Are you struggling with time management? Would you like to be more productive, stop wasting your time so much on social media, and make more time for making and creating? Many creative professionals struggle with time management, so here is my personal selection of the best time management books for creatives who want to stop talking and start doing.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
This is a time management classic for both individuals and organisations. I read The 7 Habits nearly twenty years ago for the very first time and it had a profound effect on me. And it still has!
Although the title is very business-like and corporate it actually goes really deep emotionally. It’s not a ‘quick fix’ book (I wouldn’t recommend you read it all in one go!) but it deals with our human struggle on how to spend our limited time in this world. I have re-read this book now several times, and each time I discover new ways to work on myself and refocus on what I really want from my life and business. It asks some really big questions but also offers practical solutions and activities.
The book centers around the 7 habits:
- Be proactive: Stop moaning and start taking charge of your life basically! It’s up to you how you choose to respond to challenges, where you are heading and how you’ll spend your time. What are your values? What do you want to focus on?
- Begin with the end in mind: Rather than focus on the here-and-now and immediate tasks (e.g. do you start your day with emails and social media?) start to create a value-driven principle-centered mission of what you want to get out of life. What life do you want to create? What do you want your legacy to be (literally)? Setting long term goals will give you clarity and purpose to help you make better decisions. Then work backwards to set smaller goals and deadlines of what you need to work towards.
- Put first things first: Are you making the time for these important aspects in your life? Is the balance in your life right between life and work, you and your family, your health and your money?
- Think win/win: You’ll need to negotiate and create relationships build on trust, values and long-term goals if you want to achieve your goals.
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood: When it comes to interpersonal relationships will you truly try to understand the other person’s perspective? Really useful chapter also about learning to negotiate – both in business terms and within your family and personal relationships.
- Synergise: Put it all together and you’ll get more than the sum of its parts. Through mutual trust and understanding conflicts are resolved and better solutions can be found than when working alone.
- Sharpen the saw: Are you looking after yourself (physically, mentally, socially, emotionally and spiritually) so that you can be more productive?
I recommend the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People especially if you need to look at the bigger picture and you want to find clarity and focus: What do you want from your life? What’s your purpose and values?
Give Me Time – The Mind Gym
This is both a strategic and practical book that goes straight to your own time management issue. At the start of Give Me Time you do a quiz and based on your answers you’ll get a personal recommendation of which chapters/exercises to read and focus on. Perfect if you haven’t got a lot of time and want a quick fix!
Although this time management book isn’t specifically focused on creatives, it’s very helpful if you don’t like planning, if you feel that you never have the time to do what you really want to do, if you are super busy but it doesn’t fulfill you and if there are too many distractions in your life.
Finish – Jon Acuff
Let’s be honest … do you find it hard to finish projects? To turn your ideas into real products and services that you can sell and launch? You start, work on lots of different projects and ideas …. But you rarely finish them?
This book (you can read it in less than 2 hours) is full of really great insights about why we don’t finish what we start. I really cringed a couple of times …
About the importance of the first day after you start when you are full of hope, when you often supersize the scope of your project, and then don’t follow through. And instead of getting yourself back on track gently, you quit.
About not being good enough. By having only the exceptional standard of ‘perfectionism’. And oh yes, the ugly head of perfectionism raises up regularly in disguise!
About how adding fun and joy to your goals and activities make it more likely you will do them. But how this bizarrely contradicts with out inherent belief that if we want to make something happen it needs to be hard, and can only be achieved by a lot of sweat and tears.
About the hiding places to avoid messing up. (Also called procrastination)
About the importance of tracking your progress.
And the final chapter really hits it home: About why we so often self-sabotage when we are very very close to reaching our goal. (This is so good!)
“What are you getting out of not finishing?
Because you’re getting something.
That’s the true reason why you don’t finish.”
Finish is a must-read for any chronic, super busy and super-excited starters who frankly rarely finish anything and want to really figure out why that is the case. Deep stuff. A book that will make you sit up straight.
Manage your Day to Day – a 99U book edited by Jocelyn K. Glei
This is a compilation of articles by creatives and entrepreneurs around time management including marketing guru Seth Godin, Behance Founder Scott Belsky, graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister, author and creative process expert Steven Pressfield, and creative coach and poet Mark McGuinness (see below).
Short, snappy articles and Q&A’s covering building a rock-solid routine, how to focus in a distracted world, tame your email and social media, and sharpen your creativity.
A beautifully designed books with great quotes such as:
“I don’t wait for moods.
You accomplish nothing if you do that.
Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”
– Pearl S. Buck
Manage Your Day To Day is a beautiful little book – perfect if you want to get a little boost and make the most of your time and creativity.
Check out the 99U website for useful time management articles for creatives too.
Productivity for Creative People – Mark McGuinness
If you are looking for a quick introductory read into time management, especially for creatives, then this is it. You can read this practical book in an hour or so, covering both the big challenges and practical solutions for creatives who struggle with having too much on, who don’t have time to create, who feel anxious and overwhelmed most of the time, and who get distracted easily.
Mark has brought together in this book many of the time management gurus, such as David Allen and Steven Pressfield, and translated them for creatives, with many practical stories and insights from his own practice as a writer and poet, and creative coach.
Especially the chapter on how to get creative work done is very useful, with tips including email management, how to stop last-minute panicking, how to design your ideal work week, create rituals and habits to get into your creative zone, how to stop procrastinating by incubating instead (this is truly a marvellous insight!) and even how to make the most of boredom!
At the end of each chapter Mark asks some really poignant questions to help you find your own answers. And throughout Productivity for Creative People Mark shares stories and insights from his own perspective as a writer and poet, as well as his creative coaching clients. If you are looking for a creative business mentor then you find Mark in our list of favourites here.
Time Management for Creatives ebook (free!) – Mark McGuinness
I’ve recommended this 32-page Time Management for Creatives ebook for many years to creatives as Mark really covers all the aspects of improving your productivity and getting better organised. Although published in 2007 (and downloaded more than 100,000!) it is still very relevant. Highly recommended! And yes, this is a free download.
Organizing for Creative People – Sheila Chandra
Do you believe that creativity thrives in chaos? Then this book is not for you.
This is one of the very few books about organisations systems for creatives, written by a creative – the singer Sheila Chandra. It’s full of really practical advice on how to sort out your systems, paperwork, work and living space, routines, how to make better decisions, planning your work load, delegation and much more. She asks the really big questions for most creatives, but also gives really practical advice to help you get sorted. Organizing for Creative People is for creatives who need a helping hand to get sorted.
Create Space – Derek Draper
We are the first generation that don’t have enough time.
‘Rather than having the need to fill space, we have the need to create it.’
In Create Space psychiatrist Derek Draper argues that we, and especially leaders, deliberately need to make more time and space to think, more time and space to connect, more time and space to do, more time and space to be. And each of these 4 parts is broken up in 3 chapters to create space to reflect, learn, decide, check in, share, relate, plan, deliver, lead, dream, balance and grow.
Each chapter starts with a story explaining a specific case study from Derek’s executive coaching practice, and his psychological theories behind the behaviour and dominant thought processes and behaviours. At the end of each chapter he includes some ‘ask yourself’ questions, often very deep and thought-provoking, or suggest practical exercises to work on.
Derek makes the case for us to deliberately step back and regain some control. Unless we make space deliberately we won’t be performing and developing at our optimum. This is much more than just a question of how we fill our time and diaries, or even how we manage our energy, but it’s mostly a state of mind to create your own life and priorities.
This is an excellent read for anybody who is feeling overwhelmed, who makes rushed decisions, who wants to encourage their deep and creative thinking, who wants to make more time to reflect.
(In 2020 Derek caught Covid and spend nearly 12 months in hospital, he is one of the longest surviving Covid patients in the UK. He is still recovering.)
Personal Kanban – Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry
Kanban (Japanese 看板, signboard or billboard) = a Lean manufacturing method to manage and improve work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks.
Based on Japanese manufacturing methods to minimise bottlenecks in the system this book shows how you can use these agile working principles in your own life. However machines need to be productive, but people need to be effective. It’s not about doing more and more and more, but about choosing the right work at the right time. Being aware of the impact on ourselves of the work we do, as well as on our colleagues, families, and the wider world.
In Personal Kaban there are only two simple rules: visualise your work and flow, and limit your work-in-progress.
- Visualise your work flow through Post-It notes into specific columns, moving them from one step to the next will make your work priorities more actionable, and providing a context-sensitive flow.
- Limiting your work-in-progress will help you to complete what you start and understand the value of our choices.
Combined, these two simple acts encourage us to improve the way we work and the way we make choices to balance our personal, professional, and social lives.
It’s a very simple system that will appeal to creatives who love PostIt note planning!
Growing Gills – Jessica Abel
The subtitle of this book is ‘How to find creative focus hen you’re drowning in your daily life’ and is one of my most recommended books for creatives.
This isn’t a ‘pure’ time management book, but rather a very practical book about the creative process and how to get your best work done.
Jessica is an award-winning graphic illustrator and Professor of Illustration and she created this book to accompany her popular online course The Creative Focus workshop. Although you can read this book in two hours you would totally miss the point. This is a book that you need to DO. Indeed, you’ll get a workbook and short online course for free with the purchase of this book.
As Jessica suggests herself: Read one chapter a week and then do the accompanying exercises in that week and see how it works for you. Indeed this book is more like a course to get focused, rather than a book about time management.
Each chapter deals with a specific challenge that many creatives will recognise:
- What is really stopping you?
- Why do we as creatives hold on to too many ideas and how that stops us from finishing any of them?
- How to identify and gain control over the many commitments you’ve made to yourself and others?
- How to prioritise
- Dealing with the ‘Dark Forest’ or why and how we go through creative crisis in the midst of big projects. And how to escape.
- How to get back on track when you’ve derailed.
