Canyonlands National Park overlook. Photo by Keith Chapman.

Many creative folks are busy folks, and certainly the successful ones! That brings challenges to finding time to actually be creative and to do your creative work. Whether you consider the life of a professional artist with thousands of customers and followers or consider a budding hobbyist with a day job, the actual time they spend doing their creative work is relatively small compared to running their business, holding down their full-time job, or spending time with family and friends. For me, I find time in the cracks of being a dedicated husband and father and a busy business executive. I have worked very hard on finding time to write and am now working on finishing my second book on just how to do that, find the time to write. This new book explains how I found the time to write, finish, edit, and publish my first novel, Sushi Wars – Vol. 1: A New Roll, mostly during work lunches. It wasn’t easy to consistently find the time such that I could actually link it all together to finish a novel, but I did manage to do it.

It is a common problem, finding time to be creative. Many creative folks have a ton of started but unfinished projects. There are as many reasons why they remain unfinished as there are reasons they started them in the first place! One is time, well, consistent time. Stringing the several needed creative sessions back to back long enough to finish a creative project is a constant struggle. You have to find your mode of creative operation, your defined process with a reasonable pace of interaction with the project, to actually finish it. Professionals clearly have this down because it is most likely one of the main reasons they actually became professionals. They found the needed time to become that good. For hobbyists, it is very difficult. There are a million reasons to not work on your creative project. Some people work hard at finding reasons why they shouldn’t work on their projects. And we all know once a project gets shelved for even a few weeks or even days, it is difficult to bring it back up to stride to get it over the finish line. Once you lose momentum on a project, it’s a struggle to find the end.

One of the reasons I started The Mission Creative was to share ways to be creative and how to beat the obstacles we all face when wanting to be creative. Time is either your friend or your enemy when considering a creative project. The good news? It’s your choice on which it will be. The bad news is that it takes discipline to get your process defined and into a routine status with a reasonable interaction pace. And when life derails your routine, you need to know how to get back on track. These derailments could be business travel, unexpected events, family events, long day job hours, or anything else out of the ordinary routine. We all face these but we all don’t necessarily manage them the same. One key trick I have learned is to simply keep the stream of creativity going in those derailments even if it is not directly relating to your on-going project. There are two stages of derailment here in my experience. There is the project derailment and then there is the creativity derailment. Stage one is the project derailment. Let’s say you are working on a woodworking project, building a piece of unique furniture, and then find out midway through that you have to travel for business for 2 weeks and you cannot work on your project during that time. This is the project derailment. Now you have a choice. When you are on your business trip, let’s say you choose to read on the plane, go to business meetings and dinners, and watch movies in your hotel room at night. This is creativity derailment, the loss of your creative output for a significant amount of time, in this case, 2 weeks. Most will find it much harder to come back to your project after these 2 weeks. You’ll have to figure out where you left off, refind your routine, redefine your creative sessions, and it is way too easy to just leave it in the unfinished state.

If you can avoid the creativity derailment, and it is simply a choice you have, then you have a much better chance of returning refreshed with ideas and will be anxious to get back to your project. So, instead of reading a book on the plane and watching movies in the hotel, give yourself a creative assignment before you leave. Consider it a micro-project or better yet a project that you keep trickling in the background that is completely mobile. This can be traveling with a sketch book (or mobile sketch app) and defining what you need to draw before you actually travel. It could be a notebook (or mobile writing app) and defining what you need to write on the trip. It could be a photo assignment that you give yourself using your smartphone camera.

These micro-projects work well for me. When I get a creative routine derailment, I will either define some research I need to get done for my book that I am currently writing or work on my mobile photography portfolio. Find what works for you, but if you need a starting place, try the mobile photography portfolio. You likely take pictures with your phone everyday anyway, so why not make it a portfolio with assignments and further, why not get paid for it and load them up to stock photography apps!

I recently took this on and find it quite liberating on the creativity front. When I return from the derailment, I’m anxious to get back to my major project and even when in the routine, I trickle along the portfolio as a mental break, hobby, and minor, no-risk creative outlet.

Here are some of the best apps you can get started with for your mobile photography portfolio:

Twenty20 – a fun app and website that is easy to use. Upload your mobile photos to your account, apply them to a challenge and if you get noticed and nominated, you can sell your photos. Focused on mobile photography.

SnapWire – a more intense app and website that has a level up game mechanic that can be limiting at times but is still productive. Requests and challenges can make it interesting.

Clashot – a simple upload and sell photo portfolio app. They also have requests from companies. Easy to use.

ScoopShot – an app and website more focused on professional photography but does have a crowdsource photography area and assignments from companies.

Foap – an app and website that issues assignments from companies that stress social media usage and creativity.

Check them out and just trickle one along. It’s fun and easy. You might enjoy it and it will keep your creativity alive and well during life derailments. Derailing a project is sometimes unavoidable but derailing your creativity is really a choice you make which means you can choose to not derail your creativity. Mobile photography is an easy way to keep those creative vibes flowing.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative