Motivation Monday

As an artist, do you need help getting motivated to do all those non-art tasks that are piling up and making you feel guilty? Well keep reading, because help is on the way!

Last week, we looked at how important it was to have the perspective that as artists we are running small businesses. Yet many artists avoid the non-art stuff because well, it isn't art. So this week the goal of this post is to encourage you to shift your thinking once again. This time, you are going to change the way you think about non-art tasks.

How can you get excited about the business side of art? Simply start to see business tasks as creative tasks! As an artist, you love creativity. Stop limiting creativity to your art and start viewing all of your tasks as inherently creative. Do you believe that one can cook creatively, decorate a house creatively, raise children creatively, and garden creatively? Of course you do. Then, why can't someone run a business creatively? The truth is, the more successful a business is, the more creative it is.

Perhaps some examples might help. Think about designing a website. An artist needs to make all sorts of creative decisions as to the layout, fonts, content, and colours. Think of how diverse blogs are. Again, each one expresses the creative choices of the artist. Designing business cards, media cards and brochures are very creative endeavours. Here again as the artist and business owner you get to determine the content, colours, layout, fonts and so on. Do you have to create a display for doing shows? You will need to creatively choose the backdrops, display grids, lighting, and tables that will present your art in the best possible way. If you teach art, creating content for courses is a very creative thing to do.

Are you making the connection now? You love creativity and you enjoy having the opportunity to express yourself creatively. Well yippee, those business tasks you have been dreading and putting off are actually more opportunities to get creative!

Of course there are a few exceptions. Keeping your accounts in order - humm, maybe you can get creative and use multi-coloured pens?... Not recommended for tax forms. :-) But if we are honest, there are also exceptions on the art side...like cleaning paint brushes or spending hours tweaking lighting, fabric and objects to get the perfect still life reference...dampens my creativity just to type it! Indeed, creative cooks have to grate carrots and chop onions and creative gardeners have to endlessly battle weeds.

Yes creating a new blog and creating course content might feel more like work than creating your art does. But, it can be enjoyable! Simply focus on the creative aspects of what you are doing. I encourage you to really make a determined effort to change your thinking about your non-art tasks. Consciously become aware of how these tasks require you to be creative. As soon as you do, you will find that these tasks are not a variety of horrible things that take you away from your creative journey as an artist. In fact you will find that they are part of your creative journey as an artist and as a successful business person. Honestly, just make the shift...