Creativity Management Specialization

Introduction

Thank you for joining and choosing to embark on this journey to enhance your creative management skills. Here, you’ll learn to design personalized systems that boost your productivity and creativity while honoring your unique style. We’re excited to have you with us!

2m

Influences / Benedikt Glatzl

In this lesson, Benedikt Glatzl dives into the productivity systems of remarkable figures like Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Tim Ferriss, and David Allen. You’ll learn how these great minds set goals, prioritized tasks, and built lasting habits to achieve extraordinary results. Take inspiration from their methods and start shaping your own productivity system!

6m

Influences / Sabrina Lagoun

In this lesson, Sabrina Lagoun shares the personal influences that shaped his approach to science communication. From inspiring museums to the fascinating connection between art and neuroscience, you’ll discover how curiosity and documentation have driven humanity’s understanding of the world. This is an invitation to reflect on what inspires you as we dive into setting your goals and improving how you work

4m

Influences / Hanoi Morillo

In this lesson, Hanoi Morillo opens up about the authors, podcasts, and resources that inspire his work and fuel his passion for learning. From Tim Ferriss and Brene Brown to insightful podcasts and daily reads like Morning Brew, you’ll get a glimpse into tools that keep him motivated and focused. It’s time to reflect on your own inspirations as we dive into energy management, distractions, and focus strategies.

12m

Influences / Clare Seal

In this lesson, Clare Seal highlights three inspiring women who shaped his approach to money and work: Otegha Uwagba, Alex Holder, and Anne Boden. Through their books and insights, you’ll discover practical advice on valuing your work, managing money, and embracing financial conversations. By learning from their experiences, you’ll start building confidence in managing your own finances.

4m

Influences / Frances Odera

In this lesson, Frances Odera shares the cultural influences that have shaped his design thinking and creative approach. From the Techish podcast and trailblazing leaders like Elaine Welteroth and Virgil Abloh to inspiring business collectives, you’ll discover how diverse voices and communities can fuel creativity and innovation. Get ready to dive into Notion and learn how these influences can inspire your own journey!

8m

Basics, Principles, and Materials

First, I will briefly examine the concept of ego depletion and decision fatigue. I will then explain how our brain is pretty terrible at keeping track of tasks, schedules and decisions and how a written-out system helps ensure you can focus.

4m

Your Own Organization System

In this lesson, you will see how my organizational system changed and evolved. Finally, I will share a short reflection on the system.

5m

The Brain Download

To start organizing yourself without getting distracted immediately, you need to get everything on your mind (especially things you need to do) out of your head and on (digital) paper. I call this the “brain download”.

10m

Specifying Goals and Tasks

At this point, your task collection likely contains many somewhat unclear items that cannot be turned into effective actions. Let’s change that and rewrite them by answering a few simple questions.

8m

Categorization

In this lesson, you will create your own task categories that will help you balance tasks across areas that are important to you in life.

10m

Deciding on Actions

Now, you will learn simple yet powerful principles for assessing and action on existing and new tasks that come your way. In the end, each task should either be dropped, delegated, scheduled, immediately done or put into your task board, which we will build right after this lesson.

9m

Task Board and Weekly Priorities

In this lesson, you will learn how to build your weekly task board, which will be your productivity system's centrepiece.

9m

Estimating Task Durations

To build a realistic weekly schedule for yourself, you need to master the art of estimating how much time completing a task takes. In this lesson, you will learn concepts and approaches that help you ensure you don’t overload yourself by miscalculating tasks and how much time you have available to complete them.

6m

Scheduling Tasks in the Calendar

You are almost done with setting up your productivity system! Here, you will see how to connect your weekly task board with your calendar by creating a variety of time blockers in the calendar, both for work and personal time.

17m

Task Boards and Calendars for Different Areas of Life

Having established a task board and reworked the calendar into a productivity tool, you can now expand on these methods and create additional boards and calendars for different aspects of your life.

3m

Dealing With Unexpected New Tasks

Planning is nice, but as the saying goes: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans”. I will examine a few principles for dealing with unexpected events to avoid getting wholly derailed when that happens.

2m

The Inbox Zero System

Email can be a powerful productivity tool; however, most people are controlled by their email instead of vice versa. Inbox Zero is a system that uses the approach we learned in this course to take back control of the Inbox to reduce unread (and untackled) emails to zero. Combining a task board, task calendar, and Inbox Zero will supercharge your productivity and focus.

