I am a little reluctant to write this post today. It has been two weeks since my last post. You see… although I made the goal to write a weekly blog this entire year, I missed a week. It was spring break, and I had an entire week off from my day job as a High School art teacher. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to skip just one week, besides I was spending time with my family on vacation. What I didn’t realize is that over the past few months I had established a routine which made it much easier to write blog posts. Now I have broken that routine and I have found that it is much harder to do it than it was before. And to think what would have happened if I had missed more than just one post!
This happens to be the only picture of me taken during my entire spring break vacation. I guess it is hard to get pictures of yourself when you are the one behind the camera. We were at a family members house roasting marshmallows.
Routines have pros and cons in art just as much as in any other aspect of life. Today I want to make an argument how routine can help your artwork, or any other aspect of your life for that matter. Maybe in a future post I will talk about how breaking from routine can be beneficial but that is for another post and another time.
How can routine help your artwork? Just like my blog writing having an established routine helps you form habits that make you more productive. If you set aside a specific time each day or week to work on your art you will find that the routine will develop into a habit. Once creating artwork becomes habitual then you will no longer waste time with getting in the right frame of mind. Your body and mind will adjust to your routine and will get prepared for the schedule you have set. And because it is a habit you will naturally be thinking of Ideas during the times you are not creating, so when you sit down to do art you aren’t stumped on what to do.
Keeping a routine helps minimize distractions. This world is full of more distractions then there have ever been. If you keep to a firm routine and you let others know about it they will be less likely to be distracting you. Your family will respect your routine and it will be easier to say no when someone tries to pull you away from what you should be doing. Not to mention the distractions that go on within your own head, If you have a schedule set out you will be less likely to waist your time checking your phone or worrying about other things that can wait. If you don’t set aside a specific time to create then creating artwork will feel like a distraction from something else you should be doing. I used to feel this way a lot. I knew I needed to make artwork a priority, my wife knew also and supported me. But if I didn’t set aside specific time to make art I would feel like I was being selfish and I should be helping around the house and with the kids. The truth is, during the summer time, me being at home trying to help around the house was a distraction to everyone else, and everyone would get more done if I would just stick to a routine.
Routines help you be more productive. One routine I fall in and out of is apply to public art calls. Applying to calls is a lot of work and can be very time consuming. When I make a routine of applying to calls I find that I am able to get through each application much quicker. Much of the material needed for each application can be reused on future applications. But if I haven’t applied for a call in a while I tend to loose or forget where the information is. I am now in the process to establish that routine again. I have applied to a couple public art calls recently. One of which I procrastinated for a long time. I finally got it together the day before it was due. Because I had fallen out of my routine and procrastinated I ended up having to pay shipping for next day delivery. Another call I was working on which needed to be submitted online never got submitted. I was working on it the day it was due and what happened. My computer crashed and I lost everything I had written. At that point I didn’t have the time or drive to finish the application. No routine resulted in lost opportunities. There have also been many instances where because I had a routine and I was able to take advantage of opportunities which helped me in my art career.
Now I’m in no way perfect at keeping to my routines but I sure am trying and I know established routines help me a lot.
I hope you are able to glean some inspiration from my experiences on routines that you can apply to your own art creation and life.
What do you think? What routines have you established that help you get things done?