Struggling to keep it all together?

Want to feel creatively productive?

No worries. We've got you! Check out these five things you can do right now to become more creatively productive by Lisa Johnson, author of Creatively Productive. 

Guest Post by Lisa Johnson

Creatively Productive is a mindset, a lifestyle, a movement. Sometimes we are creative. Sometimes we are productive. Sometimes we find the sweet spot and achieve #creativelyproductive. But the bigger picture is that we are happy, healthy, and achieving the heights we want to achieve personally and professionally.

Here are 5 things you can start doing right now to feel and be more creatively productive:

1. Know your Values: I love reading a wide variety of books and articles on businesses, entrepreneurs, productivity, and life hacks. Interesting enough, the vast majority of these will inevitably talk about goal-setting. But goal-setting isn’t the interesting part. The intriguing part is that the goal-setting activities typically start with a value audit. After all, to get what we really want our goals must connect the dots between who we are and who we want to be. If you are interested in doing your own Values Audit, check out this blog post. (If you have a Mac or an iPad, the blog post includes a FREE downloadable file to do your own values audit. If you have a non Apple device, here is the Google Slides version).

2. Use a Habit Tracker: Once you have your values in place, then it becomes much easier to set goals that align to those values. Unfortunately, goal-setting isn’t enough to ensure that those goals see the finish line. I have found that the next step is really taking incremental smaller steps. And the way to do that is with a habit tracker. You can use habit trackers for pretty much anything. For me, I use them to encourage myself to do something better (e.g. reading every night) or to stop doing something (perhaps eating out or spending money). I have linked an example here. I should also mention that there are habit trackers for sleep, water, mood, gratitude, and much more.

3. Play Productivity Bingo: In the new book, I feature a wide variety of ideas, tips, and tools from professionals all around the world and Instagrammers alike. One of my faves which I have used so many times when I am feeling overwhelmed or trying to stave off procrastination is Productivity Bingo. Here is a link to the original version. And I am including my example, a student example, and a blog post about how you could use these with students.

4. Track Your Reading: Last year I read 43 books (23 YA fiction books, 8 adult fiction, and 12 industry nonfiction). This equated to 14,862 pages for the year and 40 pages per day. And I can tell you that the only reason that this happened is that I did two things: 1) I made a list of books that I read and added a new one each time I read it AND 2) I kept a list of books that I read next. Tracking what I read let me see my progress and listing books I wanted to read next removed the barrier of decision fatigue.

5. Audit and Condense Your Tools: Too often we are reactive instead of being proactive. I am guilty of this too. One of things I find to be really helpful is an audit. I audit the tools and apps I am using every year or so. I consider the unique purpose of each site/app/tool and consider if it still meets my needs or if another tool works better. I also remove dated or old sites that I no longer use, and I try to find a central repository to link all of the existing working sites off of for easy access. If you don’t have a website and you want a quick landing page, you could use a site like Linktree (this is what I use to organize resources in my bio of social media pages). If you have a website, you could create a page with all of the links to the tools and sites you consistently publish content to (e.g. Smores, Thinglinks, Haiku Decks, Quizlets).

I think the biggest take-away should be that there is no one size fits all approach to being #creativelyproductive. And even the practices and pathways that work in one arena and season of our life may not work in another. So the best advice is to really explore ideas, tips, and tools (both analog and digital) but only commit to the ones that work for you and your students.

All of these topics are delved into deeper in my new book Creatively Productive. You can find out more about the book, read the introduction and first chapter FOR FREE, and watch the 2-minute book talk on the Creatively Productive DBC Inc page.

- Lisa 

Thank you, Lisa!

Wow! Extraordinary tips, Lisa! Thank you!!

To all of our readers, if you try any of these #CreativelyProductive ideas, please do share on social media and tag @dbc_inc, @TechChef4u and use the hashtag #CreativelyProductive.

If you liked what you read here, you should click the book link below and preview the #CreativelyProductive book for FREE! It's A-MAZ-ING! *Scroll to the large cover image at the bottom of the page and click "Free Preview." We'd love to hear your thoughts.