Time Efficiency for Creatives (17 time management styles)
Time efficiency means I can get more done more efficiently. So these are my favorite time management styles I like to use as a creative.
I’m a musician, artist and traveler who likes to blog and make videos. I also freelance and have all that general life stuff to juggle too.
So optimizing my life means I can finish more creative projects and reach more of my creative goals.
Good stuff, right? I think so.
So let’s not waste any more time — let’s get to it!
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What Is Time Efficiency?
For me, time efficiency for creatives means prioritizing your most important creative tasks first.
These are the things that will have the biggest impact on your creativity, goals and overall progress.
So the trick is in first understanding your preferences, personal bottlenecks and lifestyle. Then, you can choose a time management style that best complements those things.
So let’s keep moving and look at the different ways to do stuff better.
Do Stuff Better (17 time management styles)
Ready to crush your time efficiency? Epic.
Here are my favorite ways I like to manage my creative life.
1. Time Awareness
Time awareness means understanding your current habits and preferences and how you want to improve.
It’s a mixture of self awareness and goal setting. And it’s a great place to start.
So consider these questions:
Do I waste time on unimportant things? If so, why?
What are my time-wasters and distractions?
What would my perfect creative schedule look like?
Why do I want better time efficiency?
How will better time efficiency impact my creativity and creative life?
How do I define “time efficiency”?
2. Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s law says that your work will take you exactly the amount of time you give it.
For example, if you give yourself one week to do something, it’ll take you one week to do it.
But if you only give yourself one day, it’ll only take you one day.
And if you give yourself no deadline at all, you may never get it done. I think creatives are especially vulnerable to unfinished projects and starting new things rather than finishing old ones.
So Parkinson’s Law can help.
To use it, first focus on choosing just one or two projects to complete. Then, set a shorter deadline.
3. The Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle is the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of our results comes from just 20% of our actions.
So, that means you just need to figure out which (20%) of your creative efforts make the biggest splash.
Here are some questions to help you figure things out:
What are your creative strengths or your strongest creative habits?
How could you better prioritize these things?
What stuff do you spend too much time on?
What are your biggest distractions?
4. The Flowtime Technique
The Flowtime technique is when you work on a specific task in timed intervals, but breaks are not scheduled.
It’s a productivity systems that’s optimized for flow state, mood and creativity. It’s an alternative to the Pomodoro technique (which works better for clerical, non-creative stuff).
With Flowtime, you’re more likely to enter a “deep work” state and accomplish more. The important part is to avoid interruptions during this deep work focus.
Your focus should be on the task at hand. You simply work on that (with the goal of entering a flow state). You stop when you get tired, bored or lose focus.
Tracking your time helps also. This way, you can determine how long you should take a break for after you exit deep work (the longer you were in deep work, the longer your break should be).
Recommended: How to Do the Flowtime Technique
5. Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering is deconstructing a big goal or problem into its smaller component pieces.
As creatives, it’s normal to have big goals, epic projects and exciting ideas.
But looking up at that tall mountain from its base is daunting and leads to inaction, procrastination and bad time efficiency.
So this strategy makes things smaller and more organized.
Here’s a simple framework I follow:
Identify one main goal or task
Identify the core micro goals and tasks required to meet that main goal
Identify the core nano tasks needed to meet each micro goal
Solid time management comes down to focusing on the right things at the right time.
And this strategy helps.
6. Day Hacking
Day hacking is reframing one day as being made up of multiple “mini days”.
This just requires a subtle change in perspective and mindset.
Here’s how I do it:
I like split up my typical day into three core segments
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
I treat each segment as its own separate “day”
Each “day” has different types of work and tasks I focus on
I plan each mini day based on my typical creative mood and schedule.
For example, I’m usually more creative in the mornings and evenings. So I plan a lot of my personal creative work for these times.
During the afternoons, I’m less creative, so I schedule more clerical stuff then (like sending emails or doing client work).
Day hacking makes me feel like each day is longer than it actually is. It’s pretty cool.
7. Know Your Peak Performance Times
Your peak performance times are the times during the day when you’re most motivated and creative.
As I mentioned above, I’m most creative during the mornings and evenings. So these are my peak performance times. I schedule important creative work to be done at these hours.
Knowing your ideal focus times helps to solve a lot of motivation problems and improves your time efficiency as a creative.
It’s self awareness for creative productivity.
So when are your peak performance times? Identify those and then make your schedule optimized for them.
8. Slow Motion Multitasking
Slow motion multitasking is working on multiple projects at the same time, but moving between each one based on your mood. It can be a good strategy for creatives.
Like you, I usually have more than one creative project I’m working on or scheming. So one way I like to manage things is by hopping around each one based on where my mood is flowing.
For me, this means relying on my creative intuition more.
But there is one important caveat.
