Lists can give order to your hectic life, whether you process each item in order or, more likely, get around to them someday.
The most valuable thing about making lists is that it gets tasks, projects, and ideas out of your heads and into a place where you can find them again. At least that’s the idea.
Your to-do list is the one you’re probably most familiar with and contains urgent or near-future items that you must accomplish: pay bills, order framing supplies, write the newsletter draft.
But I want to take you beyond daily tasks with a list of 5 lists (yep, a list of lists) that are useful to artist-entrepreneurs.
1. The good ideas list
When I plan a project with a client, some things are immediate: an exhibition, a launch, a class to teach. But their minds are still churning with ideas. You don’t have time to do them now, yet they take up head space and keep floating back until you give them a place to live.
- Write a book.
- Lead a retreat overseas.
- Go after a residency.
Think of this as a dream list. It’s a placeholder. When an idea becomes real, it becomes a project.
If your list is anything like mine, you’ll look at it in five years and ask, “What was I thinking with half of those?” But at least you got them out of your head and onto paper.
[Aside: In the podcast I combine the good ideas list with lists of things I want to remember like books to read or movies to watch.]
Listen to episode 282
2. The absolute no’s list
These are the things you will not do, no way, no how, in no universe. In my experience, things land here because you said yes once and realized you would never do it again.
Your list might say:
- I never work with people who bargain with me.
- I never take a commission under $2,500.
- I never loan my art without a contract.
Mine says I never work with whiny people who make excuses. I just can’t help them. I never tell anyone, “I’m so busy,” because being busy is boring. And I never consult privately with an artist who doesn’t have a body of work and a studio practice.
Once you’ve named a no and written it down, it can become a policy. Then it’s easy to say, “Sorry, I have a policy against that.”
4. The 10 to 30 minute list
We are not all blessed with three uninterrupted hours to work in the studio, or to write, record, edit, and publish a video in one fell swoop. That doesn’t happen very often.
But we can all find pockets of time between tasks or appointments. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes.
This list is what you go to instead of turning on YouTube for the latest news and getting swept up in something that isn’t helping you (mentally or professionally).
Mine says to delete old blog posts, and to delete the downloads and screen captures on my desktop. A lot of digital cleaning is mindless. It doesn’t use many brain cells, so you can do it while a game is on or while you’re watching something you don’t have to follow the plot of.
My friend Janice McDonald kept these tasks on slips of paper in a mason jar and pulled one out when she had a few minutes. That leaves too much up to fate for me. If I pulled something I didn’t feel like doing, I’d put it back and grab another one. I’d rather look at a list and think, “Oh yeah, that would be fun now.” And we should get joy wherever we can in our day.
3. The things someone else could do list
Everyone would like more help in their business. It’s great to work alone and have all the control, but wouldn’t a little extra support be nice?
Here’s what I know from experience and from clients who have hired help: never hire someone until you know exactly what you want them to do. An extra body is dead weight. You don’t need an extra body. You need specific help, and this list starts the whole thing.
Frame it as things you do that someone else could do and that you’re willing to let go of. Maybe even someone already in your orbit.
Heidi Fahrenbacher talked about hiring her brother, who excels at shipping logistics in a way she doesn’t want to. I keep my list in the back of my planner, right next to me all day.
They won’t do the job the way you do it. But they just might surprise you and do do it better — freeing you to work your genius.
See these episodes about working with others:
My best practices for working with an assistant (59)
Learning how to be a boss with Ali Manning (106)
5. The done list
This one is just as important as your to-do list. It’s everything you have completed.
Here’s what happens at the end of the day. We look at our planner and think, “Ugh, I didn’t do those things,” and we move them over to the next day. We keep seeing what we still haven’t done, and the to-do list just keeps growing.
We have to get used to that. The to-do list is ongoing because we always want to be doing. We want our lives to be meaningful, and that means we do things. But we have to learn to prioritize, and we have to learn to take credit for what we’ve done.
This is why the most important thing I ask people to do in my coaching is reflect on what they’ve done. If they don’t, they can’t grow. They can’t celebrate. All they see is the list of things they haven’t done yet.
Call it a done list or a celebration list. I don’t care what you call it. Just do it. And if something you did was never on your list, write it down and cross it out. There’s great joy in that.
Then when I ask what you’ve accomplished, you can look at your days and tell me exactly. It’s not for accountability. It’s so we can figure out your next steps.
Where to keep your lists
It’s great to make lists, but if they’re all over the place in various corners of your studio, your office, or your home, they don’t do any good.
Each one needs a dedicated place. They don’t all have to be together, but you need to know where to go to add to them and review them.
My 10 to 30 minute list and my done list live in my planner, because that’s where I look for time and where my daily tasks are. My good ideas and all of the other lists are in Notion, because I can search them and find them easily in a digital format
If you do nothing else, do the done list. Give yourself credit for your accomplishments.
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