to add more time to your day?

There is so much I can day, but perhaps I'll leave it for another blog post ;) So this week, record your time. I would be very interested to see how you all spend your time! If you would like an outsiders perspective, post your time sheet in one of our social media groups and see if we can all brainstorm ideas together :)

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