OK, so recently I told you that drawing a little every day is the best way to improve (and up your output). One of the problems you’ll run into is that it’s hard to carve out an hour or even half an hour for drawing each day. While I’m not sure what your average day looks like, I doubt you sit around picking lint out of your bellybutton thinking: gosh, I wonder what I’ll do with all this time I have lying around.
No, you’re busy. I get that. Still, I believe you could find the time to draw every day if you made it a priority. Because time you have, 24 hours every day.
Where is my time hiding?
You can find time around, outside of and even during whatever normally takes up your time. You can multitask and draw while watching TV (you’d be amazed how little you actually need to look at the screen to follow a TV show or movie, especially comedy). You can draw during lectures or in your lunch break at work. If you can get into doing quick sketches, you can even take a tea break for drawing time, or pause during your walk to work to do a quick architecture study.
This is small-time time though. If you want to get some real time in, it’s better to actually schedule time. An hour straight after work, for instance, or right after dinner. Think about this: if you found out about an interesting, free drawing course that would help you exactly where you need it and is held in the evenings near enough your home, would you go? Would you find the time? I think you would. So time isn’t really the problem, it’s your perspective on it. Think of your drawing time as study time, improvement time. If you want the feel of a course you could get a book that suggests exercises, or set up a programme for yourself. You know what you need to work on, so work on it.
Morning Time
Something I’ve done that has much improved the time I have available for drawing and other important stuff (like posting to this blog, hello! ^_^) is changing the definition of daytime. To most, I think daytime means perhaps “between 7am and 11pm” or “from 7:30 until I feel too tired to play WoW anymore”. My daytime currently runs from 5am to 9pm.
There’s a bit of hype around getting up earlier; some people sell it as a “have more time” solution. I think that’s dumb: unless you can make do with much less sleep than you’re currently getting, which is unlikely, you’ll just end up having to go to bed earlier. So getting up early doesn’t get you more time, it just gets you time in a different place. But that can make all the difference. Morning is for me an excellent time to work in. I’m fresh and awake, and there’s no distractions because my house mates all sleep until 10 if they can. Evenings I’m not so good, I get tired and distracted easily and generally end up aimlessly wandering the net or watching my boyfriend play games (we’re too poor for TV).
Once I figured that out, I realised that if I had more morning before work time and less after work, I’d get more stuff done, and I wouldn’t miss the evening time: I never used it for anything much anyway. So I started getting up at half past 6, and that worked, so I started getting up at 6am, and that was even better, and so on. So now I get up at 5am and have 2 full hours to put into things that are important to me before I even have to think about getting ready to go to work. There’s no way I could work for 2 full hours after getting back from a day in the office. But being tired and unfocussed towards 5 o’clock in work is normal, and doesn’t generally get me into trouble.
Now, I’m not saying you should do this. Obviously, there are downsides. I tend to fall asleep at parties, for instance, and don’t go out much in the evenings. But it’s been worth it for me.
Where is your best time?
Maybe it’s not a good solution for you. Maybe you do your best work in the evenings. If so, it would be good to know that and think about what you can do about it. Yes, school, college or work will set annoying constraints on when you can do the work that’s most important to you, but even then you can probably find creative ways to re-purpose your time, open time up, and find time in places you hadn’t looked. Are you really too tired to do anything but watch Friends reruns? Are you sure? Do you really want to play games for an hour every evening? Could you bring a drawing pad to the pub or when you visit friends?
Think about it. Time is here for you. Every day.
A nice free e-book on how to find more time by Dave Navarro is here: More Time Now. It’s a bit on the rah rah motivational side, but Mr Navarro knows his stuff and makes some very good points in this. Check it out. If you like it, you might get on with his hardcore I will bring you time programme, which he calls 30 hour day. It is: motivational, hard work, quality. It is not: mathematically accurate, a magic wand. If you’re interested, get it here: 30 Hours a Day: Time Management Skills.
Next week in DIY Manga: Scripting for comics (yes, I’m not just planning ahead, I’m actually writing something relevant. I know, right?)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I work best in the late morning (10-12) get distracted by my stomach, then get distracted of procrastinating during the day and then get back to work in the evening while watching TV.
A somewhat, perhaps, related post on writing without distraction. Writing without distraction.
Oo..interesting! I’m gonna take a look at ‘More Time Now’. I tend to procrastinate too much I think (heh – like writing this reply! XD ) tho I don’t do it as much as I used to (this is why I never join any new forums or art sites online, having my LJ, SD forums and a DA account is well enough, if not too much, for me o.O; )
I think prioritising works well, altho its difficult to know what to prioritise when there are a lot of things that mean a lot to you to get done (i.e. should I sacrifice my gym time to do more artwork?). Personally, I used to do my Daily Draw most days right after lunch before starting on my afternoon’s work. However, I just cannot get it done in 30 mins (drawn and posted), therefore it tended to take about an hour out of my afternoon, which I can’t afford to lose for 3D work.
My daily priorities go like this I think:
- 3D work 9am-6pm (or as close as I can get)
- Exercise (often I’ll start 3D at 9.30 after walking to work with Lee, or finish at just before 5 to go to the gym with my sister)
- Daily Draw (which I am now pushing out to evenings or weekends only)
- Commitments to family / friends (well, these probably come higher, but they tend not to clash with the 9-6 work day too often, but they do take out a large number of my weekends)
- Personal side projects: comics, Comic Mole Investigates
- Housework
- Rest / games / reading
Heh – the housework usually gets done in big monster sessions every few weeks rather than every day ^^; (except clothes washing, which I do as mini-breaks from 3D during the day). Plus, if I’m too tired to do any of the things above it, rest then goes to the top of the list (I do take rest breaks most days ^_^ )
Sometimes I calculate it tho and I’ve only done like 5.5 hours of 3D in an entire day ~sigh~ there just isn’t enough time ;_;
XD Friends reruns. You knew who was reading, then! Oh, E4, Damn you.
I just wanted to say, thanks for this, I only recently discovered your blog when searching google for self-publishing tips, but so far everything you’ve written about has been HUGELY helpful!
Getting up early… Yeah, when I used to get up at 6am, I felt fresher and tended to get more out of my drawing, and then the winter came. I feel worse when I have to drag myself out of bed in the dark…
But if I planned to do something for an hour every evening, what happens when I’m caught out one evening, and end up spending an hour wondering what to draw? This seems to happen alot. >,<
Hey Hoshii,
I’m very happy to read you’ve found the blog helpful! ^_^ I’m with you about the winter thing, yes, it’s so much harder when it’s pitch black outside. I find turning all the lights on and jumping up and down a bit to get my heart rate up generally gets me to the point where it doesn’t matter, but those first moments are a bit depressing.
About wondering what to draw: perhaps you can set yourself a standard exercise you can do when there’s nothing else you feel like doing? I’ve got a stack of pictures of naked people somewhere (no, not porn) and when I don’t have anything else I’m working on I just grab some of those and copy them as a figure drawing exercise. It’s not very exciting but at least I still feel like I’m doing something useful.