As artists, we often get caught up in that iconic whirlwind of creativity — some call it the ✨flow state.✨ Creative beauty and magic often happen from letting our inspiration guide us from one project to the next.

But the reality is, reality is a thing. And if we want to achieve those artistic goals of ours, we need to have a plan.

(But I’m not talking about Plan Bs, as you’ll watch below! 👇)

Having some solid plans for the future is so important for your romantic artist journey so you can achieve all the dreams you set out to do! Because the cheesy-sounding-but-100%-true truth is that you can achieve whatever dreams you set out for yourself. Period, end of story.

Having a plan is the map to help the universe realize this for you. 🪐

✍️ The Importance of Making Plans for the Future & How It Works

Planning and creativity are typically on two sides of the brain. And while it seems impossible to plan while we’re creating, the good part is, we don’t have to.

We can dedicate certain hours of the day or week for planning, and other ones for sheer creation. This is one of the main ways I work to make plans for the future – placing intentional focus on each and every day to help push my vision forward.

As creatives, we need to juggle both long-term goals (~6 months) and short-term goals (more like mini-goals). I don’t tend to plan any more than that, because I find it hard to plan too far into the future beyond a few months!

Life is crazy, divine, and beautiful — and part of that unfolds because we’re not trying to control too many things. There’s a healthy balance we need for ongoing career development paired with having faith in the universe.

👩‍💻 Practical Tools for Creative Future Planning

There are tons of tools out there that have helped me plan for the future. But I remember when I first got into self-development, I put a lot of unfair and untrue expectations on myself:

🙈False: You need to pay money to plan for the future

🙈False: You need to have your plan perfectly laid out in order for change to happen

The goal is to expose yourself to lots of tools and techniques so you can take what you like and leave the rest.

Because your best plans for the future will come from what works for you. Here are a few I love. 👇

🌀 Vision Boards

Vision boards are a fantastic way to visualize your dreams and keep them at the forefront of your mind. It’s the perfect example of manifestation in action. You’re showing your subconscious words and images of aspirations you have to bring more of it into existence.

It’s amazing how the universe works like that!

There are two main ways you can create a vision board – 

✨ Physical vision boards — this is where you can ritualize creating your vision board. Make a night of it by yourself or with a friend! Grab some magazines, print out some photos, and get a poster board, scissors and glue and hang your beautiful creation in your home, someplace you look at every day. Some great spots:

• Your bathroom mirror
• The outside of your closet
• In front of your toilet (hehe)
• Your refrigerator

✨ Digital vision boards — If you’d prefer to keep it digital, use Pinterest to source some images you love, Canva to edit them into a single file, and then size it to fit both your phone lock screen and your computer desktop.

I look at my phone and computer dozens of times per day, so this is truly an amazing way to start manifesting those creative dreams to complement those tangible plans for the future that you have.

✨ Digital Productivity Apps

These apps help you bridge the gap between your artistic flow and making those practical, tangible plans for the future. Here are some simple ones you can use to get started, especially if you’re new to the productivity game:

♡ Google Calendar – scheduling your creative sessions, planning time to maintain a healthy balance of creativity, making money, and enjoying that beautiful life of yours!

♡ Asana – to plan your creative projects in a more big-picture view. Create boards for specific projects (I have one called She Sees Faeries for my band, one called Violet Gaze for my business, and one called Client Deliverables for SEO clients!)

Asana is great for helping you incrementalize your tasks into smaller pieces. If a project you’re working on feels too big and overwhelming, this is the place to break it down into smaller steps and check off those steps once you’re done. This helps you 1) better plan and visualize your tasks by breaking them down, and 2) getting that little rush of dopamine flowing so you can see the progress you’re making on projects!

♡ Blitzit and other time-tracking apps – to hold yourself accountable to focus focus focus when you’re getting that work done! Having a little time tracker, whether on the corner of my screen or on my phone helps remind me not to get distracted. Is it a perfect system? Heck no, I’m only human. 🤭 Has it helped my overall focus and concentration? Heck yes!

