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Ever feel like there's not enough time to work on your creative projects? Well You're not alone. Today we're tackling the three biggest time traps that crush creators and how you can flip them to your advantage.
Do you ever feel like you're not in control of your time? Like, obligations keep pulling you away from the work that really matters. The work that grows your audience or fuels your creativity? Maybe exciting opportunities come your way, but you're so bogged down in the day to day grind that you can't say yes.
Or maybe you feel stuck at your current level, overwhelmed by the idea of taking on more clients, launching new products, or creating more content. In some days, you find yourself longing for the early days, when everything felt fresh, exciting, and fun. Well, imagine, instead, you're a creator who crushed time.
You felt in control, even with an ever growing list of obligations. You had a balance. of tasks [00:01:00] and time that fed your soul instead of drained it. And you felt excited about new opportunities because you knew you could make them work without stress or burnout. In today's episode, we're diving into three key time management strategies that creators who crush it master so you can sustain momentum and enjoy your creative work again.
Welcome to Creators at Crush, the podcast that helps you move from crushed to crushing it as a creator. I'm your host, Shawn Buttner, a certified high performance coach. And in today's episode, I combine proven high performance principles with the realities of creative life. Join me as we uncover practical ways to work smarter, stay inspired, and build a creative career you love.
Life Changing Events Require Better Use Of Your Time
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Shawn Buttner: the first angle we're going to look at for managing your time as a creator is life changes.
I was recently listening to Jay Klaus's creator science podcast, which is fantastic. I love Jay. [00:02:00] Go check it out. And he was talking about managing his time as a new father, right? Talk about a huge life change.
So he's his baby's, I think, nine months old now. And so he was mentioning how he always felt time starved. And so. So, that meant he couldn't do everything that he used to do, right? He used to be on all the platforms without a team, and he was feeling very stretched out about continuing his content rhythm with the new commitments he has as a father.
So his idea was to cut out things that weren't really helping move his business forward as a creator, so that he could do Higher quality work in a more condensed amount of time. And so it's making the time he did spend in his business and creating content that much more impactful, but that much more efficient.
The takeaway here is we can all do this in our creative businesses. [00:03:00] what parts of your business provide the most results, and how can you focus your effort on the top 20% of all of your creative endeavors? Uh, the solution that I have that I'll explain is the A SMD framework. And the ASMD framework is a quick decision making tool to help you maximize your most valuable time.
You do this by either adding, subtracting, magnifying, or deleting tasks to stay laser focused on what matters. And so you can apply this to your creative business by asking yourself the question, What do you need to add? What do you need to subtract to keep your focus on the things that really matter in your business?
What do you need to multiply? And what do you need to delete?
So what's the difference between, subtract and delete? Subtract is taking stuff off your plate. Delete is not doing it at all. thinking through everything you [00:04:00] do, um, a day or during a week in your creative business, you can apply the ASMD framework to quickly figure out what you should be focusing on, what you should be delegating, what you should be hiring team for, and what you should stop doing completely.
This will help you hyper focus for efficiency.
Do This When You Are Stuck In Your Content Rhythm
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Shawn Buttner: Second angle we're going to look at is what happens when you cannot control the structure of your day. This happened to me starting out as a software engineer.
I'd have all these meetings, you know, with my manager with the clients. With other project members between times I was supposed to code and this led to a lot of stress, exhaustion and frustration because any creative work, writing code, writing content, uh, painting, creating sculptures, writing music, it takes you a little bit to get in the groove and on average it takes you about 20 minutes to start a task and [00:05:00] get keyed in to where you can get into that flow state.
And so. If every hour you're getting pulled into a 15 minute meeting, that 15 minute meeting is actually costing you another 20 minutes in ramp up. And so, I was struggling, right? I call this time thrashing. And when you're time thrashing, you're going between task and task, and task and task, and you're not effective.
And what happens is at the end of the day, you might feel like you've accomplished a whole lot. But, you don't feel like you've made any progress, and maybe you've felt that way too. what you need to do is reorganize your time into the three content tiers, or three tiers of content work, which I'll share in a second.
because, after I did this in my early career, my work became fun again. I was making progress, I was solving problems. I was getting recognized for solving problems and getting promoted. So you need to structure your day that supports you the most. [00:06:00] so,
Three Tiers Of Conent Work
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Shawn Buttner: here are the three tiers of content work. There's every day you have a number one priority. And this is the core deep focus task that requires your best energy. in high performance terms, we talk about. the thing you do the first thing when you hit your workday, so it's either Progressing on your biggest creative project it's almost tax season as I was recording this episode So getting your taxes done is becoming more and more of a number one priority to just kind of knock it out so What priority work do you need to do every day?
And how early in the day can you get it accomplished, And this will help you in a couple of different ways. One, there's a psychological gain when you see progress on your big projects. You'll feel more motivated to continue on the things that matter.
Two, Like if you do your priority work and the rest of the day goes sideways with Unexpected things or you have to fight fires or [00:07:00] what have you At least you've advanced one thing in your day and that can help prevent burnout in your career So it's really important to get that number one thing Identified and done every day So this could either be Admin Time or Creative Work, which we'll talk about right now.
So Creative Work is the fun, the deep focus tasks that require your best energy. I find scheduling them in half a day increments is And so on days when I have to record a podcast episode, I schedule a half a day, like a morning, to do the outline, and then the afternoon to do the recording and editing and whatnot.
And sometimes it requires more half day blocks for revisions but most creators do things, In a way that makes them feel time starved, so you want, at [00:08:00] least a four hour block where you're just focused on one task and maybe you're taking breaks and stuff in between.
We can talk about that in another episode. But the creative work is I'm working on this one project, this one problem, this one piece of content with my full presence and focus. Contrast that with admin Hermosi had a video where he talked about project time versus meeting time.
