📄 Mini Note: This was transcribed by an auto-magical transcription fairy. She may not have perfect grammar or have captured all of the juicy details from the video, but we love her just the same. For the full video, watch below! 🧚‍♀️

The Cathedral Effect in Productivity for Artists

The cathedral effect is the phenomenon where high ceilings or spacious environments can enhance creative thinking and problem-solving abilities. This concept suggests that the physical space in which a person works or thinks can influence efficient art-making processes.

I talk about this when it comes to having a home and kind of treating your home like your own canvas as a creative.

Aside from your home actually being your canvas, I also talk about how having a home that literally sparks joy for you, that brings you your favorite colors and themes and shapes and sizes can actually make you feel more comfortable and more cozy. When you feel more cozy, you have more permission to be yourself, which invokes more creativity because you’re not trying to force yourself into something you’re not.

This cathedral effect highlights this so well in productivity for artists – you need to give yourself space.

When we talk about your creativity, we have your home, your creative career, and your body, all of which kind of make up your whole creative lifestyle, your artist workflow optimization.

Once you have intention in each of these and you have care in each of these, your creative lifestyle can flourish.

Notice I say lifestyle and not success, money, because it really isn’t this one specific like principle of, you’re going to make this much money. You’re going to have this much success because literally what is success? It’s different for everyone.

I have found that having a really thoughtful intention into each of these three kind of quadrants in your life can be really helpful.

Let me break this down, especially when it comes to space.

I’m not talking about, you have to have a cathedral in your home. You have to have the highest ceilings in your home in order to be creative. Although that’s super cool. I partially dream about having an A-frame house, just because of that,

You can create more space in each of these three parts of your life.

Making Space In Your Home

Let’s start first with the home.

I’m going to talk interior design. I’m not an interior designer, but I’m going to tell you some things that make me feel like my space lets me be myself and that’s really the most important part. You don’t have to be an interior designer.

You don’t have to follow the trend of having all white things in your home, unless you want that, you don’t have to be minimalistic or maximalistic or country or whatever interior style you’re seeing on Pinterest right now. The key is having a space that sparks joy.

What I’m saying is you need a home that first of all sparks joy, not my words, Marie Kondo, and also a home that makes you feel cozy. There’s three elements to having this home studio, this home space that sparks joy is that it has to be cozy, conducive, and curated.

The Three C’s of a Creative Home: Cozy, Conducive, Curated

So cozy makes it actually feel like you can be yourself. When you feel comfortable, you feel like you can be yourself. When you feel uncomfortable, you feel like you have to be another person or hide yourself.

We want it to be curated to things that you like, a la we want it to spark joy for you, whatever that means. For me, obviously I love purple, I love butterflies and whimsical things and that sparks joy for me and that’s curated for me.

Curated for you might mean something totally different and that’s okay.

The third one is conducive. We want it to be conducive to your creativity. For me, I have a very easy access to being able to whip out my camera and record.

Same thing with writing music. We have a bunch of guitarists just hanging in the studio ready to be played. Whatever that means for your art.

I’m in no way an interior designer, but I’m just going to give you some things that I have done as like simple ways to just bring more space to your place.

First thing is windows having as much energy towards like open windows, high windows, large windows. I like to have my curtains really high up and white pointing attention towards windows and openness, especially if you don’t have high ceilings.

Whether you’re living in an apartment or a home, can help you bring more spatial energy into your home and get more productivity for artists. If you can have a dedicated office for your cozy girl job, that would be amazing, or at least a dedicated space.

When I say cozy girl job, it’s my little way of saying this job that is really scalable and sustainable and basically lets you not be a starving artist.

(As a female singer-songwriter, I’ve worked every type of job to sustain my dreams, from minimum wage to working full-time in a tech company and everything in between! The artist advantage of creating a Cozy Girl Job has by far been one of the best long-term decisions for my creative career!)

Basically the job that you get. Where you’re working remotely, you’re working on your own hours, you’re working on very low stress, ideally like digital marketing job, a job that creatives are very good at remotely. And from that, it’s really nice to have your own dedicated workspace.

