Episode 38: Reclaiming Your Time

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Transcript:

I want you to feel like you can reclaim control over your time and unlock your full potential as a creative entrepreneur. I'm Annie Christine, and this is where all things, creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town, tucked right inside the Smokey Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

When I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

I am so excited to share with you a brand new project we've been working on. It's called 60 by 60 because there are 60 incredible artists who have come together to share with you one way that they create income from their artwork and under 60 seconds each, which means that it's 60 minutes of incredible knowledge and wisdom being shared by some insanely talented artists that I know you're going to love. Our hope is that it not only shows you what's possible, but it also encourages you and helps you get clarity on the very next steps you want to take in your own creative endeavor, and it's entirely free. We've also created an interactive directory with all of the artists included so that you can go dive into all of their worlds and get to know them a little bit better. To watch the video, head on over to bonnie christine.com/income. Again, that's bonnie christine.com/income. You'll be able to watch the 60 by 60 video right away, and we cannot wait to meet you there today.

I have a short and simple but powerful update to offer in the way that you think. So many years ago, I decided that I would stop saying I don't have time, and instead say, that's not important enough for me to make time for. So let's break that down. You see, the second one is a much more powerful statement that puts me back into control over the outcome. Rather than feeling like a victim of my own time schedule, I get to decide that it's not important enough for me to make time for, because the truth is that we do have time. We're typically just spending it doing something else. I remember thinking, you know, me and Oprah Winfrey have the same amount of time every day, and she just must be spending her time doing something wildly different than me, specifically when she was just getting started and really making a name for herself, right?

So this brings to light making sure that we're making time in our day for the things that are most important to us, because just 15 minutes a day adds up to over 90 hours in a year, and so just 15 minutes, we all have that. It's just a reframe about how we think about it. You know, oftentimes I'll hear people say, I just don't have time to work out. Well, you do have time, but maybe it's just not important enough for you to make time for, and maybe that's okay, right? You are making time for the things that are most important for you, but you don't need to always go around feeling like, oh, I wish I could do this thing, but I don't have time. Right?

By changing our mindset and the language that we use around time, we can take charge of our schedules and prioritize them more effectively, which is gonna lead to increased productivity and eventually success. Listen, creative entrepreneurs and many of us are women specifically face so many unique challenges around managing our time and balancing the demands of not only our businesses, but our personal families and self-care as well. So by adopting a more empowering perspective on time, I think we can better make use of our limited hours and create space for the things that truly matter to us most.

I want you to feel like you can reclaim control over your time and unlock your full potential. As a creative entrepreneur, I really believe that there's a lot of power in our words, the language around, I don't have time versus it's not important enough for me to make time for it feels different, right? Changing the way that we speak about time will better empower us and help us take control of our priorities and our actions, but most importantly, the outcome. So maybe you're not exactly sure what's important enough for you to make time for, right? And if that's the case, well, it's time for a super thinking session. So you have to sit, sit down, and really prioritize your tasks and activities. You can start by identifying your biggest personal and professional goals, and then you can work towards some time management skills. So one of my favorites is using time blocking.

If you've never used a time block, I can't wait for you to try it. This is identifying a block of time where you're gonna do nothing but just one thing. Yes, just one thing. It's easier said than done, but it's incredibly powerful. So this is also called batch working sometimes, but time blocking is typically an increment of 15, 30, 45, 60, or maybe even 90 minutes based on the project at hand,
where you are going to remove all distraction and do the singular task at hand. This is also called maybe getting into the flow, right? Like going deep into one project and not doing that surface level work that keeps you being pulled out and going in circles around the internet, right? So time blocking is one thing at a time and is the best way to really make progress on your goals.

So if this is resonating with you, I would love for you to identify some activities that you can just dedicate small amounts of time to, and the next time you find yourself saying, I just don't have time to x, y, Z, go ahead and change that to you know what, it's not important enough for me to make time for right now, and that might change your whole perspective. Maybe you will make time for it, or you'll at least feel less guilty around it because the power has been put back into your hands. Thank you for tuning in to this short and simple, yet hopefully powerful episode of the Professional Creative Podcast. You can get show notes for today's episode and all other episodes over at professionalcreative.com.

Friends always work to create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.