I want to start this topic by telling you this guys... Thank you, really thank you for the support and being awesome! If it was not for you reading what I write here, taking your time to look at my art and reading my Webcomic, I'm sure I'd have given up long time ago. I have no words to describe how grateful I am right now. Really THANK YOU A LOT!
BECOME MORE PRODUCTIVE!
To many of us Inspiration is something that comes just in a while, then you feel like you have TONS of things to do, maybe you have to work, clean your clothes, the house, make Breakfast, lunch and dinner, that's fine, we all have that kind of activities, we are humans! But you feel like you don't have enough time to do all the things you want to, and you sleep less, you're really stressed, you want to be alone but at the end you can't stop complaining about time, money, life, children and other issues in life.
I really mean it: IT IS REALLY NORMAL TO FEEL LIKE THIS. But you can take advantage of this kind of things, what you need a little bit of organization and other some little tricks I'm going to show you below:
1. Organization is the basic key for success, for some people making a schedule is something that is against their own views, well, it is not like this, you do not need to do something like:
"4 AM Get up and make breakfast for the kids".
"5 AM Take a shower".
"6 AM Drive to work and leave the kids in the school"
HELL NO!!! Organization is not like that, all you need to know is what you have to do, then find a way to organize the activities in a way you can spend less time for it, for example, instead of drawing, inking then adding colour to a single draw I do like three sketches, then I add ink to all the three sketches, so I do the same with the colouring stage. It takes less time to do this, that's in my case, for some other people there are more effective process, but this is just an example.
2. Rest 5 minutes per each work hour, this is something really good, not only to rest up a little your mind, this is for your health, you need to stand up from the chair and walk or see trough the window, this will make any task you're doing more bearable. When I draw my comic I usually work for 8 or 10 hours in a single page, so each hour I stand up and drink some water, look trough the window or just "imagine".
3. Most of the people will say no to this, but I already did this some days ago, and it is actually working like a charm, and it is... Please, close that Facebook! That page stoles from you tons of precious time, just for nothing, and they're getting richer with your time! What are you winning? Nothing! I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook during a day, I was working on the comic and at the same time I was on Facebook, so look at this:
Time to complete a comic page: 10 hours
Time spent on Facebook per hour: 12-15 minutes
Time for drinking water, stand up and go to the bathroom per hour: 5 minutes.
Total Time on Facebook for comic page: 2 hours and a half.
Make your count of time! You can see something horrible here! I'm not saying "stop using Facebook" or "Facebook sucks", I do still use Facebook, but on my free times, not when working.
4. Do not stay up late! I really mean it, I did this for 5 or 6 years, now I'm always trying to sleep at 10 - 11 PM. This is a fact: when you get up early you have more energy to spend in the whole day, another fact: when you rest at night your body rest a lot better than on the day, last fact: and this is more serious working during the night increases your chances to get Cancer. If you love your relatives, your friends, your dog, cat, hamster, I don't know, please, take care of yourself, your health is the most important thing.
5. Entertain yourself, life is not a punishment, with more joy in your life you can find easily more inspiration for working hard and do all the task you have to in a single day. If you worked hard, you MUST reward yourself in some way.
Well those are the most important advices I can give you for become more productive! I used them all for improving in my activities, my art and improving as person, this saved me a lot of time that I'm now spending with my wife and other activities like playing video games, go out and drink coffee or just to rest up a little. Now I'm giving it to you! I hope it was very useful for you! Thank you for reading and see you the next time!
Previous Posts:
Manga Studio 5 Review
Pre-Launching Béance
12 Tips for Webcomic Beginners
Tutorial: Create Scenery/Background
Asada Hiroyuki, one of my Inspirations
Improve your sketch abilities in 10 steps