I’ll be honest, I jump around all over the house. Like when I’m working, I am over here, over here, over here.

Sometimes I’m on my bed, sometimes I’m in my office, in front of the couch, in front of the TV, behind the couch, on the kitchen table. I’m in a lot of different areas and honestly, that’s okay.

But I think even just energetically having this dedicated space to be like, I have the space specifically for work when I need it helps remind you that you are worth taking up space. You know how people say like dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

It’s like treating your potential for financial abundance treat that as if you already have it create a space where you’re like Yeah, I work really hard and I make good money doing this because I’m good at what I do.

So yes, I do have an office for myself or a space to work for myself you’re placing that energy into the universe and into your home that I’m worth taking up space to make more money.

Taking up space, creating more space, allowing space to come in and flow through your life.

We also just want to get rid of clutter.

I highly, highly, highly recommend Marie Kondo’s two books or you can audiobook it like I did spark joy and the life-changing magic of tidying up, actually reverse that.

And that’s the order that you should read it. So read the life-changing magic of tidying up and then read spark joy.

For me, spark joy helped define what sparking joy meant to me. It’s sometimes very hard to understand.

After I read her books, I stopped doing like spring cleaning and decluttering days cause I don’t need to do it anymore.

I obviously have clutter in my home sometimes when things are in transition, but everything has a place and when I’m not trying to catch up on laundry all the time, everything has a place.

Clutter also just takes up a lot of energy, a lot of mental energy.

She mentions this one thing in the book about visual clutter, how if you have like cereal boxes out and labels out, you’re going to be reading them and that’s going to be ingrained in you throughout the day, like sale, random words and stuff that are on labels that aren’t really helping you throughout your day.

It definitely makes a difference when you go into someone’s house who has so much visual clutter versus going into these really beautiful houses where you’re like something about this just seems clean. Think about all the visual clutter. Think about the labels, the colors on the brands that you’re using, and hiding those things, and literally just seeing if every single thing in your home can spark joy.

And if there’s anything that doesn’t, find a place for it out of sight. Or get rid of it.

I also talk about light colors. I’m not going to tell you to paint every single wall a light color. I really like dark and moody. If we’re talking about adding more space, especially if you’re in a small space, a small apartment and you want to have the illusion that it’s bigger, light colors are always going to bring that element.

I would definitely say go with lighter colors on the walls, lighter curtains, lighter bedspreads, and then also lighter fabrics, especially in the spring and summer.

Things that will lift the place up and feel like you can come in and you’re not bogged down by all these things you have to clean and like heavy dusty things. Light always brings in this very free-flowing energy.

I started doing this, I don’t think it’s necessary when you’re just kind of starting out re-envisioning your space, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve been starting to invest in nicer things, nicer prettier things that I use every single day that make me happy.

I have like Our Place pans that are this pretty purple color and I have these collapsible, Tupperware for lack of a better word, but it’s not plastic.

It’s non-toxic and you collapse it and it’s this really pretty matte purple. And so things that I feel like I use every day, food stuff, my backpack, like storage things that you might use every day.

Think about when you have the money. If you find that you have some extra money lying around and you want to start switching out some things that you might’ve bought temporarily, but they’re like wearing away is yeah, investing in things, things that are really pretty, like things that you wouldn’t think about, cookware or storage containers that, that really bring you joy and are really pretty and your favorite colors.

Overall, as much as I could say, do all this and do that at the end of the day. This should be about bringing the permission to design your space how you want to.

Using Pinterest is an amazing way of getting inspiration. I use it all the time.

At the same time, there will be pictures that I’m like, I don’t like how they did that. I’m going to do it this way. There’s trends on Pinterest that I don’t like. There’s trends that I do like, and I want your home to really give you the space and permission to feel like I am not only allowed to take up space here, I’m allowed to create here, to rest, to eat well, I also am allowing this space to give back to me. I’m giving it permission to do what it’s best at, which is for me to add character to it and add myself.