9m

The Status Quo

With just a marker pen and some post-its, we will explore how to transform an idea about neuroscience into a fun and accessible video, highlighting the importance of planning, effort and authenticity in our approach.

13m

Preparing for the Worst

We've all procrastinated at one point or another, but by understanding how our brain works, we can channel that stress productively. Join me on this journey as we unravel the secrets behind the stress performance curve and learn how to apply it in our everyday lives.

7m

Satisfaction, Rewards, and Perfectionism

Welcome to this lesson, where I will shed light on the science of self-sabotage and reveal how our brain's quest for dopamine can lead to procrastination. Together, we'll learn strategies to trick our minds, stay motivated, and overcome the daunting fear of imperfection.

9m

The Myth of the Genius

Now, we will explore the myth of the "born genius" and dive into the science of creativity. Join me to discover how our brains adapt and learn, challenging preconceived notions about talent and art.

4m

What Does My Creativity Consist Of?

Uncover the mystery behind creativity, from how our brain operates to how platforms like TikTok influence our ideas. Dive into divergent and convergent thinking and unlock tools to boost your creativity.

14m

How to Find Inspiration

In this lesson, we'll navigate through unlocking creativity, even when inspiration seems elusive. Discover the power of mood, diverse brainstorming, emotions, and the myths surrounding external enhancers.

8m

The Science of Focus

In this lesson, we delve into the intricate science and art of focus, exploring its pivotal role in our creative processes. Join me as we uncover the challenges of sustaining attention, the magic of flow, and the strategies to harness and optimize your focusing abilities.

7m

Bending the Rules In Your Favor

Dive deep with me as we unravel the essence of creativity and the nuances of how our brain works. From the art of relaxation to the wonders of sleep and the magic of playfulness, together we'll explore how to harness our inherent creative power.

8m

Nudging or the Role of Habits

From the intricate dance between habits and creativity, I've always been captivated. In this lesson, we'll delve into how our brain forms habits and how you can harness this knowledge to boost your productivity and innovation.

10m

Using Digital Tools

Digital platforms have always been a double-edged sword for many. Let's dive into how these tools can become powerful allies in your creative journey, rather than mere distractions.

3m

A Very Quick Test

Let me tell you more about this course and how to measure its impact on your time management abilities.

6m

Debunking Multitasking

Many people talk about the importance of being great multitaskers and how that’s their tool for better time management. Oh well... I have some bad news. Multitasking doesn’t really exist.

6m

Understanding Your Distractions

If you want to be super productive and great at managing your wake hours, you need to understand what distracts you and how to manage those distractions.

6m

Managing Your Energy

Managing your energy throughout the day is essential in this productivity conversation; your ability to focus will be very positively or negatively impacted by it.

11m

What Do You Want to Accomplish?

Answering this question will give you the best foundation to start being incredibly productive.

9m

Email Is a Tool and a Distraction

Is checking your email a distraction? It is if you don’t do it correctly. Let’s build a new discipline around emails that will remove it from the distraction list ;)

15m

Running Effective Meetings

From scheduling to preparing the agenda or making effective follow-ups. Everything around a meeting is essential. So let’s make the super effective from beginning to end.

16m

Your Wellbeing Is a Must

Taking care of yourself is the best tool to be productive. Allocate time to it.

3m

Own Your Agenda: Build a Time Box

It’s the time (no pun intended) to start fully owning over your agenda. Ready?

21m

Sunday Is Your New Best Friend

The only way to accomplish all this is to plan ahead. Sundays are great options for it.

19m

Success Is Focus Not Completion

This is not about a to-do list anymore is about managing to be focused during the times you said you were going to focus. Your success will be determined by your ability to focus and not your ability to finish a task.

2m

What’s Your Formula?

What's your formula for success? You'll have a Playbook that you need to commit to following by this time.

3m

The Importance of Money Management

I will talk about why learning to manage money correctly both in your business and finances is so important, from the mental health benefits to the business benefits of having your cash flow under control.

5m

What Do You Need In Your Toolkit?

Here, I will introduce the final project: your creative money management toolkit. Then, I will explain how each tool works and how they work together to give a comprehensive money management kit.

