Early in my art “career”, I realized I had to find a way to get and stay organized. I was using a lot of online resources, and I needed to keep a list of these so I could not only find them again when needed, but also keep track of what I had seen and not seen yet. I also needed a to-do list application that was both easy and convenient to use. And, knowing me, of course, this had to be free or very low cost. I looked at a few online “organizers” and eventually settled on one called “Airtable”. I have mentioned it before, and I still really like it. It is not the simplest tool to use, and here my computer background certainly helps. It is built pretty much like a spreadsheet, but with many many more built-in features. And even though it has all the features I need, the version that I use is free. Unfortunately, just as buying professional quality paintbrushes and paints doesn’t make you a professional artist, using a great organizational tool doesn’t make you a great organizer! As well as using it to store a bunch of my lists, I built my to-do list in Airtable. It is a model to-do list. Each task includes a Name, a Due Date, a Status, a space for Notes and another for Attachments. Once they are marked as “Done”, most tasks disappear from view, but the “recurring” tasks get added back to the list according to each task's schedule (some weekly, some monthly, etc.). In order to concentrate on things that will help me reach my goals, most tasks are also attached to a specific “Strategy” which itself is attached to a “Goal”. Other lists in my Airtable file include Packing lists for different types of shows, Expenses, Painting ideas, lists of courses or programs I have looked into or taken, and detailed notes that I have made about some of them. I am very proud of my “Airtable” files. Very organized. Very OCD. I am not saying these lists don’t help. They do, enormously! However, recently I have been letting my “to-do” list slip. I used to look at it every day and follow it closely. For the past 2 or 3 months, I have found myself regularly pushing “late” tasks further down the list. Some of these have perfectly good reasons for not getting done, but others I just can’t seem to muster the energy or the will to do. I occasionally decide against doing something I may have thought was worth doing when I added it to the list, but most of the time the items just get pushed further down the calendar. I probably shouldn’t care about most of these postponements, but it does wear on me that I keep postponing things. I suppose it is easier to postpone something than to decide not to do it. Also, I have long been an “out of sight, out of mind” person, so removing an item completely from my list is pretty ‘final’ for me. Some of the items on the list are creative or art related, but most are housekeeping or administrative tasks. Maybe I should add a “Category” to each item and see which type of task gets postponed more often. That is exactly the kind of thing I would do. “Busy work” to keep me from facing the things I don’t really want to do. Then I would know exactly which things I don’t want to do, but they still would not get done! Is there a name for this disease? What about you? How do you get motivated to do the things you don’t like to do? Let me know in the comments!
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
March 2023
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