A home is here so you can make it your own. A home is not going to feel like a home unless you can really lean into, what are my favorite colors?

What wallpapers do I love? What patterns do I love? What pictures on Pinterest do I love that I can make into this home and make me feel like I can fully be my most creative, inspired, happy joyful self and that’s really what this is about.

We have a Skylight calendar and it’s a calendar that’s just so pretty and aesthetic and has the prettiest colors. And also it helps us with home and studio organization tips. These are things that can be in your home.

They can be things that are in your workplace and like your career, which I’ll talk about in a second, but just things that spark joy for you.

Making Space in Your Body & Mind

Now let’s talk about taking up space in your body and mind when it comes to productivity for artists. It’s so cheesy. I wish there was another way I could say this, but it really is your body is your temple.

Your mind is your temple. You could not create without these two things. Perhaps more importantly, you can’t create from your heart unless you not only have your body and your mind, but they’re actually being nurtured and taken care of.

Here are some ways that I do this that I found to be really helpful and gives me the space in my creativity do have creativity really for lack of a better word.

Time in Nature

I spend intentional time in nature. I try to get outside every day, which sounds so silly because everyone should be getting outside every day.

It’s crazy. But for someone who works remotely sometimes it can be hard especially as I’m in this cozy girl job now and I could just work from my computer all day.

I try to go for walks, even if it’s like, let me go outside to go to my car to drive to the library to work, even that can be a really big difference. Then over the weekends, we like to go on trails and just explore different parts of nature.

A lot of this is just, it’s intentional time. I’m doing better at trying to ground, which is when you go on the grass without your socks on and you just absorb the earth. It’s so good for you. Even if you want to work outside if you want to be on your laptop and work outside. Watch Netflix outside.

I think it would be so cool when we get a house to have some sort of system where we can watch movies outside. I need to put that on my vision board. Having a projector or like a TV outside? It’s amazing like these outdoor movies that people do by the pools, like, how, when was the last time you watched a movie outside?

Spending this time in nature, intentionally enjoying the fact that you’re out in nature, and also like bringing the things that you love out to nature. Sometimes I talk about habit stacking, which is this idea that if you want to do something more, you have to pair it onto another habit that you’re already doing.

Habit-Stacking

If you were already watching Netflix and you want to spend more time outside, then bring Netflix outside. Get a little picnic blanket and some snacks and bring Netflix outside and there’s your sunlight. There’s your outdoor time.

It might not be the level that you want to be at. Maybe you want to eventually meditate outside, but these are ways to just make it a little bit easier for you.

Exercising That Sparks Joy

Definitely a big way that affects your body and your mind is exercising and specifically exercises that spark joy.

When I stopped gymnastics, I was like, I guess I have to exercise now, so I would go to the gym, and I was so bored, I would just be on the cycle machine, and I would be like, bleh, I would watch that 70s show.

I would just sit on the cycle machine like, And I knew I really wasn’t getting a workout, but I didn’t really know what else to do.

Now, I go on my roller skates. I go running. Running is really actually not fun at all, but I just sometimes do it. Shake things up. Help me make running fun. If anyone has any suggestions to make running fun, please drop it in the comments.

I’ll go to the gym and lift weights. I think that’s fun every once in a while. Hot yoga. I am going to a 6am hot yoga class tomorrow.

What exercises sparked joy for you? What things did you love doing as a kid? Did you love rock climbing? Go rock climbing. Find a rock climbing gym. Did you love swimming? Go join a YMCA and start swimming.

Exercise does not have to be boring. And again, all of this has to do with giving yourself the space to create. That means allowing your body to be healthy enough to be able to do the things you want it to do. If you’re a dancer, you want to be able to be flexible. Even if you’re not, if you’re an artist, you want to be able to be on your feet for several hours and not be tired.

You want your mind to be super excited to start the day. You want it to be constantly on track and you want to just physically feel good. I feel like everyone can agree that feeling good is better than not feeling good.

Integrating Into Your Community

Connecting with your local community can also give you more of a space geographically in your area.

