Whether you’re an artist, writer, or anything in between, managing your time efficiently can make all the difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one.
Do you find yourself easily distracted when trying to get your online art marketing done?
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Creative People Have To Be Organized And Disciplined In Their Daily Lives
Creative people have to have a good sense of organization and discipline. That doesn’t mean they need to be the most punctual people, but they should be able to organize and schedule the things that need to be done in a reasonable fashion. This is why, when we talk about how to be organized, it’s essential to talk about time management.
These apps will keep you organized and on track, from organizing your day and setting reminders to tracking your progress.
Time Management Apps For Artists
How nice is it to work for yourself and be your boss?
Whether you are selling art part-time or full-time, you are in charge of what you do and when you do it.
If you want to take an extra break during the day you can.
If you need to pick the kids up from school or run to the grocery store, you have the freedom to do it.
Selling your art and handmade crafts for extra income is both exhilarating and excruciating.
When you work for yourself, you are not accountable to anyone. Yes, you can take a break whenever you wish, but you are not getting any work done when you are on break. You can not sell your art if you have no artwork to sell, and people cannot purchase your art online if you do not publish it online.
There is no one to manage your time when you work alone effectively. You are both the boss and the employee. If you are not careful, you can find yourself easily sidetracked by social media, an unorganized studio, and other distractions associated with working at home.
An artist’s time management skills separate artists who sell art online and artists who dream of selling art online.
Who would you rather be?
Time Management For Creatives
Below is a list of popular apps artists are using that will help you to save time and help to ease your mind by allowing you to get all of your online art marketing tasks done quicker.
1Password
1Password remembers all of your passwords for every website and allows a one-click login that is secure with two-factor authentication.
For as low as $2.99 a month, you will never have to worry about forgetting your passwords again.
1Password works with Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, and the web.
If you spend too much time remembering your passwords, you might want to consider trying 1Password’s free trial to see if it is a perfect fit for you.
Rescue Time
Rescue time is an app that tracks how much time you spend on websites and applications. If you wonder where all of the time went at the end of the day, Rescue Time will show you what sites and applications might be hindering your productivity.
- How often have you promoted a post on your Facebook business page and found yourself scrolling down your newsfeed to see what is new with your friends?
- How many times have you uploaded an image on your Instagram account and found yourself wasting 15-20 minutes scrolling through Instagram?
- Do I even have to mention Pinterest?
Fifteen minutes here and fifteen minutes there add up. If you find yourself easily distracted online, you might want to consider trying Rescue Time.
Features:
- It shows you what applications and websites you spent time on
- It shows you how much time you spent in different categories
- Weekly email reports summarizing your activities and productivity scores
- Set goals to help keep you on track
- Create alerts
- Block distracting sites and much more
Rescue Time works with Mac, PC, Android, and Linux and has a free membership and a premium membership with additional features for a monthly fee.
Clockify
If you want to improve your time management, then the ultimate tool is Clockify. With it, you can track the time you spend on various activities, provide data to enhance your work routine, and organize your schedule around how you want to spend your time.
To begin using the tool, go to the Time Tracker page, and choose how to track time.
- Timer mode: start the timer when you start doing one task and end it when finished.
- Manual Mode: You can enter the times you worked on an activity manually in the Time Sheet view.
After you’ve logged your time, you can develop reports indicating how productive your work is during the week, monthly or yearly.
Remember The Milk – Task Manager
Remember the Milk helps you stay organized and productive by helping you keep track of all those things you need to remember.
This simple virtual assistant can help you do anything from adding tasks to associate tasks with sub-tasks to defining due dates for everything you need to do today, tomorrow, and weekly.
The system differentiates between personal and business tasks, but you can take your to-do list game further. Smart lists are created based on specific criteria you’ve previously set, and they can update automatically as your needs change.
TextExpander
TextExpander is the last app we will cover in this post and might be one of my favorites.
How many times do you type your email address a day?
How many times do you type your signature a day?
How many times do you type your website address a day?
How many times do you type the same message every day?
It might seem like it only takes a few moments to type the same content repeatedly, but the time does start to add.
TextExpander saves you time by inserting snippets as you type.
Features:
Create powerful snippets to save you time so that all you type is a short abbreviation, and TextExpander does the rest of the typing for you.
Streamline your email. Take boilerplate email responses or sales queries and customize just the needed areas.
Quickly insert the date anywhere.
And so much more.
For a low monthly fee, you can start to save time typing the exact text over and over.
TextExpander works with Windows, Mac, and iOS.
Final Thoughts On Time Management Apps
Selling the artwork you create is a lot of work.
The apps above are just a few creative time management tips to help get more work done in less time.
The quicker you can get your computer work done, the sooner you will be in the studio.
The best time management apps for creative people allow you to set the schedule for the day, which means it doesn’t depend on what time you are in the morning or at night. But, it should also provide you with a way to see how much time you spend working on your project so that you can see if you’re getting the results you want.
That way, you’ll have a way of knowing if you’re being productive or if you’re spinning your wheels.