Being able to focus and push through unmotivated moments is crucial for finishing stuff. So it’s best to couple this strategy with another one that supports discipline and finishing what you start.
9. Gamification
Gamification uses typical gaming elements (like rewards, timers or challenges) to complete tasks, build new skills and/or reach goals.
And it works.
It creates a sense of urgency, improves your time management habits and makes the whole process of getting things done more fun.
For example, in 2023, I did a song-a-day challenge where I wrote and shared one new song everyday for one year.
This gamified my songwriting routine and forced me to improve my creative discipline and sharpen some important skills (like music production).
Gamification makes it easier to do the things we don’t feel like doing. It makes you more consistent and totally improves your time efficiency.
So what are some creative tasks or goals that you could gamify?
10. The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix organizes things by their relative urgency and importance.
It’s a way to visualize your stuff and prioritize things.
This is a great way to visualize your creative tasks in a way that makes the most time-efficient sense.
The matrix is broken into four main boxes, where you input tasks based on their urgency and importance.
Some tasks are moved to the top, some are schedule, some are delegated and some are deleted.
Better creative time management means you know which of your tasks are most important and most urgent (and which are not).
So why not make a box to help visualize this?
11. Timeboxing + Creative Workflows
Timeboxing is scheduling specific timeblocks to work on one task for a specified amount of time.
A creative workflow is a personal system for working on (and finishing) projects.
For example, my music production workflow is a template I use for producing songs. It helps stay focused (you know, so I spend hours in sound design when I don’t even have a chorus yet).
By coupling my workflow with timeboxing (i.e., making a schedule for my music production work), I’m able to reach my creative goals quicker.
So what’s your workflow look like? And do you use any scheduling system to get your things done?
If not, let this be your sign.
Recommended: How to Make A Creative Workflow
12. The Do Something Principle
The do something principle is a motivation and discipline strategy, that focuses on just taking action and doing the thing you’re thinking about doing.
It’s a concept I discovered through Mark Manson.
When plagued with issues of motivation or confusion for what to do next, it’s best to just take action.
Just do something.
Often, it’s our doing that creates motivation and insight for which courses of action are best to take (through trial and error and hands-on involvement).
The do something principle is simple, obvious and effective.
And it’s a great way to stop waiting for motivation and better manage your creative time efficiency.
13. Doing the Hard Things First
Doing the hard things first means saving the easiest, funnest stuff for last.
This is effective because when you don’t have annoying tasks on your mind, you’re less stressed and more creative.
You’ll also ensure you do the hard stuff earlier on, when we tend to have more motivation and discipline.
Hard tasks usually require more focus and energy, so doing them first (when we have better focus and energy) is simply a more efficient use of our time.
So start big, and then end smaller (or at least try it out).
14. Use Technology
Using technology means leveraging AI, apps, software, automations or tools to improve your time efficiency.
And there are tons of resources available.
Here are some examples:
AI tools in your specific niche (video editing; writing; music; etc.)
To help narrow things down, consider your personal preferences, the type of creative work you’re doing, your time bottlenecks, your level of technical agility (for things like AI or automations) and your budget.
You can also just test different options out to see what works best for you.
15. A Time-Efficient Mindset
A time-efficient mindset is thinking and believing in a way that improves your time efficiency.
This is a great strategy, since how we think and perceive our world dictates our experiences in it.
So the goal here is to cultivate a mindset that supports better time habits, thinking frameworks and perspectives.
Here are a few tips:
Practice a growth mindset (believe you can change)
Address your limited beliefs about your time management skills and habits
Hang around more time-efficient creatives
Don’t get discouraged and stay patient
16. The Hell Yea (or just no) Method
The hell yea (or no) method means only doing things that you’re absolutely stoked on.
It’s like this:
If the thing you need to do (or are invited to do) is a hell yea – then do it.
If the thing you need to do (or are invited to do) is eh, maybe – then don’t do it.
The hell yea (or no) method is simple and can save you time in two key ways:
It helps you make decisions quicker
I helps you avoid doing things you don’t actually want to do (which is a waste of time)
So the next time you’re plagued with an invite or creative opportunity, just ask yourself one simple question:
Is it a “hell yea” or not?
17. Self Time Management (do nothing)
Self time management means planing for and scheduling uninterrupted, zero-guilt you time.
Our time spent on productive things is only as good as our time spent relaxing.
We can’t be on 100% of the time. And being more chill is an awesome way to boost your creativity and avoid burnout.
So while workflows and optimizing creativity is all well and good, I also like to schedule in pre-planned nothingness.
I mean, we’re not robots. Go ahead and schedule in that “garbage day”, full of guilty pleasures, Netflix and wasting time.
It’s cathartic.
So relax, refresh and recoup. It’s essential for creative self care, more clarity and better time efficiency.
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