How to plan your week as a creative business owner

What should I be working on?

This seems to be a question and struggle for most creative business owners. And I struggle, too.

Should I be making something new? Should I be reaching out to new potential clients or exploring money-making opportunities? Should I be getting better at my craft? Or maybe I should be better managing my current work, family, and life that I have?

When I talk to fellow creative professionals, it seems that many of us are flying by the seat of our pants. A few are content with that kind of life, but others, like me, want to do better.

I know life will always be a bit messy. But I’m not content with the idea that we creatives are just messy people. I want to run my creative business well. To the best of my ability, I want to harness my potential, serve people well, make beautiful things, and take advantage of the opportunities available to me.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years reading books, taking courses, and watching YouTube videos about productivity.

One of the more helpful things I’ve carried with me is the idea of picking a “big three.” When I’m doing well, I try to plan three big things I want to accomplish each week. Doing so helps me prioritize what I’m doing with my days.

That’s been helpful, but not helpful and clear enough.

My wife and I have worked together in a creative business since we’ve been married (14 years!). We recently talked about bottlenecks in our business. We realized that we need a guiding framework that is better at equally prioritizing the various spaces and functions of our business.

A guiding framework we came up with is:

MANAGE, CREATE, SELL

As we plan our work priorities for the week (our big three), the goal is to accomplish one big thing in each space. We ask ourselves, what’s one big thing that we need to manage this week? What’s one big thing that we need/want to create this week? And what’s one big way for us to sell this week?

These three “big things” aren’t the only things we accomplish in a week. We get a lot of other little things done throughout our days. But we know the “big three” will help us move forward - even if it’s the only three things we accomplish.

Making sure that each one of them is in a different space keeps us from getting lopsided - which is exactly what has happened in the past.

For example, we’ve spent a few weeks laser-focused on managing our current jobs only to come up for air and realize we need some new work and future income. Or we’d spend time selling, selling, selling (for us, that’s looked like booking shows) to realize then that to keep selling in the future, we need to spend more time making new things.

You get the idea.

I wanted to share in case this might be helpful to you, my fellow creative, as you’re figuring out what you should work on.

P.S. I know it’s cheating, but I also throw in a personal fourth objective: what am I learning this week? I believe that growing in creativity and life requires a commitment to ongoing learning. Plus, I just like learning new things. So, I try to be intentional about what my primary learning objective is each week.