An Hour a Day

Being cre­ative for a liv­ing is not always an easy thing to do. There’s bills to pay, for instance! And let’s face it, most peo­ple who are cre­ative, whether com­posers, poets, painters, or sculp­tors, find it hard to earn money being creative.

Some­one once told me that he spends an hour a day on just his career. I think that’s impor­tant; whether it’s net­work­ing, design­ing your busi­ness card, research­ing grants — by all means, spend an hour a day sup­port­ing your cre­ative career.

But in the rush to tend to busi­ness, both your “day job” and your cre­ative life, don’t for­get to spend time being cre­ative. That is key, and that is the habit to develop.

I myself spend my first hour every day hav­ing cof­fee and com­pos­ing. That’s before I head out to work for my day job. Some days it is a drag because I don’t feel like there’s much to com­pose. But it’s like shoot­ing the bas­ket­ball toward the hoop; you can’t score if you don’t shoot.

So make it a habit to be cre­ative one hour a day. Don’t have that hour? Make it 30 min­utes. Or 15. What­ever works for you. Keep track of it in a spread­sheet or cal­en­dar, and add it up at the end of the week, and the month, etc. See how much time you can spend being creative!