Virtual High Five...

Yesterday I spent the day surrounded by creative entrepreneurs at the Etsy Success Symposium.  It was so much good information and points big and small to work towards. I left feeling reenergized, head spinning with motivation and ideas. It's just real, real nice to be with your people too... that's Rebecca, Nguyen, Virginia and I hammin it up in the photo booth.

So with all that excitement I'm a bit behind with my weekend project, but here's a little sneak peak of a test I did below. I've also got to take little Lillian to an adoption event today. Cross your fingers that she finds a good home today!

Hope you're having a great weekend so far!

Schedule that.

One of the hardest parts of my everyday routine is scheduling my days. When you are accountable to no one but yourself how do you organize and structure your time? How do you work when the dishes and laundry are begging for attention? How do you manage all the online work that needs to get done without the watchful eye of your coworkers keeping you in check and off all those blogs, FB & twitter? It's easy to just say a schedule, but life is not conveniently chunked into easy digestible periods of time. Making hand embroidery is a labor of love and each piece just to stitch can take 2 hours (not including creating the pattern, customer care, cutting fabrics, staining hoops and backing the piece). Schedule that.

So then I heard April of Blacksburg Belle talk at the Etsy Success Symposium about creating lists with actionable tasks(<-- that link is to a post about learning Japanese, but hey you get the idea), tasks that give me the most out of my time and the most reward. This is not the monster list that is impossible to accomplish in a day, but simply 6 things to accomplish everyday.  This simple act of writing down what I should do in a day keeps my mind focused on the priorities and more than any schedule I've created keeps me (more) on track than I've ever been before.  I know exactly what I need to do everyday and can prioritize my time accordingly. My days are not limited to these things and I often add tasks just to cross them off, because that just feels good to do (personal gold stars). There's always more things to add to my list to grow my little business, but my days are slowly feeling more manageable. You have to hustle as a creative entrepreneur, so finding ways to better yourself and your work are a must. WHAT DO YOU DO THAT HELPS YOU ORGANIZE YOUR TIME & FOCUS YOUR CREATIVE ENERGY?
Also here is April's talk....

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