The Art of Efficiency: Qs To Help You Find Your Flow
The Art of Efficiency: Qs To Help You Find Your Flow
Start squeezing the most creative juice out of your day and save time for what matters most.
Welcome (or welcome back!) to Multifaceted, a newsletter about finding delight and direction in a creative life made up of many different interests.
Hello and Happy Halloween!
After a bitty break, I’m back with a new-ish publishing schedule. Instead of an every-week routine, I’ve discovered that writing, illustrating, and publishing three newsletters per month is the sweet spot for me.
So – assuming I follow my own rules – you can expect thrice-monthly missives from Multifaceted moving forward! 💌
(A weekly newsletter is nice, sure… but this is about to be your favorite thrice-monthly one. 💁♀️)
One of my reasons for scaling back just a smidge is that, true to my multifaceted nature, I somehow always have other writing projects going on. I didn’t realize it until recently, but every month I’ve squeezed in something else.
Throughout summer and fall, there’ve been…
Guest posts for other newsletters
Freelance writing projects
Narrative essays to share with my local writers’ group
A contribution to a forthcoming book on creativity and motherhood
Aaand website copy for something exciting I’ve had in the works for a while! I’m excited to share more with you soon. 😊
In the meantime, today’s piece will focus on efficiency – a tool that helps me squeeze the most creative juice out of my 24-hour days.
This was initially going to be the intro to Part 3 in my series on how AI can support multi-passionate creatives. After all, the right tools and technologies can help supercharge your efficiency. But I had so much to say about the topic that it warranted its own post.
So, let’s dive in!
Efficiency: The multi-passionate creative’s secret weapon
There’s never enough time to get everything done. It’s a bummer to say it. But, those quotes about time being our most precious nonrenewable resource are 100% true.
Okay, so maybe we can’t get everything done, but with the right approaches, we can get an awful lot of things done. This is good news for people like me who have big dreams and batches of projects humming along at the same time.
The key is to find little efficiencies here and there. These add up quickly, eventually saving us heaps of time and energy. From there, we have more precious resources to reallocate toward other priorities.
Those might be other passions that are calling out to us, or opportunities to rest and reset. Either way, it’s entirely possible to fit in things we’d like more time for when we boost our efficiency elsewhere in our creative work.
Do less, achieve more
I love being efficient. I love using my creative energy and working windows to get loads of stuff done without wasting time, energy, or resources. It feels amazing – and it gets me closer to my goals.
Achieving efficiency means getting the maximum output with the minimum input. In other words, doing less to accomplish more.
Sometimes, becoming more efficient involves finding new tools and approaches that can get us from A to B faster and more effectively. Just think about the difference between using a calculator vs. crunching numbers by hand. When you have a lot on your to-do list, the calculator option looks pretty attractive.
And you do have a lot on your to-do list, right? If you’re a creative professional, a multi-hyphen hobbyist, or something in between, every plate you’re spinning is undoubtedly full. You could use a few extra efficiency hacks. We all could!
This is where my aforementioned series of AI ideas comes into play. With ChatGPT doing some heavy lifting, you can plow through tedious or complex tasks a little faster and free up time in your day. More time means more freedom to explore your many other creative passions. For multi-passionate people, that’s a pretty sweet deal.
AI isn’t the only efficiently-friendly resource at our disposal, though. It’s impossible to share an exhaustive list of tools and tricks – there are too many possible solutions to count.
Questions to help you uncover inefficiencies and find your flow
Instead of trying to give you all the answers, I’d like to give you all the questions so you can track down answers of your own.
The questions below are designed to help you figure out where things start to creep along in your creative process. Think of it as a little self-assessment to boost your creative flow.
By answering the first set of bulleted questions in each section, you’ll pretty quickly start to uncover where you’re spending more time and energy than you need to. From there, the sub-bulleted questions will help you find your way out of the rut.
(And if you’re still feeling stuck, just reach out or drop me a comment – I’d love to see how I can help!)
Think about the times you get stuck:
Where do you feel like your creative process slows down the most?
Where do you experience a lot of friction or tedium?
Would better approaches or tools help you sail through these rough patches?
Conversely, are any processes or tools you rely on making things harder for you?
Think about the drudgery:
What part of your creative routine do you dread or avoid?
What tasks feel most draining and exhausting to you?
Which tasks tend to take longer than you expected or planned for?
What parts of your process could you rethink, delegate, or simplify?
What could help you limit time the time you spend on certain tasks to stay on track?
Think about when you retrace your steps:
How often do you go back to adjust or re-do work you already did?
How much of this comes down to perfectionism?
How much of this comes down to something else, like shifting ideas or skill limitations?
How could you align your work more closely with your vision earlier on?
How can you structure your feedback and self-critique processes to avoid stalling out?
Think about your decision-making:
Where do you hit decision fatigue or overwhelm?
What big or small choices trip you up the most in your creative process?
How could pre-planning help you to minimize the amount of decision-making you have to do?
In what ways could simplifying your creative process help you spend less time considering and more time creating?
Think about your energy levels and focus:
When do you find yourself in flow state?
When do you feel your energy fading?
What distractions pull away your focus?
How could you align your tasks with the peaks and lulls in your creative energy?
How might you minimize interruptions and distractions while you’re working?
What strategies can you use to regain focus more quickly?
What adjustments to your creative routine or schedule could help you become more productive?
Efficiency isn’t about getting more done just for the sake of it. It’s about breezing through the least interesting items on your to-do list. It’s about conserving your creative energy for the parts of the process you care most about. And it’s about freeing up time in your day so you can explore other creative passions – or simply recharge.
By taking a closer look at your process, you can spot inefficiencies and start thinking about new ways to approach your work. That might involve bringing in helpful tools and technologies, enlisting outside assistance, or simplifying your process. No matter what changes you make, it’ll be worth it when you see how much space you’ve cleared out in your life for the creative work that lights you up the most.