And managers tend to work in one hour blocks because you have a meeting with someone, you're communicating, you're getting priorities set. where as An individual contributor, you might have to sit down and code for half a day or a whole day to actually do the work.
essentially, you have these admin or one hour meeting blocks, which for me in my business are strategy calls. It's actual doing the coaching. work that I do with peers or collaborating. So I have a couple of groups and masterminds and I have a podcast coach. And so all of these, I consider [00:09:00] like admin one hour blocks.
Cause we meet for about an hour, Or less. The benefit of identifying your day into your priority work, which you have to do every day, first thing in the morning, your creative work, the things that require you to sit and think and focus, and then these one hour admin blocks is that you can then group them,
So the phrase that I've termed to help me solidify how this is helpful is you want to batch your time and not be bat shit crazy. So batch it, not bat shit. organize each day or week with these three tiers of content. Again, if you can do start every day with your priority work. And then have days during your week where you're grouping creative work or admin work, you'll find it to be really impactful.
Sign Up For A Free Creator Strategy Session
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Shawn Buttner: so sometimes we need extra help. And if you are struggling with [00:10:00] managing your time or you feel stuck in how your work is structured, then you might want to talk to a certified high performance coach and a great coach can help you find blind spots. We'll keep your goals in mind, we'll work and celebrate wins with you or help you work through losses to help you break through.
So if you are not sure that coaching is for you, it's why I offer a free one hour creator performance strategy session. And on these calls, we take a holistic look at your life and career and co create a performance plan to help you break through your creative career. And with an uninsured economy, you want to be as effective as you possibly can.
if you're interested, you can go to ShawnButtner. com backslash apply, which I'll link in the show notes, to save your spot. And I only have ten slots open per month, and they go quick because I block my time, like we were just talking in this episode.
sign up before [00:11:00] those slots fill up. Go to Shawnbuttner.com/apply ,
people love these calls. They find a very insightful. And I just want to get to know you, one, and two, just deliver a great strategy plan. check it out,
What To Do In A Hostile Environment
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Shawn Buttner: Alright, so the third productivity angle we're going to talk about is, when your environment hurts how you spend your time? years ago, I was on, uh, Neil Strauss's, email list he's a journalist and an author.
And he talks about how he writes books. what he needs to do for his productivity to make sure he hits his deadlines for writing, is he needs to completely lock down and change his environment. So, He'd get stressed out from procrastinating, but he would have this special safe where he'd lock up his phone, and, only his wife would have the code for it, and so he'd lock it in the morning, and then in the evening after he's done with his day of writing,
could he [00:12:00] get the phone out of the safe. He also would go to a place that didn't have Wi Fi, so he'd rent a house somewhere out in the hills. And really just, like, not have any distractions, right? The environment was forcing him to focus on the one thing he was there to do, which is to write his book.
And I think creators so much, myself included, live or work in environments That are very distracting. there's the TV with the Netflix or, tons and tons of things online to get worked up about and without those, would you actually do the work? The answer is yes,
the lesson here is to change your environment to help you focus your time better. And what do you have to eliminate in your environment in order to cut out distractions, so how do you reduce or eliminate all the notifications, the beeps, the boops, the bops that get in the [00:13:00] way, your email inbox, which is, as one of my mentors famously said, A convenient organizing place for other people's agendas.
You know, so where can you turn off all those types of alarms in order to change the environment so you have to focus, right? What are the things that you can cut out that drain your attention? Is it parental locking down social media during the day so you don't endlessly scroll or go into the doom scroll?
if there's a lot of noise in your environment, do you,get, those noise canceling, like, beats? cans or earbuds or airpods or whatever that can help you not pay attention to the guy that's yelling into his phone on a conference call one desk over from you. or You can use it more positively, like, what music gets you going, right?
Gets the blood pumping, gets the creative juices flowing. so how do you use music each [00:14:00] day to get you primed to work, to work out, to see people? for me, I like to listen to music before I get on a call. With one of my coaching clients, right? It's just helps me bring the energy I want to the call.
And something that I, you know, teach in the coaching. It's something I'm really focused on. So it's important. How are you using noise or music to, help you? And limit a lot of distractions, right? Again, hide your phone, turn off all the boops, beeps, and bops. You know, all the things we just talked about changing your environment.
Because when you change your environment, you can change your life.
All creators struggle with time management. Sometimes you have a big life change like Jay, who recently had a child, you can use the add, subtract, magnify, delete framework to hyper focus on your needle movers, because that leads to more bang for your buck on the time you are spending on [00:15:00] work.
sometimes we get stuck in our routines, so use the three tiers of content work, priorities, creative work, admin time, to batch it and not go bat shit crazy.
And then sometimes our environments hurt how we spend our time. So limit or lock away distractions, change your environment, change your life. When you master these three areas, you go from being crushed to crushing it as a creator.
So I challenge you to pick one of these three time strategies we covered today. If I had to pick one, I would do the priority one for sure, and implement it this week. Then DM me on bluesky at ShawnButtner. com and let me know how it went. I'll link that in the show notes. So pick one of these strategies, whether it's cutting distractions, restructuring your day, or focusing on your high impact work, and just try one, DM me how, tell me how it went, because small shifts in your time lead to massive shifts in your creative success.
[00:16:00] If you loved this episode of Creators That Crush, you might also love this episode on creating your content purpose statement. Why? Because it's way easier to know what your priorities are and what to spend your time on if you know where you want to take your audience. The content purpose statement is a great way to help you organize your week into the three pillars we discussed.
The priorities, creative time and admin time. So we go over the three part process to create your content purpose statement in the episode listed here or in the show notes. So check it out and continue to crush folks.