Jessica has got a great knack to describe a situation in such a way that it really resonates, but more importantly she identifies what’s really going on and what you can do about it. The description of The Dark Forest especially really resonated with me. At the time I felt seriously lost in the middle of rewriting my own Dream Plan Do book.
Firstly, I was surprised that I wasn’t the only writer/creative dealing with this challenge (Oh yes! So obvious in hindsight, not at the time!) but also how she managed to describe my feelings, and then reframe it as an essential part of the creative process, rather than me beating myself up for being pretty lost and thinking I would never get to the finish line of writing Dream Plan Do. While of course continuing to procrastinate! Haha!
Her explanation of why it is crucial to go into these undiscovered territories, without a map, really helped helped and calmed me down. Yes, I realised – it’s the only way to create your best work!
Another wonderful creative exercise in the work book is the ‘should monster’ AKA the evil gremlin of self-doubt! What are all the ‘shoulds’ in your life that are driving you crazy? Instead of keeping it all to yourself .. get it all out! Draw your own ‘should’ monster with all your ‘shoulds’ and then share it on social media! Do check out #shouldmonster on social media. As soon as you start to see the funny side and that you aren’t the only one struggling with this you will feel so much better!
Growing Gills was written in particular for new creatives, and especially creatives who are not yet working full-time or are considering the move from hobby to professional. But I think most creatives can do with a boost of insights into how the creative process sometimes can be challenging and tricky, so that you are better prepared. Highly recommended. Especially if you DO the exercises, rather than just read it as a book.
When – Daniel Pink
The big but basic idea in this book is that our energy is at it’s best in the morning and earlier in the week (if you have weekends!). Throughout the day our energy levels go up and down, and if you work with these natural energy flows then you become a lot more productive. The subtitle of this book is: The scientific secrets of perfect timing.
So instead of wasting your time in the morning with more and more emails and social media, use this time for ‘deep work’ that needs your brain space. For example this is the perfect time for some serious thinking or creating that needs you to get into flow.
I was aware of this phenomenon (who isn’t?) but it really shows that by planning better WHEN you do certain activities will increase your productivity.
So now I often really plan blocks of time to work on writing up projects or creating online content, while I leave more repetitive jobs such as emails, social media or indeed folding up the washing and doing the supermarket shop for later in the day when my brain isn’t as sharp. And I am a lot kinder to myself (and more realistic!) of what I can achieve in a day too! Just by shifting jobs around during the day has helped me to get more done quicker.
When – The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing is full of practical examples of what can go wrong if activities aren’t done at the ‘right’ time (when people are tired or have lost most of their willpower) and also how to plan your days and hours better in line with your own energy. It also shows how important regular breaks throughout the day are – including a detailed description of the ‘perfect nap’!
THE DESIGN TRUST DIARY PLANNER – Patricia van den Akker
Although this isn’t strictly a time management book for creatives many clients have told us how useful they have found our diaries and planners to help them turn their big goals and dreams into do-able actions by breaking them down into smaller chunks. Our specialist annual diary is giving many creatives the strategic and practical framework to reflect and plan ahead through setting long-term goals and turn them into goals for the next 12 months, making time for quarterly reviews and monthly planning, and tracking their goals and numbers for finance, marketing and social media.
When you work by yourself it’s often hard to get accountability and to stay on track. If you decide to do things tomorrow then nobody really notices. Unlike a regular team meeting on Monday morning with fellow colleagues, the solopreneur struggles. Many of our diary planner readers have told me how they use the planner to write down their goals and activities, but also to have regular meetings by themselves to help them actually do what they want and need to do.
The Design Trust diary planner also helps creatives to do the right things at the right time. Most creative businesses are seasonal with a most sales in the run up to Christmas. So it’s really important that you start ‘planning with the end in mind’ – if you know when your clients are most likely to purchase then work backwards to plan when you need to have your website ready, your images, when to design your collections. But also on a weekly or even daily scale can you get much more done by being aware of what to do when, and to stack your time with similar activities and doing ‘brain-intensive’ activities (like planning, creating) in the morning, and more repeat jobs (like emails) in the afternoon or evening.
The Design Trust diary planner has been self-published for the last 5 years. For more details about The Design Trust diary planner see here. It’s normally only available for pre-order in mid September, and then from early November – February. More than 7,000 creatives in many countries across the world have been using The Design Trust diary planners in the last 5 years to achieve more in their business and life and turn their goals into action.
DISCLAIMER Please note that we have included affiliate links in this post, which means that The Design Trust will get a small commission if you order the recommended time management books for creatives above via Amazon. Of course it’s entirely up to you where you order your books from (we prefer small indie local book shops too to be honest!) but as many of our readers find Amazon very convenient and we offer lots of advice for free we do sometimes include links that earn us some additional pennies and pounds.
Have you got any recommendations for time management books for creatives? Or did you decide to purchase one of the books above and got lots out of it? We would love to hear your comments and time management suggestions below in the comments box.
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