You’re Batman without all the moody Bat-bullshit.

And there’s always an unlimited amount of work to do. If you’re not busy doing work for your customers then you’re busy finding more of them. And without the strict deadlines and glares from your boss when you’re in employment, it can be tricky to keep your productivity steady without burning out. 

Here’s the problem: you need some way to track your tasks so that nothing falls through the gap, but all too often you end up spending more time managing your work than actually doing it.

So try this:

1. Set your goals

These aren’t your five year plans, these are your next business milestones. So it might be ‘increase my customer numbers by 20% in the next 3 months.’ 

TIP: Remember to keep your goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound). So no wooly guff about being a millionaire at some point by doing something or other.

Write your current goal down and stick it up somewhere. Put it as your computer wallpaper or stick it on your fridge. Force it to stay in the forefront of your mind every day.

Now, whenever new opportunities or tasks come in, you can see if they help you meet that specific goal. If they do, they can go on the list, if they don’t then bin them or add them to a ‘one day’ list away from your more important tasks.

2. Choose a single point of truth

We’re all into tech-supported working now. Apps help us with our superpowers. But they also tempt us into doing far more than we need to. In trying to make their product justify the price, app makers tend to load up with features that you probably don’t really need.

Here’s what’s important:

Use ONE: a single point of truth. Double entry of tasks is a pain and leads to mistakes. Ideally you should be able to keep notes and due dates in the task so you don’t have to remember them with your human brain.

After a lot of philandering with different todo lists, I’ve come back to using Trello (a kanban board app). It’s fast, it’s free and it lets me share boards with my customers so they can see how the work’s coming along.

3. Write a daily list

‍I’ve found that working straight from my Trello list tends to end with me getting distracted by my other tasks. So every morning I look at my task list and write down (using pen and paper like some sort of caveman) the three vital tasks that I MUST do that day. 

This has been far more effective than I expected. 

By physically writing down your tasks, you start your brain engaging with them, and you’re left with a distraction-free list of work to do. Only once those vital things have been done do you go back to the master list. Or take a nap. Whatever takes your fancy.

4. Kill the distractions

We can’t multitask. 

Really, we can’t. Our brains just won’t work that way. And the nearest we can get — rapidly switching between several tasks — leaves none of them getting done well. In fact, studies have shown that after switching tasks it can take our brains up to 20 minutes to settle in to proper work again.

And we can only concentrate for about 25 minutes. Seriously, our brains are rubbish at focussing on lots of things at once AND at focussing on one thing for a long time. 

So, we work with what we’ve got, using this variant of the Pomodoro technique:

• Turn off all notifications. We all think we can ignore them but we can’t. Turn them off while you work.
• Work on your task for 25 minutes without switching to anything else. Set a timer until you’re used to it.
• Have a 5 minute breather. Check those notifications that you’ve been desperate to look at, but remember that any new tasks that come from them go into your task list — don’t go off on a tangent.
• Go back to your original task. Do another 25 minutes. Repeat until the task is done.
• Have a longer break between tasks (20 minutes or so). 

NOTE: The original Pomodoro technique says to do four 25 minute sessions then take a long break, but I’ve found it easier to concentrate when I take my long breaks between tasks. Your mileage may vary.

We’re always keen for you to share your solopreneur productivity tips. Why not give us a glimpse of your wisdom @creativesunlshd 

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We’ve all seen those emails that have a typo in the subject line. Then, sure enough, a couple of hours later another email arrives with a sheepish “Whoops! Look what we did. Aren’t we human and clumsy? Here’s the email again with the right spelling.”

Or maybe it’s the current trend of sending out a “Whoops! We put the wrong link on our last email. Sorry. Aren’t we human and clumsy?”

The trouble is, they’re lying. Deliberately making a mistake in order to justify contacting your customers again with another email really isn’t as convincing as some marketing agencies seem to think it is. Particularly when you get five different companies all doing it in the same week.

It’s better for your business to have 50 people valuing your emails than 500 people feeling manipulated and reaching for that unsubscribe button. The more authentic you can be, the better the bond you’ll build with your customers and more valuable that relationship will be to you.

Keep it short.

I send out a lot of emails, to you lovely creative lot, to my web design customers and for clients, and the results are really clear: shorter emails work better.

In fact, there’s a part two to that: short emails that ask a question work best.

The best response I’ve ever had for an email was two sentences, asking my customers what their marketing challenges were at the moment. The subject line just said “Quick question for you.”

This worked for two reasons. First, it sounded authentic. It was the kind of email you might get from a colleague. There was no mass-mail feel to it (which is also why I recommend against using fancy HTML email designs for your creative business). Secondly, it engaged with the reader.  It valued their opinion. It encouraged conversation.

Now of course you can’t do this with every email you send out. You have to provide useful content too. But in a world of unlimited content and tiny amounts of reading time, the power of the short can be a great way to cut through the clutter.

