Unit 7 TAKING STOCK & MANAGING YOUR TIME

Unit Overview:

Read the unit introduction
Read the short NYT article :Procrastinate Much? Manage Your Emotions, Not Your Time.“
Book a mid-term review time with Alysha
Come to your mid-term review with your blog completely updated and a proposal for your Exhibition Responses and Annotated Bibliography
Begin on Projects 1 & 2 and draft statement

Procrastination

By this point in the semester you’re likely coming face-to-face with some of the challenges of working creatively and especially of developing and implementing your own projects. I remember an author and mentor telling me “that the hardest work your do is the work work you make for yourself– the work that no-one has asked for.” This has certainly rang true in my artistic life.

For this reason I find it very helpful to re-frame procrastination as an emotion management problem, rather than a time management problem. I’ve spent hours making lists, schedules, plans but if, when the time comes to get my work done, I avoid it because I’m overcome with anxiety, no amount of scheduling and planning is going to help me.

This NYT article “Procrastinate Much? Manage Your Emotions, Not your time.” has been really helpful for me in thinking about procrastination in a new way and has allowed me to address the real roots of the problem.

Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work, and by learning from their work. They commit themselves to the work of their heart and act upon that commitment…What you end up caring about is what you do, not whether the doing came hard or easy.

-Bayles and Orland

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