Social media is making your head spin and your inbox is overflowing. Let's face it, it's easy to get distracted and ineffective. We can easily lose site of our ultimate goals for our career. Develop your own simple guidance so that you are staying on task with your priorities. Or, feel free to use mine. It's a three-prong approach that keeps things simple and I find that I come back to it at the beginning of each week.

I came about this three prong approach out of this necessity of ensuring that I am still staying focussed on the big picture tasks. The big picture tasks are the one's that have direct impact in helping my career. Some of these tasks are applying for grants or emailing new work to previous patrons.  But I find that sometimes I don't "get around" to these important tasks as I can get caught up in the details of indirect tasks ie. I really should add a "selfie" to my Instagram feed.

I like to ask if the task that I am about to start or currently working on fulfills one of the following areas in a direct, hit-the-nail on the head fashion:

1. Am I generating art?

2. Am I writing, speaking or publishing content about my art?

3. Am I exposing my art to clients?

If I can honestly say that what I am about to spend time on will support one of the above options then I feel certain that I am prioritizing well and not slowing myself down with the minutiae of grooming my facebook page etcetera.

What are the tasks that you find drive you away from the core actions that will ACTUALLY help you in your art career?

One of the tasks that totally distracts me is emptying my inbox. I started the regular task of emptying my inbox so that I could ensure that I wasn't forgetting any important emails that had come through. There is nothing worse than missing a fabulous opportunity because your inbox has become a mire of blog updates, business /social emails, bills and various other notifications.  When I sit down to clear my inbox I feel pulled in a million directions and have to work hard to clear it. The great thing about this task though, is that the more frequently I do it, the easier it is to maintain. 

Take a good look at the diagram above and ask yourself which of these three areas needs some attention. You may be creating art and introducing it to people through galleries but maybe you could write more about it, get some press, submit info about your work to interesting art blogs. 

Image source [1]