Happy New Year! Can you believe we are a week into 2021 already? I hope you are doing well. It’s been a busy start to the year here at United ArtSpace as our Best Year Yet workshops are now in full swing! 

As we get stuck into 2021 and we’ve properly all got our aims and goals for the year in mind by now, I wanted to take the time in this blog post to look at how we can all find a little more time within our days, weeks and months so that we can work on achieving our dreams. Now, I touched on this on my Facebook live this week (you can watch it below), so here are the key things that I try and do to carve out and find some of the much needed time.

Love this! 

Someone once said this to me and it’s stuck and it seems so relevant to this topic and a new year. I was forever saying ‘ I don’t have the time, I just don’t have it.’ When I heard this, it made me stop and think. It was something like this: 

“We can’t get a refund on time. We can’t find any more time, everyone has the same 24 hours. It’s about how we use our time. That is what makes a difference.”

I found that when I just stopped saying, ‘I don’t have the time’, I had more of it (I was saying it that much). It’s about finding the time that we can claw back and utilise so it’s more productive. Here are some of my tips.

Tip one – stop saying it! 

Like I have just said, stop saying you don’t have the time. Firstly, this will put you in the wrong mindset and secondly, think how much time you can save each day by not thinking you don’t have the time and by not saying it. 

Tip two – what time do you have?

Really sit down and think about how much time you have to work on your art and your dreams. Is it all day or is it once the kids are in bed in the evening? You need to be realistic with this so you can set out what you need to work, when and how long it will take. Remember, slow and steady wins the race so you don’t have to work at a hundred miles an hour, just ensure you are productive within the time you have. 

Tip three – be picky! 

It’s good to be picky about what you want to spend your time doing. If you have a goal in mind, something that you want to achieve or reach, quite often sacrifices need to be made in order to meet these. So if you have to be a little picky about what you are committing too, that is okay! 

Tip four – what is important to you?

What is your dream? What are the key things in life that are important to you? It may be family, pets, friends, certain aspects of work, a hobby. It can be anything. The things that you need to keep doing in life, but also the things that are pushing you to achieve your dreams and create a life that you want to live!

Tip five – what isn’t important? 

What are you currently doing that you don’t need to do? Are there certain jobs that you can outsource or stop doing altogether? Anything that may allow you to claw even an hour. We all get sucked into this idea of what we should be doing, but if it’s not important to you, don’t do it and save that time to work on achieving your dream!

Tip six – can you make some adjustments?

Is there something you can do in the short term to give you more time? For example, for me, when I started out with United ArtSpace I had two babies, I was running the house, had a job and was so tired from broken sleep, however, I had this dream and life I wanted to build for me and the kids and just knew I had to make an adjustment somewhere. So what I decided to do was once I put the kids to bed in the week, I worked on United ArtSpace for an hour. Just one hour each night. I stopped watching television for a while but it was the only time I had at that moment in life, which ultimately led me to where I am today. 

It was a short term adjustment that wasn’t going to last forever. It was achievable and it worked for me at the time.

Tip seven – find triggers 

This follows on nicely – there are certain things you can do that can trigger ‘work mode’ and allow you to get into the zone. It may be a song, going for a run, dancing in the kitchen or doing a workout for 10 minutes. This can set your mind right and give a little push to get things done! 

Tip eight – say no!

It’s okay to say no. Sometimes we need to say no to things in order to work on things that are important to us, so we can achieve our dreams. But saying no, we can’t commit to one thing or another, as appealing as they may seem is okay. Remember, it won’t be forever! 

So I hope this helps you out. Trying to find more time is hard and you may need to let certain aspects of life go for a small amount of time to make things work, that is okay. It’s okay to say no, it’s okay to stop doing the things that aren’t important. It’s all okay! 

Whatever journey you are on, we all need to do things and make our journey work for us and our families! 

You can do this. 

Much love,

Michelle x.