First of all, I wish all of you fun yet productive week! And thanks for those nice words and encouragements on MATS group! I love you for that!

Drawing is fun, maybe not for 16 hours a day, when your hand starts hurting, but generally it’s straight up the best job I can imagine. Thing is, that being illustrator is a “little bit” more than just drawing, and I don’t mean painting 😉 Most of us are just one man company – everyone who tried that knows that you need to wear lots of hats. To be honest, when I have tons of assigned work, (like right now) I tend to skip most of those maybe less urgent, but in a long run really important task like: online presence, working on new portfolio pieces (as I’m usually not allowed to show what I’m working on until it’s published, and also as I mentioned in opening post I’d love to try new fields), looking for new opportunities, taking care of my beloved supporters…There’s quite a few things to handle and I need to figure out how balance everything.

How many great productivity tips are out there? MANY!
I know dozens of those, but tricky part is to (Capitan Obvious strikes again!) implement them. Like, for example making a plan and set specific week day for each “not urgent” thing.
So I figured out that Sunday will be day for planning. Here you can see what I’m up to this week

Rough plan for week March 30 – April 5

1) Assignments aka “day job”

This for sure has the highest priority and will take most of my time.
For the moment I have 3 big projects open, as I’m not allowed to talk about them, just yet let’s call them here A,B and C.
Project A is kind of ongoing – when I finish with one story, my awesome awesome client gives me another script to work on right away. I will finish current story this week and make sketches new one (this time I got text even before being done with previous, so I’ll do this “meanwhile”)
I’d love to close project B as well but that depends on the client – there are some instructions from them still missing.
Project C – I intend to tide up all missing sketches and put color on what was accepted.

= a lot but doable.

2) Sort out my portfolio for my new agent thing.

I would love to do it ASAP, but that again depends on 3rd party 🙂
That will include making small amends to some illustrations and maybe some re-sizing.

3) Portfolio building.

I wish to make one complex scene (for that I already have idea and even some rough sketches) and one sort of spot illustration – one character maybe with some small part of background. For this one, no idea yet, but it will be inspired by colour Collective’s Color of the week – emerald green. CC is a fun idea I found on Twitter last week – just follow amazing @PennyNevilleLee – you can find out everything about it (and about other things as well) from her.

= even more work but still doable.

4) Our Print on Demand business, which I will describe more detailed very soon.

As this week will be really busy as it is, I’m just planning to finish one or two designs I started while ago – I have kind of big library of half done, 70% done or even nearly done designs for POD. This never seems like a urgent thing to do so. It’s one of the first activities I dismiss, when it gets busy over here, but it pays off and  surely I can make a 2-3 hours a week for this.

5) Other projects.

Speaking of half finished things – there’s aaaalmost done blog post for our travel blog (which is also fairly new and it will be more of my husband’s thing, but I wish to contribute from time to time…).

6) Social media and pages where I show my work.

My main goal is to NOT spend too much time on that 😉 No, seriously I have to control this even more than usual, so maybe planning one hour a day for all SM is enough? Right now I hanging out on mainly FB, Twitter and a little bit less on Pintrest. My Instagram waiting for me to buy new smart phone – in May I guess. I do not need it when I’m far form home.
As for portfolio type of pages, that’s a mess and I should totally get into that!
Starting with HAI and Childrens illustrators as they are the easiest and well, I’m paying for them.
Also HAI brought me some awesome jobs.

7) tourist things.
This week I only have 12 hours bus ride from Huatulco to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, but during the night, so only loose few hours but I might be not that rested next day = slightly less efficient.
I don’t think we’ll get to exploring Chiapas state this week, as it’s Easter holiday and all sights will be probably crowded.

Ok!
In total = crazy busy week.

And now into details…

This is my Monday schedule

5.15–6.30 working on project B (yes I’m getting up at 5 AM most of the days, I have no idea how).
6.30-7.15  jogging.
7.15-9   working again on project B.
9-9.30  proper breakfast break.
9.30-10.30 social media and emails, preparing my portfolio for agency page, if I get instruction, if not back to project B.
12-14 sketching time (project A + new portfolio piece). Actually I’d love to do this in the evening, but I have no sufficient light in our present hotel room.
14-15.30  lunch break.
15.30–21 working on project A with some breaks for quick snacks.
21-22/23 finishing some almost done design for POD + some writing if I will have a time, plan for next day aaaand TO BED.