The Busy Creator

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The Busy Creator | Tools, Techniques & Habits for Creative Productivity

Helping Creative Teams Master Workflow, Culture, and Technology

Learn the tools, techniques, and habits to become your most creative, productive self.

The Busy Creator goes inside the minds of top creative professionals to examine their workflows, methodologies, and mindsets. Together we’ll improve our skills, land better clients, and build a thriving, sustainable practice.

Let’s get busy!

Helping Creative Teams Master Workflow, Culture, and Technology

Learn the tools, techniques, and habits to become your most creative, productive self.
The Busy Creator goes inside the minds of top creative professionals to examine their workflows, methodologies, and mindsets. Together we’ll improve our skills, land better clients, and build a thriving, sustainable practice.

Let’s get busy!

Can you benefit?
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How we help creative professionals

Group Workshops

Skills training for professional societies, classes, conference audiences, and other gatherings of likeminded creatives.

Learn more about Group Workshops →

Team Workshops

Focused retreats for small agencies and internal creative teams, to examine workflow, culture, and shared skills.

Learn more about Team Workshops →

Individual Coaching

One-on-one workshops and focused training for younger creatives, new freelancers, and solo practitioners.

Learn more about Individual Workshops & Coaching →

Who we work with

  • Graphic Designers
  • Web Designers
  • Illustrators
  • Writers
  • Musicians
  • Software Developers
  • Photographers
  • Architects
  • Film/Video Producers
  • … and more

Can you or your team benefit from being more creative and more productive?

Who we work with

  • Graphic Designers
  • Web Designers
  • Illustrators
  • Writers
  • Musicians
  • Software Developers
  • Photographers
  • Architects
  • Film/Video Producers
  • … and more

Can you or your team benefit from being more creative and more productive?

Creative work is different.

That’s why we love it! But it’s not enough to focus on inspiration and motivation to get the results we want — we need practical strategies for tackling the in-between. Process matters; how we produce our work is just as important as what we produce.

Because of this, creative teams are faced with unique challenges.

Great websites, books, videos, interiors, events, and other creative endeavors don’t just happen.

At least not with the same industrial input-output relationship that other professions trade on. Instead, we need to consider our workflows, and the roles each person plays. Only by examining our work and making adjustments — small improvements over time — can we bring our best selves to a team, and in turn produce valuable work for our clients and customers.

Creative work is different.

That’s why we love it! But it’s not enough to focus on inspiration and motivation to get the results we want — we need practical strategies for tackling the in-between. Process matters; how we produce our work is just as important as what we produce.

Because of this, creative teams are faced with unique challenges.

Great websites, books, videos, interiors, events, and other creative endeavors don’t just happen.

At least not with the same industrial input-output relationship that other professions trade on. Instead, we need to consider our workflows, and the roles each person plays. Only by examining our work and making adjustments — small improvements over time — can we bring our best selves to a team, and in turn produce valuable work for our clients and customers.

Take This Free Course:
9 Habits of Highly Creative People

Following 100+ interviews for The Busy Creator podcast, we’ve discovered nine habits top creative pros use to achieve and maintain flow states, find inspiration, and replenish their creativity energy.

Register for this free 9-day email course to learn exactly what these habits are, and how to make them your own!

9 Habits of Highly Creative People

Take This Free Course:
9 Habits of Highly Creative People

Following 100+ interviews for The Busy Creator podcast, we’ve discovered nine habits top creative pros use to achieve and maintain flow states, find inspiration, and replenish their creativity energy.

Register for this free 9-day email course to learn exactly what these habits are, and how to make them your own!

Align Creative Teams With Productive Habits

A critical challenge for any creative team is how to establish common habits that aide in original thinking and allow the best work to emerge. Sadly, few groups realise this, instead addressing questions of workflow only through reaction. They concentrate on tools and tactics rather than deep habits and first principles.

How many times have you found yourself arguing with colleagues (or clients) about file naming, server folder structure, or whether you need to post alerts in your project management tool vs. email vs. IM? These are details that emerge later, once you’ve agreed upon the rules of the studio — the common habits you’ll abide by under any condition.

The Productivity Pyramid: Tools, Techniques, and Habits
Think of this pyramid as a framework. The base are the Habits — the first principles you establish together as a team. No structure can be built on shifting sands, you need a solid foundation underneath you. These first principles become a measure of future decisions. Everything starts here. For example, let’s use the habit “Always Teach”, which some companies and teams do try and foster. These snappy isms make great first principles.

Above the Habits are the Techniques. Here, a creative team will devise a workflow or system based on that first base layer. Keeping our “Always Teach” habit in mind, this team might create a lunch-and-learn series where each person rotates once a month to showcase something they’ve discovered about their area of focus, and introduce their colleagues to it. How these events run with be your Technique, and will live in this middle layer.

On the top of the pyramid — the smallest part, but also the finishing piece — are the Tools. These are the elements and materials you need to carry out the Techniques in question. Tools can be physical, like a whiteboard or large-screen tv to use in the example lunch-and-learn sessions, or they can be software, like Dropbox, Slack, Basecamp, or Photoshop, where teammates create and organise their project components and files. Tools are important; everyone involved in a project will need mastery of his/her own to complete a job with precision, but Tools are not everything. With a solid Technique in place — one based, in turn, on Habits — your team can change Tools over a weekend or at the start of the next project.

Keep this pyramid in mind as a framework, as mnemonic device of sorts. When you start to ponder the strength of your Tools, perhaps you’re really questioning the strength of the Technique. And if the Technique is failing, think if it’s truly reflecting a Habit. Build from the bottom up and your team will be on the way to better, more effective, more enjoyable work!

Prescott with workshop attendees in Indianapolis

Team Effectiveness, and exercises to achieve it, are a major component of our live workshops.

Your team will be more focused, more understanding, and altogether more productive after a full- or half-day session.

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