REMINDER: Don't be TOO vague with your subject lines. If people feel they're being tricked into opening an email, they'll probably unsubscribe. Be vauge but on-topic. Rather than "Hey" try "Hey, can I ask you something?"

When you’re an accountant, you can do your thing with accounts whenever you need to. It’s a skill you have. You turn it on, you do your magic numbers thing, tick it off your to do list and go back to eating Pringles or watching Netflix or whatever else you were doing. But creativity doesn’t work quite like that.

If you’re in a creative profession, whether working for some corporate overlord or basking in freelance glory / anxiety, your job is to do creativity. The people with the money will point at the literal or figurative blank page and say “Do creative things for me”. But sometime the creative juice just doesn’t flow.

Here are some ways to train your creative muscles to do your bidding.

But first

It’s important to realise that creativity doesn’t just mean coming up with a spectacular design that belongs on the walls of the Tate. Creativity is important in most aspects of our lives because it’s how we solve problems. It can be as much about deciding how we’re going to approach the situation as it is about creating a beautiful piece of design.

1. Move around

It’s one of those things that tends to cause eye rolls when people are told to walk around for health reasons, but physical movement can also have real benefits for your creativity.

There are two types of thinking that we use in problem solving: divergent and convergent. Divergent thinking is where we come up with lots of different possible ideas (brainstorming). Convergent thinking is where we follow a logical sequence to arrive at the correct answer.

Creative activities need both.

Walking around has been found to boost divergent thinking. Walking and brainstorming go exceptionally well together, so if you need to decide how best to approach a task, do yourself a favour and take a walk. You’ll generate more varied ideas and there’ll be less temptation to jump straight into the construction phase, which limits your creative thinking. Also, if you have co-workers sat around you, taking a walk is a good way to get away from them for a while (for strictly creative reasons, of course).

The Stanford study that looked into this effect found no particular difference between walking indoors or outdoors, so take your pick. Of course, being outside (especially in nature) has other mental benefits too, such as stress relief, so if you can take a wander in a park, so much the better.

Once you’ve gathered your ideas, that’s the time to sit and get on with it. Sitting or standing at your desk improves your convergent thinking and gives you better focus.

2. Tweak your environment

Nothing sparks creativity like changing things up, so makeing improvements to your work environment can really keep your creative skills sharp.

Studies have shown that dim lighting generally improves creative thinking. Electric light is at the other end of the spectrum (inadvertent lighting pun, there) and is pretty terrible for all types of work, concentration and mental health. So if you have control over your work environment, try drawing the curtains or using low wattage lamps to keep the light level low and your creativity high.

Just as nature helps our state of mind when we go walking, it can help at your desk too. Despite what is commonly thought, indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air, and having a plant nearby can help give you cleaner air, lower your stress levels and increase your attention span.

Sound is an important part of your environment too, but something to be used with caution. Contrary to the way most trendy offices have it, having the radio on with its high level of annoyingly inane DJ banter can lower concentration and increase stress levels. Keep to music for doing admin, instrumentals if you’re writing (to avoid word clash), and if you need to be creative, seek out ambient sounds. Coffee shop chatter, and nature sounds like rain or the sea help our minds to relax, which improves our ability to be creative.

Lastly, make use of your environment. Change your location for different types of work. Read on a sofa, plan while wandering around, design at your desk then review work on your tablet at your local Costa. The novelty of changing locations will keep you motivated, and the moving around will be good for your health, too.

3. Limit your options

You’ll have heard this many times:

… the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of invention.

Or variations of it. It’s a Plato quote, one so old that people now try to come up with clever counter-quotes to it. But it’s lasted so long because there’s an important truth in it: when we create, we are creating solutions to problems.  If there are no problems, our minds stagnate (or “Contentment: the smother of invention,” as Ethel Mumford put it).

It’s been shown that the more limitations we have on a project, the more creative variety we’ll come up with. It’s a familiar problem, though usually from the other side: almost every creative person knows the fear of the blank page. Give us unlimited options and we’ll give you… well, not very much.

So, if you’ve got a project that’s too wide-open, put some limitations on it yourself. Your creativity craves challenge, so give yourself a strict time limit, word count or design constraint. The work will be harder, but that’s good, because the result will be better.

You can practice this on work that doesn’t pay your rent. Take up a creative side project and give yourself no budget. Force yourself to think of new ways around problems. Your creative mind will thank you for it.

4. Add novelty

The part of our brain that deals with processing new things is vital when we want to create new things. So feed it with new experiences.

Travel to new places. Abroad, near home, city, countryside, wherever, just somewhere you haven’t been. Explore at random (don’t worry, Google Maps can always get you back to your car). Learn about historical places and the stories behind them. Read something by an author you’ve never read before. Get out of your comfort zone. 

Your brain, like a muscle, needs training to perform at its peak. The more you experience new things, the better you’ll be at creating them too.