5m

Business Finance vs Personal Finance

This lesson explores the relationship between business finance and personal finance; it’s essential to keep them separate and how interdependent they are.

3m

Case Study Intro

To help me illustrate how you’ll create and use our creative finance toolkit, I’m going to be talking Chloe through the process of creating hers. Chloe is an illustrator, designer and stylist working as a freelancer, and like many of us, she’s looking for a way to manage her money.

5m

Setting Challenging but Achievable Financial Goals

This lesson will focus on goal setting. I will encourage deep thought about the goals and a good structure for getting them down on paper.

11m

Planning Your Income, So That You Don’t Get Caught Short 1

Planning your business income is essential, even when your business is in the creative industry! In these couple of lessons, I'll show you how I manage it.

11m

Planning Your Income, So That You Don’t Get Caught Short 2

Here, you'll continue creating a simple income planner to help you to keep track of where projects are at and how much income you're expecting.

14m

Creating a Budget That Allows for a Flexible Income

The last tool in the kit is a second Excel spreadsheet that works with the income planner to give you a picture of your personal finances and helps you to feel in control of your money.

20m

Using Your Toolkit

There are many different uses for these tools, from the practical use of filling them in regularly to the conclusions and lessons that you can draw from them.

10m

Routine and Habits

Making the toolkit is the easy part in some ways; you actually have to use them! Here are some ways to establish good money management habits and routines to use your toolkit.

5m

Digital Tools

Sometimes, keeping your finances in an easily accessible place can help you stay on top of them. So create a folder on your phone or tablet with all of your tools: budgeting apps, Excel or Google Docs etc., so that you have all of the info you need on the go!

2m

Financial Accountability on Social Media

Social media can be great for a sense of community, as most creatives tend to work alone. You can get great finance tips, crowdsource information about rates and opportunities, and find new clients!

4m

Why Use Notion?

In this lesson, I'll introduce the productive and creative use cases of Notion and its diverse target audience. You'll then apply these concepts to how you can build a profile page that celebrates your personality.

10m

Introduction to the Course Guide

Now I'll show you the course template I've created in Notion, which contains mini-exercises and resources to help you practise your Notion skills and get the most out of your profile page.

7m

How to Use Notion

So that you feel empowered when you are creating your profile page, in this lesson, you'll unlock the functionality in Notion and understand the basic concepts.

19m

Goal Setting and Choosing Blocks

In this lesson, we'll have a look at the goals for your profile page, and I'll show you the right tools in Notion to get you there.

14m

Structuring the Profile Page

Here you'll learn layout and navigation techniques. Additionally, I'll introduce the concept of syncing text content.

13m

Setting up a Blog

I'll also introduce the concept of setting up and manipulating Notion databases by creating a blog for your profile page.

19m

Sharing a Goals Roadmap

Goals are a great way to show what's important to you and, therefore, a great addition to a profile page. I'll show you how to publicly display your goals in Notion and connect them to your thoughts, and also how to create templates.

13m

Dashboard Templates

In this lesson, I'll show you the power of templates and dashboard templates to make your workflow quicker.

12m

Sourcing Design Inspiration

Most of us have a design style, even if it is unconscious – you're naturally drawn to aesthetics. In this lesson, I'll talk about likely and unlikely different sources of design inspiration which could influence your style.

4m

Narrowing Down Your Style

The key to having a good design style is to stick to a few key elements or motifs. So, it's important to assess your sources of inspiration and pick key elements that you want to bring forward into your work. I'll show you how!

5m

Customising Notion

Notion doesn't have to look like a spreadsheet. In this lesson, I'll show you some of my favourite techniques to make it more aesthetic.

19m

Making an Aesthetic Profile Page

The less like a spreadsheet Notion looks, the more encouraged you are to use it! Here you'll learn how to apply the aesthetic techniques to your profile page.

9m

Publishing and Sharing a Profile Page

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use the share settings in Notion and different ways to publish to the web.

5m

Community Building and Collaboration

What other applications for a profile page are there? I'll explain how you can use your profile page to help build community and other methods for collaboration.

7m

Staying Inspired

Communities are a great source of information and keep you accountable. In this lesson, you'll learn about the different Notion communities you can get involved with.

5m