Honing your Organisation and Timekeeping Skills as a Creative
Nov 06, 2025
As creatives, we're all familiar with having multiple projects on the go at once. Post-it notes for one stuck all over your walls, and reminders for another spread across different apps on your phone. We spend a lot of time dedicated to developing our craft, however, we often neglect to grow other skills that are just as vital to supporting our work.
Organisation and time management are commonly seen as a chore by many, but it doesn't have to be this way. As a self-confessed planner nerd, I love the time I spend organising my creative projects and today I'm going to share my most important pieces of advice so that you can improve and enjoy this aspect of your projects.
These tips are to help all types of creatives, from filmmakers to photographers, artists and authors. Organisation and time management are vital to you all and shouldn't be pushed aside.
Balance
What we hear so often from our creative community is the difficulty to balance everything at once. Our struggles to do this are often what leads to burnout and needing so much more recovery time than we would like to give ourselves. The best way to prevent this burnout is to learn to balance your life better.
Read more about creative burnout here.
Juggling work or education, personal projects and downtime are the main areas that us creatives get swept up in. One of the best ways to make the most of your time when you're trying to fit all of this in, is to tick two boxes at once. This means doubling up on which category your tasks fit into.
For example, if you are studying at university (like many of our followers are) then using a class project as a portfolio piece is a great way to save time on your personal projects. You can use a university brief as a base, and then adapt the work you have already completed for your assignment into a piece that you want to be shown in your portfolio. This is a great time saver as it means you don't have to start from scratch, while still giving you the freedom to adapt your work into something that shows off your skills the best.
Creating personal projects that you genuinely enjoy is another way to do this. By developing ideas that excite you, you are ticking the boxes of working on your portfolio as well as doing something fun for yourself. This means you will be much more motivated to work on these projects and they will use your energy much slower.
This is also a great tip to getting work that you love! Prospective clients will see the types of projects in your portfolio that you want to work on, and you are much more likely to attract those types of clients.
Don't forget to balance your work with rest time in between. It is a good idea to come up with a list of things to do that replenish your energy, so that you don't have to think about it when you are in need of a rest and don't have the energy to come up with any ideas! The best thing to do is to vary your self-care ideas into small activities you can fit into work breaks, and bigger activities you can dedicate a day off to.
Use the self-care trackers in your planner to encourage nourishing activities.
Make Things Easier
So many people have this misconception that the harder something is, means that it is more worthy or better in some way. This can lead to a huge mismanagement of time and also develop into a toxic working environment for yourself and others.
To help manage your time well, find ways to make tasks easier for yourself and don’t be afraid to ask for help. You are not alone in this world, and we know this because we have a fantastic community of empowered creatives who have been there before. Be brave and reach out and see if anybody has had a similar problem and how they solved it. There are no extra points for struggling.
Use all the resources available to you. You don’t have to figure out how to do everything by yourself; we’ve done that for you! Utilise all the pages of your Filmmaking Planner that already tell you step by step exactly how to do a great location recce, actor feedback, production schedule and more. Make things easy for yourself by using what is available to you, and you will save so much time and stress.
Keep a Tidy Workspace
Whether you like to work digitally or on pen and paper, keeping your files and notes organised is very important for all types of creatives.
Use tools like Notion, Slack or Google Calendar to help manage your time and sync these between your phone and laptop so that you can update them on the go. Such a common mistake to make is having notes in too many different places, so pick your favourite method and keep this consistent across your phone, laptop and work desk.
Get ahead of the game and have a proper clear-out of your documents before the new year starts. Archive anything you do not need access to in order to declutter and this will help you find what you are looking for more easily, as there will be less files to search through.
A well-labelled or colour-coded system will help you navigate your documents more easily and support a streamlined client system. This is important whether you keep your files on a computer or in physical folders.
For example, my computer files look like this:
- Clients
- [Client Name]
-
-
Admin
- Project proposal, quote, timeline and invoices
-
Assets
- Any photos or previous content they have sent along
-
Branding
- Branding boards and logo variations
-
Content
- Photos and videos
-
Documents
- Exported documents I have sent off to the client
-
Working Files
- Assets that are still being designed and haven't been exported yet
-
Admin
-
- [Client Name]
It may seem like a lot of folders for somebody to start with, but it means that I never have to spend time opening all my different documents, because I know exactly where they will be, and this takes up no extra storage space on your computer.
If you’re someone who has a lot of sticky notes surrounding their desk (like me!), set aside a time every week to transfer these notes into the journal at the back of your filmmaking planner, and assign each reminder a due date. This will keep all your important information in one place and means you can clear all those distractions from your workspace.
Lastly, Find The Best System For You
If you are unsure about whether you are best organised working digitally or physically, try both with the Filmmaking Planner Bundle.
You will receive one physical planner which you can experiment with adding tabs and writing in different colours for one project. You will also receive a digital planner, which you can experiment with on your phone or tablet by adding ideas wherever you go, with a different project. At the end of both, compare and see which method you felt most effective with.
