10 Tips to Plan and Organize Your Daily Routine as a Creative

Refresh your day-to-day routine with these exercises to help develop good organizational skills, increase productivity, and reach goals

Whether it's work or a hobby, one of the main challenges creatives face today is staying focused long enough to let ideas really flow. Constantly bombarded by notifications, emails, and last-minute tasks, it's hard to concentrate and get stuck into a project.

While these distractions aren’t going anywhere, there are tools and practical solutions to help.

Ready to reset your routine this season? Here satisfaction and productivity expert Lygia Ponte shares advice and tips to help organize your daily routine. These tips are designed to improve your productivity, restore balance to your days, and (ultimately) leave you feeling more fulfilled.

A consultant, speaker, and teacher, Lygia has extensive experience educating people about networking, productivity, and time management (her next online course is launching soon on Domestika). She believes that developing good organizational skills is key to achieving objectives, as well as building confidence and nurturing trusting relationships.

To help you create a more balanced routine and optimize your creative time, here Lygia shares her essential tips to manage your daily work routine. This advice is designed to help you get a broader view of how you currently invest your time and provide you with the tools to create a focused headspace for building incredible projects.

1. Plan out all of your daily tasks

The first step to organizing your routine is planning out what you need to do, from work commitments to personal tasks (like calling a family member or even grocery shopping). Lygia recommends including all the activities that will require your time because it’s the only way to get a full picture of the tasks that take up your day.

As part of your tasks, she also recommends carving out time for leisure activities that can inspire creative moments, like watching a film, reading a book, or attending a social event.

2. Identify distractions (and reduce their impact)...

Have you ever thought about the number of times you get distracted during the day? From text messages to phone calls to spam mail or your kitten needing attention... these interruptions are all normal, but if you know how to identify them you can reduce their impact.

Simply being aware of the most common types of distraction, the times of day when you’re interrupted, and how long they take enables you to plan ahead and alter your schedule so you can avoid wasting time, maintain concentration, and get into your flow zone. Doing this exercise regularly is a way to transform your relationship with time.

3. ... But still make time for daily distractions

Even when you have an understanding of your main distractors, it’s not possible to avoid all of them—you will need to respond to that email or return a call at some point. This is why it's important to set make time for these tasks in your agenda rather than letting them interrupt your day.

For example, set time aside to deal with specific tasks like answering emails and messages, or having a quick coffee break or team call—it's important to make room in your day to deal with these responsibilities.

4. Define your work time and your personal time

It’s important to build a work schedule that still leaves you time to enjoy your personal time, which is why learly defining your work and personal time is fundamental—especially if you're freelance, own your own business, or work from home. Not only will it help you better use your time, but it's also key to maintaining a healthy balance between your professional, personal, and mental health.

To build a daily work-life balance that works for you, decide how you want to work and stick to it. For example, if you are more productive in the mornings, use your mornings to resolve work issues and your afternoons or evenings free for personal affairs.

Don't forget to set aside time for activities like networking, resting, meetings, personal projects, and leisure.

5. Create a calendar with all of your commitments and tasks

Organize all your appointments and tasks into a calendar—this can be either digital or physical, what’s important is that it helps you keep track of your activities in one place.

While many of us rely on memory or leaving random notes on stickies, this can easily lead us to forget things or run into unforeseen events creating more work or distractions. Having a planner that you can easily check at any time can make your life a lot easier.

6. Organize your week seven days in advance

Pick one day a week when you have the most free time to plan the next seven days. Things you can’t plan for will always crop up, but having a short and medium-term vision can be very useful to help you understand your workload.

This planning will help you take more conscious and informed decisions, which in turn, can help you feel less overwhelmed. If your next week looks full, avoid taking on anything new. Whereas if you have quiet days coming up, you can get ahead of your work, spread out your task to give you more time, explore potential new projects, or rest.

7. Carve out some time for unforeseen events

This is one of the most important tips on this list, as we rarely anticipate emergencies or events we don't already know about. It’s important to make room in your day for things that are beyond your control. They may not crop up every day, but taking them into consideration when planning your week will help you be better prepared and prevent you from feeling more overwhelmed if there’s a professional or personal emergency.

8. Use simple tools to get organized

When talking about organizational methods, less is more. So use tools you’re already familiar with, like your phone calendar, a diary, notebook, or apps you already know how to use to keep things simple. The most important thing is to understand what you need to do simply and rapidly, without getting lost in a task manager.

9. Learn how to say no

The only way to keep your routine organized is by knowing how to say no to anything that isn’t a priority. This will make a big difference, leaving you the time and headspace to really get stuck into the projects you want to be involved in.

10. Only say yes to projects you know you have time to work on

Saying yes to everything everyone asks you to do is a way of sabotaging your own day. When you take too much on, it becomes easy to feel out of control over particular situations or deadlines.

With this in mind, it's important to understand your limits and avoid taking on projects that you won't have time to fulfill due to lack of time. And, be careful to only allow things that you have said yes to onto your agenda!

Illustrations by Maja Dabek; English version by @studiogaunt.

Discover more tips to improve your organization and productivity

Check out all of Domestika's online time management and productivity courses, and read on for more...

- Discover top tips from creatives to make time for your personal projects and hobbies outside of work.

- Learn strategies to optimize your time with six essential books to improve productivity.

- Explore creative ways to become more productive with Louise Choi's course on creative bullet journaling for productivity.