As creative business owners, we face a unique challenge to being productive. I’ve noticed most creative business owners operate from a largely reactionary place, making our productivity based on our emotions. What I mean by this is: how we feel in a day has an effect on how much we get done in a day. 

A lot of teachings about productivity take the approach that getting more work done is inherently better. There’s a lot of content out there that’s centered on being productive for productivity's sake. This tends to guilt audiences into feeling they are doing their work wrong. 

That’s not what this is about.

What I'm trying to get at is this: when I talk about productivity, I acknowledge that you as an individual have your own wants, your own goals and your own needs that you are trying to actionably make happen. I’m specifically referring to going through the motions of trying to make your dreams a reality. 

This doesn’t just happen by manifesting alone. Manifesting is an important guide post, that’s true: but your goals are achieved through action.

You’ve probably felt incredibly frustrated in more ways than one on days where you’ve wanted to get something done but it didn’t happen, leading to excess stress and feeling low key shamed for what you weren’t able to accomplish that day. 

Hello, that’s me! 

When I’m giving you this advice, this is very much me explaining my real world, understanding my own awakenings. These are tips that have helped me not only be more productive, but feel less shame and more accomplished. When I say my mental health has improved with these simple methods, I truly mean it. 

The Creation Matrix

One of the best things you can do is really sit and think about what you feel like you can realistically accomplish whenever you find yourself fully motivated, when you find yourself in an okay space, in a bad space, and an unmotivated space. Whether we like to admit it or not, even though we don’t feel like it, there’s always something we can do.

I’ll give an example. If I’m having a really bad day, I usually find myself on social media anyway. When it comes to any of the tasks that I have to do that are related to social media, it's a natural step for me to say to myself: “I feel bad today, but to feel a bit closer to my dreams and ease some of the guilt and shame, I can go respond to comments. I can comment on other creator’s accounts and give them support. I can provide more thorough feedback on a friend's post she recently posted.” Those are things I know I can do no matter what state I’m in. 

Get really honest with yourself, and I mean truly honest. Identify what is the thing that you feel like you’re able to do no matter what state you’re in? I’m not talking about the hard thing you keep putting off. What would that look like?

Once I was able to chart out what I was able to do when I was unmotivated, or not feeling good, my productivity radically changed. I was no longer putting all the pressure on having a good day, all-or-nothing. 

There are a number of days where I just feel like I couldn’t get out of bed, or absolutely crippled with grief or anxiety. Doing it this way, facing myself honestly and asking “what can I do?”allows for a lot more grace than the all-or-nothing thinking. 

This is where my Creation Matrix comes in. The Creation Matrix is a quadrant system that helps me chart out what I can do on those bad days, or those okay days, or those days I feel unmotivated. 

The beautiful thing too is you don't have to feel like this is set in stone. This is something that could change on a week to week basis, or even a day to day basis.

Plan Out The Week In Advance

What I do is on Sunday, before the week usually starts, I pull out my Creation Matrix and I think: 

• What do I have going on this week?

• How do I think I’m going to be feeling each of those days?

You probably know loosely what’s happening in your week, so you can give a good guess as to how your week’s going to go. For example, if on Thursday you have to take the kids to school, and then you have a shoot with a client, and then you have a discovery call–you can probably guess that you’ll be feeling pretty stressed that day. 

Knowing that, you don’t have to give yourself the pressure of doing everything that you would do on a good day. You can start planning your week in a more or less predictive way towards your mood. 

I’ve found the more I’ve done this, the more accurate I’ve become. 

Of course, there’s always exceptions. Maybe I think it’s going to be a good day, and then something throws a wrench into the day making it a not-so-good day. But the fact that I’m doing something, and it’s getting me just a bit closer to my dreams, allows me to not feel the shame that I used to carry all the time. 

When I realized that I was navigating my business in a largely reactionary state, I was able to plan my schedule around my moods, and it changed everything for me. 

So if you raise your hand and feel like, “Yep, highly sensitive person over here,” a hundred percent recommend this.

I don't want you to have to feel like you have to shove your feelings down and be someone you're not. Maybe you're normally good, but you're just going through a really hard time now, or something happened that is just like really crippling you. 

You don’t have to feel the pressure to be productive 100% of the time, and the guilt that follows when you can’t. 

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For more help with your creative business, join my all-encompassing membership program, The Business Conservatory program.

Download the Creation Matrix here.

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