Picking up on patterns in your creative practise

Now contrary to what I'm said in a bunch of my previous posts about not knowing how to juggle and progress in multiple passions and projects at once, I may have come across a formula that may solve this problem. 

A majority of the things I create (being a creative and many of my projects and passions being creative skills), tend to be very sporadically and when inspiration hits at any given moment. I tend to drop everything ang go and execute the thing before the inspiration disappears. Most of my blog posts happen this way as well. Now creating around when inspiration hits or creating even when it's not present is not the topic here, that's a completely different kettle of fish. The matter here is the habit of how I've been creating. 

Usually the advice you get on progressing in anything in life is that you have to do a little bit of that thing every day. And since I have so many different projects and passions that I get inspired to work on simultaneously, it's just about impossible to work on each one of them every day. The other factor here is that I haven't quite developed the muscle of being able to create so much to the extent of creating many different things of different skills every day. A lot of these skills are also new skills so hence why they tend to take longer to have a finished project (other things such as sewing I have tons of experience in however the projects are often bigger and require more time to finish). 

Anyway, so based off of these factors, the main problem seems to be consistency. Even if I worked on 10 different things at once, if I worked on ALL OF THEM more consistently I'd automatically produce more finished products and ultimately progress faster. 

But like I said, it's a muscle you have to practice, and that takes time to do. And don't get my wrong, I've definitely produced more as of recent (I believe due to how much I've decluttered my life as well as deleting social media. Once again, a topic for a different post). 

So despite all this, since I've been creating more for a while now, I've noticed a recurring pattern.  There seems to be one skill, that even more than the others, I enjoy a tiny bit more and I seem to have a constant flow of ideas for this particular thing. And maybe it is because for a short while I put more effort into it. It might be that, it might simply be that it comes more naturally to me now that I've ironed out many of the technical difficulties that arise with it. 

The way this idea of a possible formula came to me is when first thing this morning I sat down to create a surface design. I already had the artwork saved on my computer, and I just had to open it in Illustrator, digitise and turn it into a seamless pattern. I even made 4 different colourways. I didn't time myself but it went quite quick and I ended up with a design I was truly proud of. I exported the files and then went about my morning routine. And as I continued with my morning routine, I thought to myself - "I could've uploaded them to the 3 stock and POD sites that I sell on. It wouldn't have taken much longer. And I would have a finished product that's available and ready for sale. This thought came to me especially since I've been creating a ton more designs recently and just leaving the files on my computer and not doing anything with them, knowing that once I finally get round to uploading them it would be a long and tedious exercise. But if I design 1 thing a day (or maybe not even every day but at least a few times a week) and upload the design in the same sitting, I'll build up my online shop much quicker. 

This way I'll make consistent noticeable progress AND actually be putting it out in the world consistently. And this way, I can keep sporadically working on my other projects when inspiration strikes without the pressure that I'm not making progress in them, eventually have more headspace to put more effort into those because my surface design process will be much easier and more seamless.  

So in conclusion, I challenge you to start observing how and when you create and work on your different passions and projects. Do you also have a sporadic workflow like me? Are there certain things you work on more during certain seasons or states of life? Is there another way you're noticing patterns or seeing that one skill seems to come more naturally? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Would love to know how other creatives create. 

In my next post I'll share more on the pattern I designed this morning :)