When we first moved here two and a half years ago, I really didn’t know that many people here. We had moved from New Jersey to South Carolina. It took me a while to really find a community.

And be okay with meeting people for coffee. I would always get so anxious about that. And now I’m like, yeah, let’s meet for coffee. Let’s do this. Oh, hey, there’s a class over here. You want to do it? You want to take this class together. I’m so much about that because more of a stretch of space with others.

I don’t know. It just, it makes me feel like I have more permission in the world. I’m less nervous around other people, and I feel like I can just be myself. I don’t know if that makes sense.

For you, this could be about your art, your creative career.

Are there meetings that you can go to?

Are there group therapy sessions?

Are there like girls clubs or reading clubs? Like what? Anything you can think of.

Do you love knitting and you want to knit with a bunch of people?

If you can’t think of anything else, likely each and every one of you watching this has some sort of local library. You go to the library or you go on the website and you look at the events. Just start there, even if that’s really hard, the library is open to everyone and maybe you can meet some cool people.

I’m really grateful that there’s a lot of stuff happening in our area. At our Lowe’s grocery store, there’s always different events and stuff. And I’m like, wow, yeah, there’s, that’s so cool. Trivia. And just remember that.

You’re allowed to take up space in places other than your art as well, in your community.

What does your community mean to you, and how can you interact more with your community? I find even, there are so many things around me that I’m like, Wait, yeah, why am I not doing that there might be things around you in your area where you’re like I moved here because I was near the lake and I never go by the lake.

Do it, stretch out your arms and connect yourself to other people. You don’t know what types of people you’re going to meet and you also just want to spread that influence and beauty of you with other people feel like you’re not alone in this. Sometimes it could be very, very alienating to work remotely if that’s what you do and also be an artist.

Any way that you can just get outside of the house, do any sort of like group meet ups or fun interest groups, and it’s really cool to meet people in your area. A lot of artists find that hard, and I completely understand that.

Self-Care

This also means, I know it sounds so cliche, but self care and you time, I spend time driving to get a facial, and to get my eyebrows done,

Getting massages, going to acupuncture, or even just, sitting in a sauna, whatever that means to you, whatever your self care is, you need that to take up space.

I can’t imagine what it feels like to not feel like you deserve things like that to not feel like you are worth things like that. I know things can get expensive, so even self care that’s, using the massage chair at Planet Fitness, that comes with your membership.

It’s not free, but it’s part of your membership, so it doesn’t cost anything extra. What things are you already a part of? Do you have an oil diffuser at home that you just turn on every day? That’s self care, if you don’t have the funds yet to be able to have other sorts of self care.

I think a lot of us need to be reminded that that’s gonna make us better artists and better people. We can’t pour from an empty cup as creatives. We can’t write or draw or do our art unless our cups are filled.

Meditation with Headspace

I would not have said meditation a few months ago, but Static, got a subscription to Headspace, and I’m honestly obsessed with it. I love it so much. We fall asleep to it every night. We use it sometimes throughout the day. If, he’s getting a little anxious, I’m getting a little anxious.

There’s also some study music too, so you can turn that on while you’re working. It’s a really nice guided way for a bunch of different situations, going to sleep and waking up and in the middle of the day to just recenter yourself.

If you like what you’re hearing so far, I would love it if you subscribed, that would be so cool. And if you learned one thing from this video so far that you can apply to your art. I would love it if you hit the like button too.

Now we’re going to space in our careers this goes for your cozy girl career.

Making Space in Your Career

The career that you might be using to make money and save money to then put towards your creative career or your creative career itself.

When it comes to productivity for artists, making space for you to be able to create the best art in your brain. I don’t know where I was going with that.

This is for you to be able to create art that you are proud of.

Time-Based Boundaries

Breaking it down specifically we’re talking about batching time based boundaries as time management for creatives. Creating working hours for yourself, especially if you’re a freelancer and you could technically work 24 7, which we don’t want to do And even theming your dates, which is something we did recently and we honestly kind of love.

