Creating Comic Success: Time Management | Prioritization

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” – Abraham Lincoln

When it comes to creating comic books personal time management skills are essential and the very catalyst for success. Individuals from all walks of life who practice these techniques routinely are the highest achievers within their respective fields: from business to public service, sports figures to musicians, animators and comic creators. Learning to develop and apply these skills will improve not only productivity but functionality as well. The more you organize, the easier it will be to accomplish your goals.  We begin organizing by prioritizing.

Last post we talked about Procrastination and how it is the Scourge of Success.  Prioritization is the Nemesis of Procrastination.  As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  So let’s get better acquainted with prioritization…

Prioritization 101

Prioritization is the essential skill you need to make the very best use of your own efforts and those of your creative team (if you have one.).  It truly is the only way to get a stranglehold on procrastination and pummel it into submission. When time is limited, and the tasks at hand are overwhelming, taking a moment to prioritize – i.e. assign a level of importance to each task and relativity to your end goals – is the only way to break the perpetual cycle of putting things off and keep a sense of structure. By allocating your time where it is most needed and most wisely spent, you are able to free yourself up from less important tasks that can be attended to later, or eliminated all together. With good prioritization, and careful management of unimportant tasks, you can bring order to disorder, function to dysfunction, productivity to inactivity.

The problem really is systemic; too much to do, too little time.  After all, most Independent creators have a full-time job, or several part-time jobs, that are required to put food on the table and pay the rent leaving very little time left over at the end of the day to spend working on your creativity.  I say this from experience.  While working on issues 1 and 2 of The Miscellaneous Adventures of STYKMAN™ I was in a management position that required upwards of 60 hours a week.  Obviously with time as limited as it usually is for us, it is imperative that we make the most of what we have.  Let’s face it, bad time management equals stress.  If your stressed you’re not having fun.  If you’re not having fun, how in the world can you possibly be creative?

So how do you quit procrastinating and eliminate the stress? By creating a Priority Checklist.

Last post I provided an Activity Log for you to use to help you determine where your time was being spent to help you eliminate the activities that were moving you away from completing your goals.  Knowing how long you spend each day on unimportant things – i.e. things that don’t really contribute to your success and actually move you away from your end goal – you give yourself insight into where your time goes and how you can go about allocating that time to more efficient activities.  Once you have an idea of what activities are important you can begin to prioritize them by assigning a priority level to them.

Every successful individual recognizes the importance of making a list of tasks that need to be completed on a daily basis.  It is a behavior that has not only helped countless entrepreneurs lay out a roadmap for their success, it has paved that road making the ride a much smoother journey.

It may sound like such a trivial thing and yet without this priority list you begin the day with no focus and no direction. Writing things down keeps them in your face, helps you avoid distractions and most important of all… sharpens your focus.  By having an idea of where your attention, efforts and skills need to be applied, you will work smarter by taking control of your workload, massively reduce your stress, and move towards a successful conclusion. Without a clear comprehensive vision of what needs to be done and what can wait for a later date – or be eliminated altogether – you’ll flounder around drowning in a sea competing demands.

How often have you thought, “I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day?”  As I mentioned last time, that half hour is already there you just need to trim away the fat.  You do this by listing all tasks that you feel need to be completed, adding a priority level to those tasks, then removing the unimportant ones from your list.  Putting off an unimportant task is not procrastination it’s good prioritization.  Don’t worry, the authorities will never come and take you away for removing something from your list.

To help you with this I have provided a Priority Checklist for you to download and use on a daily basis.  Begin by writing down all of the tasks, or “To Do’s,” and assign a level of priority: “1” being Very Important, “10” Unimportant.  Work through the list to determine what has to be done right away and what can be moved to a later date; or better yet, crossed off the list altogether.

As you progress through the various tasks be sure to put a line through each one as you complete them.  Should you not be able to get to one or two particular tasks, move them forward to the next day and assign a higher priority level to them.  There is a real satisfaction and an overwhelming sense of accomplishment when you begin to see the progress that you have made.  A far more gratifying feeling than looking back on the week wondering where the time went and what exactly you did with it.

Remember: without prioritization procrastination is allowed to run amok with our lives preventing us from accomplishing our goals and achieving our dreams.  By using the above Priority Checklist you will have a clearer picture of what tasks need to be accomplished and will have provided for yourself the structure necessary for creating comic success.

Next Up:  What do we do after we prioritize?.. We plan.

If you have specific subjects you would like addressed, or have any comments on what you have read here, please submit a comment below.  By working together we can make this BLOG into an invaluable resource for every creator out there.