Blitzit is a paid app, but you can use totally free timer trackers or Pomodoro timers on your phone! It shouldn’t cost money to get yourself focused. 🧘‍♀️

👯‍♀️ Accountability Friends + Body-Doubling Apps

Sometimes, we just need a little push from our fellow artists, business owners, and humans working towards a project. After all, humans thrive in communities.

There are a few different ways you can get work done with accountability:

❁ Free — co-work with your friends! Hop on a Zoom or Facetime call when you both need to get some work done, tell each other what work you want to achieve at the top of the call, and give yourselves a set time to finish or check back in.

You can do this in 45-minute or 1-hour increments, or using a Pomodoro Timer system in bursts of 25 minutes with a 5 minute break in between.

This is the lo-fi but super helpful version if you’re not looking to invest any money but want to be held accountable. 🙌 This is something I do a lot with my fellow creative friends.

❁ Paid — body-doubling apps! There are a ton of these out there — STATiC absolutely loves Flow Club and uses it almost every day! These apps are built to give you multiple “meetings” per day to come in on and co-work. You’ll always check in at the beginning of each meeting, and the meeting type will vary depending on how often you check in.

Remember — any type of coworking you’re doing is meant for you both to work on separate projects. The important part is showing up, checking in, and reporting back on your progress. It’s done wonders to both of our productivity levels to hold us accountable during bigger projects!

Body-doubling is especially great for:

• Breaking down larger projects into smaller chunks
• Doing big room cleanings or organizing
• Getting something done you’ve been dreading (this technique is sometimes called Eat the Frog!)

📖 Books & YouTube Channels for Self-Development

Books and YouTube channels are some of the most affordable ways you can learn life-changing lessons. Seriously, it kind of amazes me how many people overlook a good piece of long-form content! 🦋Here are some ones I’d recommend to help you make plans for the future in your artist career:

BOOKS

♡ The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss — This book changed 👏 my 👏 life 👏 during 2020. Like many of us, I was spending hours upon hours walking up and down the street, learning and absorbing as much as I could to figure out my next move. I was in acting school, and for the first time thought, “OMG, I can’t control everything I thought I could. I should figure out how to create my own reality.”

This book was the stepping stone to do that. Some people love it, some people hate it, but everyone has to admit: it has opinions. And for me, they were opinions that I was itching for!

Peep: this is the framework in which I created the Cozy Girl Job from — a remote job that can be full-time, because if you work strategically, it can help you design your dream life more than you ever thought possible. 🙌

♡ Atomic Habits by James Clear — I didn’t actually finish this book, but it’s a sure staple in productivity. This is all about building up (creative) routines that you can stick to via tiny, incremental changes to add up to big projects being completed right in front of your eyes.

These principles and techniques make showing up for your art every day a lot easier.

♡ The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo — This isn’t about business or productivity, but about “cleaning.” But hear me out — it will change the way you look at your home as a means for creativity, clarity, and peace.

Decluttering my space and making it more intentional made my home a *literal* zen paradise where I feel creative, energetic, and fulfilled much more often than not.

Any time someone mentions anything about spring cleaning or having “too many things” in their home, I insist that they read this!

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

My Name is Deya — This channel was, no joke, the reason I became a full-time freelancer. Her strategies are the complete opposite of generic, especially when it has to do with pricing yourself, finding *dream clients*, and getting consistent income so you don’t have to tie your worth to hourly work you do, but how well you do it. Tim Ferriss also talks about this in the 4-Hour Workweek, so they create pieces of content to watch and read simultaneously.

Modern Millie — If you’re looking to leverage social media in your creative business, I love Millie’s videos about social media strategy. She gives *silly, quirky, social media friend* and I’ve been here for for over 2 years now.

Violet Gaze — Shameless plug (!) — I talk about flourishing through your romantic, artistic journey as a creative over on my YouTube channel! As a female singer-songwriter and performer myself, I’m on this journey right next to you. It can be lonely being an artist, and I want to help you feel safe, inspired and creative throughout your journey.

I invite you to subscribe to the channel and join our fellow creatives as we’re simultaneously planning for the future and basking in the beauty of our day-to-day rituals.

Won’t you take my hand and join, friend? 👋