So when it comes to time based boundaries, let’s assume you’re in this cozy girl job. Let’s just assume that you don’t work hourly. You work on a deliverable basis where as long as you provide the deliverables, as long as you, provide whatever you were agreed upon, you can kind of work when you want.

Thankfully, there’s actually a lot of full time jobs that are starting to do this that are like, I don’t care when you work. As long as you get your stuff done. and you’re available from this time to this time, then I don’t really care. I think it’s becoming more and more common.

When we are lucky enough to have these jobs, and if you’re, you don’t have this yet, then that’s okay, because this is what you should be looking for.

When you’re looking for these cozy girl jobs, you should be looking for, would I possibly be able to, create some boundaries with this.

Time-Tracking Apps

Using time tracking apps. I’m actually using one right now. I have an hour and a half to film this YouTube video and then I’m spending two hours later to batch create some client work and then I have an hour and a half after that to batch create my own blogs work.

Really creating these time barriers and restrictions can really help you.

If we’re working online on our laptops, we can get very distracted very easily. And not that we’re not hard workers, but we can get really distracted in the sense of I should work on this. But then this email came in.

Oh, but then I should work on my blog and then I should work on this. Time blocking can say, okay, and I do this the night before, or the morning of, but I usually like doing it the night before where I basically act as my own assistant and I say, okay, Kira, tomorrow you’re going to start the day by recording a YouTube video for an hour and a half or two hours, then you’re going to have a break and then you’re going to spend two hours on this and I kind of am my own assistant and time block.

and use time tracking apps to block out that time. That works in tandem with this time blocking in the calendar. But I use time tracking apps to basically help monitor, okay, how long is this actually taking for YouTube video? I can see right now how long this is taking on the camera, but for other things, sometimes I’m like, Oh gosh, I have to work on client work.

It’s going to take eight hours. It’s like, wait, no, I’m going to estimate that it’s going to take two hours. So let me check in after two hours and see where I’m at. These apps can be so helpful. This can also be helpful if you’re currently looking for a cozy girl job, treat looking for a job like a full time job.

What space can I create for myself to have enough focused work, but also not spend the entire day.

I’m going to apply for an hour and a half, and then I’m going to take a break, and then I’m going to do so and so for two hours. It’s wonderful. Work simultaneously with time tracking, actually tracking your time, like setting a timer. Saying, go and being like, okay, that took 45 minutes. Then you can use that with a Google calendar or some sort of calendar app and even just time block and say, okay, nine to 10 going to the gym.

Like I said, I had that today. I had nine to 10 going to the gym or whatever time I had a time block for going to the gym and I time block for recording my YouTube video and then I had time block for doing X and it’s just nice to treat it as you have a virtual assistant who’s Hey, yo, you got to do this at this time.

Pomodoro Timer

I also find the Pomodoro Timer to be really helpful too. If you want this on a super basic level, download a Pomodoro Timer app, and it’s 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, and I think there’s a longer break after every 3 rounds, I think? That can be really helpful, so you’re not just stuck working for an hour, if you feel like you just work and work and work, just set the Pomodoro timer, and it’s just in 25 minute increments, and you can take 5 minutes to reflect.

It gives you that time to step away and say, Okay, am I working on what I should be working on? Is it taking the amount of time that I thought it would take? How much longer do I need to spend on this?

We’re talking about batching and literally every time I talk about it makes me think of cookies. And I want cookies now. Batching is the idea that you are batching together a bunch of tasks.

Ideally these are tasks that are very similar. For example, let’s say that you are an artist, you have an Etsy shop, and you have a social media account, try to post on Instagram like three times a week. Instead of three times a week, going into Canva, designing your graphic, or whatever, creating your social media post, and then posting it, batching is the idea of, let’s spend two hours on Monday to plan the next two weeks of content so we don’t have to go back in to the platform for two weeks and we schedule it and we do all that stuff. These creative scheduling techniques have literally helped saved me so much time preparing blog articles, outlining blog articles.

