How to Do Things and Still Have Time to Nap
This blog post was written by Josh Ryan, one of my students from Passion to Paid, my online class that teaches you how to use passion projects to grow your creative career. Using the lessons, he launched Introflirted, a collection of flirty illustrated love notes for introverts. It was featured by the Huffington Post and Forbes, and the project caught the eye of a publisher earlier this year and is now being turned into a book, which can be preordered here!
Hey y’all! I’m Josh Ryan and I do a lot of things and take a lot of naps. I’m a full-time UX designer, part-time artist/illustrator, author, creator of a couple side projects (Introflirted and Cool Pop Pop Art), occasional comedic pro-wrestler, and probably a few other things I probably forgot about.
How do I do all that and still manage an average of 1.32 naps per day? It’s all about focus, efficiency, and execution. I know that sounds like buzzword snake-oil seminar stuff, but stay with me.
GET FOCUSED
If you aren’t focused, you don’t get things done quickly and if you don’t get things done quickly you can’t take a nap. So here are some tips to getting and staying focused.
Set up your space
Have dedicated separate spaces for both working and napping and make sure they are optimized for those activities.
Keep your workspace clean so there aren’t things distract you or pull you off task.
Have your work tools organized so you don’t have to search for them.
Limit external noise or have a work playlist that won’t distract you.
Keep your nap space quiet, dark, and decluttered so you can get right to sleep.
Make your work and nap space separate otherwise you’ll be constantly tempted to nap.
Prioritize Your Activities
Unfortunately, you can’t do everything, but by prioritizing your activities you can feel fulfilled with the activities you do and less FOMO about the activities you don’t. Think about the big long-term activities/goals want to do the most? The top 1–3 items should be your big priorities that get the most attention, energy, and time. All the remaining things are now “nice to do” tasks. It’s alright if they get less attention in favor of the big things. If a small thing starts to take away more than it gives back, it’s fine to stop doing it. If a new exciting thing comes along, it can get traded out for another small thing.
Plan it Out
Recently my boss got me a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen and it has changed how I plan a lot. While it’s long, boring, and honestly could probably be cut down like 30% I definitely recommend reading it. The biggest takeaways for me have been:
Your brain is great at doing, but terrible at remembering, so get tasks out of your head and into a document or planning tool.
Capture tasks the moment they come to mind while he details are fresh. (For example: If an email comes in, don’t just think “ill respond to that email later”, put it in the planning tool)
When planning out tasks, focus on what the end goal for that task looks like and write out every actionable sub-step to complete that task. (For example: Don’t just write “respond to that email” focus on the overall task that email is addressing and write down all the steps to complete that task)
GET EFFICIENT
Once you are focused, you need to work efficiently because every minute you save is one more minute you can nap.
Get Some Tools
A great way to maximize efficiency is to have tools for dealing with complex or repetitive tasks.
Homegrown tools: Tools you create to solve your own specific needs. An example would be a boilerplate client contract you can customize easily.
Third-party tools: Pre-built tools you use to solve broad needs. An example would be using Quickbooks to invoice and collect payments from clients.
Processes: Established steps or rules for handling repetitive tasks. An example would be setting aside Monday mornings for writing contracts and Tuesday mornings for sending them out.
Get a Support System
Doing things is exhausting and while naps may make you less tired, it’ll take people to keep your mental energy and morale up.
Friends & Peers: Surround yourself with people you want to be more like and slowly you will become more like them. Following and befriending hard-working people will push you to work harder. My friends with insane work ethic make me feel a bit lazy, but that feeling pushes me to do more than what I would normally do.
Professional Community: A network or community of like-minded individuals (like Lauren’s Passion to Paid Group) will give you people to bounce ideas off of, ask questions to fill in gaps in your knowledge, or just give you that extra supportive push when you’re doubting yourself.
Professionals: If a task is draining your energy, drastically outside your expertise, or taking too much of your time, hire a professional to help out. Yeah it’ll cost some money, but you’ll buy yourself less headaches and more nap time.
GET STARTED
Now that you’re focused in and have all your efficiencies in place, you’ve just gotta do things so you can earn that sweet nap at the end of the tunnel.
Schedule It
Anyone can do a few things, but if you want to do several things and still have time to nap, you have to be intentional.
Have a calendar for big events.
Pick a time every week to prepare/plan out the following weeks tasks.
Pick certain days to do weekly tasks like client meetings, writing proposals, creating social content, etc.
Pick one weekend a month to devote to medium-large size projects
Take a week every 6-12 months to work solely on your largest projects or big changes to your processes.
Just Do it
It’s easy to get lost in the process of doing things, but at the end of the day you just have to do them. If you spend all your time getting prepared, you’ll never get things done and you’ll never get to nap. So get started and you can learn, adjust, and implement focus and efficiencies as you go.
Take a Nap
While you can just nap recreationally, I use naps as a big part of my creative process.
If I’m getting overwhelmed with thoughts or need to clear my head to shift tasks, I take a nap to reset. When working on a project I set goals for what I need to get done and use naps as a reward when hitting those goals.
So how I do things and still have time to nap. I feel like I’ve earned a nap for writing all this and you earned one for reading it. So go nap!
DISCLAIMER: Everyone’s situation is different and one of the fastest ways to burn out is to compare your output to others. Health, income, obligations, and a number of other things all have a huge effect on the number of things you can do. So try out some of the things I recommended, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Existing is hard and we all deserve a nap just for that.
