Inspiration

4 Ways You Can Budget Time to Make More Art

Are you a busy person that loves to make art but just can’t find the time? Here are 4 ways you can budget time to make more art.

How do you successfully budget time?

After all, we have recent research that many people feel busier than ever these days. Most of that time is consumed by work (depending on your specific work situation), and the rest is usually taken up by friends, family, and sleeping.

What about hobbies, though?

Maybe you’re passionate about art, music, cycling, or whatever else. How do you budget time for those aspects of your life in between earning a living and making sure you’re connected with valuable relationships?

Here are four such approaches to making sure you can budget time properly:

No. 1: Be realistic when you budget time

We live in a data-driven era these days, and you can apply those concepts to your schedule. Look at a given week. See where your commitments lie. And then be realistic about how you can budget time.

Some people, in a given week, may only have 30 minutes for a lesson or class here or there. That is totally fine. The goal is to be realistic. If you try to do too much, eventually you won’t end up going to the classes or appointments.

Then what happens?

You get it in your head that it’s not an important hobby or pursuit because you keep pushing it off for something else, and it can take years to get back to making art or pursuing a passion.

Above all else, then: be realistic.

No. 2: Pencil personal recess time in

We all need “play” in our lives — like recess from elementary school — but unfortunately, that’s often frowned upon among responsible adults.

It doesn’t have to be. You can build “recess time” into your calendar, where you can doodle, dance, sing, journal, daydream, master an airbrush kit, or whatever you want to do then. The point is: it’s your time to play and explore.

If you can get consistent about scheduling this “play”/”recess” time into your week in a realistic way, it will begin to help you embrace your hobbies even more.

No. 3: Make commitments with a friend to budget time better

You commonly see this when people want to exercise more and they bring in a running partner for accountability.

It can work to budget time for creative pursuits and hobbies like art, too.

A sense of accountability and promise of human connection will help you stick to the passions you want to find and budget time for, such as painting.

No. 4: Find more free time

Easier said than done, right?

Maybe not right.

A week has 168 hours in it. Assuming a person works 10 hours/day for five days/week, that’s 50 hours.

Now factor in sleeping 8 hours/night for 7 night (ideally). That’s 56 hours.

You still have 62 hours left.

Some people may work more, sleep more, or have busier lives. It happens.

But the key to making sure you budget time is figuring out how to free up some additional time.

There are hacks for this, but it all begins with data, self-reflection, and analysis.

A quick and easy one: how much time are you spending on social media or e-commerce sites per week? And is that making you feel good/better about your life?

Would pursuing a hobby/passion such as art in place of those hours make you feel better?

It probably would. And decisions like that are exactly how you come to budget time better.

After you have freed some time for art from your busy schedule, remember to check our art supplies and product reviews.