And good point you made over on Art and Perception.

For the past year, I have no idea how much time I spent on various activities. Some weeks, I may have spent 30 hours total on art (making & business); some weeks maybe 4 hours. I tend to get the most done if I take Friday off of work, clean the house and go grocery shopping on thursday evening, and then warn the family that I plan to spend the weekend doing art. For a while I was trying to have one long art weekend each month.

Thanks for bringing this up Lisa!

And I love the idea of having a list of what needs done when going on line. I sometimes have a mental list but then I get sidetracked and never actually finish what I intended. So I think I’ll try that approach today and see how it works.

Thanks!

I like your idea of using very broad categories for tracking things. I don’t really keep very good records about the business stuff but I think I might try out something like you are doing for that. I find that when I start tracking these things it motivates me to be more consistent in my approach to my art.

Excellent idea not bringing a computer to your studio. I need a way of locking mine up when I should be in the studio!

When on deadline I’ve been known to turn off the phones. Would you spend time at a conventional job chatting with family and friends instead of attending to the work your boss is paying you to do. Well, yes, some of us do or have, but I think you see what I mean. Just because we are working at home doesn’t mean we should drop everything when someone calls to chat.

Yes, computers are a problem, a necessary evil that can mesmerize you for hours. I’ve tried two tactics to limit time spent on the internet (because other computer uses just don’t suck up the time like the internet does). One is to wait to get on until I only have an hour or so before I have to do something else. That makes me quick and efficient. The other thing is to make a list beforehand of what I want to accomplish during this session, the “have to’s” as it were. Then if I have time left, I treat myself to a non-essential or two.

Have no idea how much time I spend on the business end, because I’m not really doing anything along those lines at the moment, but a think at one time I may have been averaging 2 or 3 hours a week documenting, filing, filling out forms, packing up quilts for shows - that sort of thing.

I read a lot - I added it up once and surprised myself with just how much, so I know that cuts into my studio time. But a lot of the reading is art related one way or another - even if it’s only to give my thought processes a change of pace.

I live by myself, have no kids but a fairly demanding dog, so take care of everything myself (although I think I’m going to hire someone to take care of the yard this summer). No outside job to distract me, but I still find it hard to spend the time I should doing what I should. Living alone creates some pretty bad habits, although the luxury of eating and cleaning and doing whatever you want whenever you want is pretty nice at times.

Interesting comments on this so far…. I actually started keeping pretty detailed records of how I spent my time (I’m a full-time artist) nearly a year ago (2/2/2006 to be exact). I just make tally notes in my “studio journal” for several basic categories: studio, events (open studios, attending gallery openings, exhibiting at art festivals), business/marketing/research, and training. Looking back through my journal, I see I’ve tried adding more categories at times, but I tend to break things down too much, so found it really wasn’t necessary.

For your question, I tallied up the actual studio and business time - my studio is outside my home, so it really is time in my studio creating art, framing, packaging, meeting with clients. Nearly all my “business” work is at my home office. So here are my numbers, averaged since 2/2/2006:

- I’m in my studio 5.7 days a week
- I averaged 33.8 hours a week in my studio
- I averaged 21.4 hours a week for “business” work in my home office

I’m also primarily responsible for all the household chores - cleaning, yardwork, maintenance, etc.

I think one of my keys for really making my studio time productive - and about creating art - is that I’ve refused the urge to take any technology into my studio space (except my iPod and cell phone). So, no computer or TV… really leaves me with not much else to do except create when I’m at my studio!

Anyone have any ideas on how to stay focused and stay off the computer?

But I agree - it is very tedious tracking this stuff but like you if I don’t do it I can tell my productivity suffers. I used to just print out a calendar and write this info on it but that was really boring.

So now I track this information in my sketchbook. I draw up a nice page for each month and keep track not only of the hours but what I was working on and also what other things are going on in my life. I find that having it in my sketchbook as made it seem not so much like an unwelcome task but it also inspires me to use my sketchbook more for other things.

Writing down the other things going on in my life has helped me understand better how outside things impact my art making activities. It’s been very interesting to see how much other things in my life can influence the amount of time I spend in my studio - and the silly excuses I might come up with for why I haven’t been doing the work.