Batching

Batching is really great because it eliminates context switching. We assume that switching from one task to another takes, two minutes or switching tabs, but really it takes 20 minutes for your brain to actually switch from one thing to another and be fully focused in that other thing.

I’ve read that around. I don’t know where I read it, but I read it and I feel like it makes sense.

This is all about making space and batching is meant to actually make intentional space for the work that you’re doing so you can make more space for creating art.

So instead of working eight hours a day, you’re working three hours a day and you have more time to create your art so that you can make that full time. What are some things in your life that you can start batching right now?

Is it posting on social media? Is it writing blog articles?

Is it applying for cozy girl jobs? Is it submitting your art to different festivals? This could be towards your art as well. What are certain things that it doesn’t really make sense to do every single day, but if you really dedicated, just like use a time tracker app and spent one hour just focusing on that, how much could you get done?

Setting working hours for yourself can also be really helpful. I’m not great at this. But I’m getting better. If you work full time, you probably already have nine to five, a lot of people will try to say like, full time jobs are traps.

No, I think full time jobs can be amazing for artists who want to transition full time in their art. They can save money, they have consistent income, and at five o’clock, they can close their laptop. 

As a freelancer, this can be hard because the great part about it is that you can work whenever you want.

The hard part about it is that you can work whenever you want. Static says, quote, that I turn into a pumpkin after 9pm. Which basically means that I really can’t function after 9pm. And I can agree. I actually think after 6, I really can’t do anything. 

I’m very productive and disciplined really early in the morning. I can wake up at 5am and work on my computer for 3 hours, no problem. So that is what I sometimes do. And it works really great for me. What would your working hours be? 

Maybe this can help be a little bit of an audit for yourself. If you still have a job that you might want to transition out of, is it because it’s working hours that really just don’t align with you?

Do you have to wake up really early and you don’t actually work really well early in the morning? This helps you set boundaries with both the clients that you work with if you’re a freelancer and yourself. I have another video that I’ll link all about how treating your creative business as a team of three people actually can really help you.

Theming Your Days

I love this and I think it’s so cute and I started doing it and it’s theming your days. I genuinely just started it this week, but I’ve been hearing people talk about it for months is I had Monday was like my prep and planning day. So I like prepped blog articles. I planned out some things that I had to do. Tuesday was zen and cleaning day. So that was, I had to clean some parts of the house. I was also organizing some things like in my business. And I also went to yoga.

Today is content creation day. I’m recording a YouTube video. I’m going to write some blog articles. Thursday was like editing. And revisions. I’m going to edit some blog articles. Just kind of like post production, what can I do? And it’s fun because you can kind of then, when you have tasks you know you have to do throughout the week, you’re like, okay, that’ll go on Monday, that’ll go on Wednesday, that’ll go on Thursday. 

This is like next level batching too, because you could basically batch all of your tasks within a specific day and then batch those tasks while you’re doing it. So if you have a day of recording videos, then you can only spend that day recording videos, but also you can record like three videos all in one and batch that all in that one day.

If that makes sense. It’s really nice to visualize your week. I love doing this on like Sunday night, and then I can see the rest of my week on my pretty skylight calendar, and it’s super cute. It also helps with priority paralysis. I know a lot of us sometimes can be like, I don’t know what’s most important, what is the most pressing, it gives you a bird’s eye view of being like, okay, I’ll do this first, I’ll do this first, and just seeing it like a little bit further out, it’s really helpful.

Instead of, just fixating on this one task and being like, I don’t know what to do, ah, it’s gonna take me forever. If you estimate your time, I’m gonna give myself an hour to do it. I’m gonna do it on Tuesday, because that’s the theme day. It takes away a lot of the mental load.

When you don’t give yourself space, you have tension. When you have tension, you have creative block. 

This is the whole reason why I’m talking about giving yourself space in your home, in your body, in your mind, and in your career. Because I want you to get familiar with overcoming artist’s block.

I want your creative block to fly away or if you are having creative block I want you to know exactly what it’s coming from.

Where can you add ceiling height, aka space, to your creative life? Let us know in the comments, and I will see you next time. Bye!