Ep 45: The Creatives Gift Guide: Master Your 12-Month Rhythm
Planning for Creative Success in 2024
SUMMARY
Are you tired of feeling surprised when busy seasons return annually? Do you find yourself behind schedule on projects that happen every year? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, Dustin Pead explores how creative professionals can escape the cycle of seasonal stress by implementing a 12-month rhythm approach to their work.
This episode is part of our special three-week "Creatives Gift Guide" series designed to help you give meaningful gifts to your own creativity as we approach 2024. By understanding and planning for your annual creative cycles, you can transform overwhelming busy periods into manageable, productive seasons that allow your creativity to flourish.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Identify Your Cyclical Patterns. Too often, creatives are surprised when busy seasons return, acting as if these predictable cycles are completely new or out of our control. Take a day with yourself or your team to review the past year and identify trends. Look for patterns in your successes, failures, and periods of stress. By recognizing these cycles, you can begin planning for them rather than reacting to them.
⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Implement the 4D Creative Process with Margin. The 4D Creative Process—Define, Dream, Design, and Develop—works best when stretched out over time rather than compressed into a stress-filled rush. For recurring annual projects, start the definition and dreaming phases months before the actual busy season. If March is traditionally hectic, begin your creative process in December or January, giving yourself ample margin for each phase.
⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Plan the Work, Then Work the Plan. Once you've mapped your 12-month rhythm and allocated appropriate time for each phase of the creative process, stick to the timeline. By planning with intention and foresight, you transform the chaotic reactive mode of creativity into a structured, proactive approach that reduces stress and improves outcomes.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control."
💬 "If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things."
💬 "Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, 'We tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget.' That is not this meeting."
EPISODE RESOURCES
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone. Welcome to creativity made easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead creative coaching consultant. And today we're going to continue a three week podcast series to close out the year in the spirit of giving called the creatives gift guide in which we're going to discuss some gifts that you can begin to give to your own creativity to take it to the next level in 2024 this week. Let's take a step back and look at something I call 12 month rhythms. Let's get into it.
Welcome everyone to the show. My name is Dustin Pead creative coach and consultant you can find me and everything that I've got going on all the content that we release at DustinPead.com P-E-A-D you can follow me on Instagram Facebook LinkedIn all the social media platforms at Dustin Pead if you're listening to this I would highly encourage you to leave a five-star review that would really help get this content out to more people who need it and benefit from it if you're watching on YouTube I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining me today I would love for you to hit the like button the thumbs up hit subscribe and ring the bell so every time I release new content you get notified about it now before we dive into today I want to remind you I talked a little bit about it last week if you're on my newsletter you've seen it if you're on my socials you've seen it but my first ever ebook comes out tomorrow. Y'all I'm so so excited. So today is the last day to preorder this book for 50% off and it's all about using Asana for creative teams. Now I want to say this too even though it says using Asana for creative teams I need you to understand that this framework is designed for any creative whether they're solo or within a team and no matter what software you're using.
I speak Asana language because it's what I've been leading creative teams through for a long, long time. And so it's easy for me to kind of speak that language, but this book in no way is dependent on you having to use Asana. You could use Basecamp, you could use Post-It notes for all I care, whatever it is, this book will help you take your creativity to the next level by getting things done in 2024. Enough talking, enough daydreaming, enough what ifs.
Now it's time to get the work done. So go to dustinpead.com slash store. You can preorder that book today for the last time at 50% off for only $5. it, get one for you, get one for any creative in your life as a last minute digital stocking stuffer. I know that the creatives in your life or you will greatly benefit from it as it's something that I've been building towards for a long, long time. Listen, we're going to get into this thing today in the creatives gifts guide about 12 months rhythms and this is something that I've kind of dawned on me in the later half of my creative career that there are these ebbs and flows that happen to us. too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control.
Have you ever been in this situation before you're sitting in a creative briefing meeting and suddenly it dawns on you that you and your team are already behind the eight ball on this project. You should have had this meeting months ago, even before you begin. feels impossible to even begin because you already fear, feel paralyzed by no margin and the inevitable long days and late nights ahead in order to accomplish this project.
Listen, I've been there. I know you've been there too. You know, the immense amount of stress of this adds to you and your team. If only there were a way to get out in front of these mountains that seem to pop up around this time every year. And it could be any time of year, no matter when you're listening to this podcast episode. So if you've been there, you know that immense stress. I want you to just kind of lean in with me over the next few minutes as we talk about these 12 month rhythms.
See, sometimes we get so stuck in the weeds of day to day survival that we miss the bigger picture. We miss the reality that there are busy seasons in our work, whether it be intentional or not. Lots of our work is cyclical. So why do we act like it isn't? Listen, it's been said by many people before me, but it's something that I stick to. If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things. So here's my tips on your 12 month rhythms and how you can avoid this seasonally recurring frustration in 2024. First thing, take a day either by yourself or with your team, set it aside and review the past year. When you review this past year, you're gonna look for trends. You could do this in July, you could do it during any downtime that you normally have, but take a day, set it aside, review the last 12 months and look for trends.
Look for the things that you see kind of popping up time and time again. When you're successful, when you're least successful, when you're caught off guard, when you're not caught off guard. If you've been around for a while, these might be a little more obvious to you. You're like, oh, well, in our company, every March is this big push. And so we know every March is going to get crazy. Set your rhythms up with margin filled timelines. So if you know March is a busy season for you, then why wait until March to gear up for that busy season? Why not start thinking about it in January or December? Give yourself and your team some margin to really dive into the full functioning 4D creative process. Now 4D creative process is something that I've talked about on this podcast and my blog before and the four D's are define, dream, design, develop. And that is a long scale creative process. You can do it in a very short amount of time. It works better if you can stretch it out. So as you're thinking over these stressful times and these clumps throughout the year, what's the right time to start setting goals for that project that come up on these busy seasons? That would be the defined part, right?
What's the right time to sit there and start defining out the goals for that particular project? Even if it's something that you do every single year, maybe your company has a Christmas initiative like I did for so long in local church ministry. You know Christmas is coming. It's the same message every single year, right? But we're going to package it differently. And so we're going to start thinking about how do we package that differently this year? What are some things that we can do? We don't want to define what our goals are for that, which leads us right into the next D is the dream. This is the brainstorm. This is the fun stuff. This is where you get to come in a room with a bunch of knickknacks and cool music playlists and great environment and lots of people. And you can just dream until your little creative heart is content, right? But when should you begin that brainstorming about the project? If your busy season is in March, you should not begin dreaming about that in March. You need to be dreaming about that no later than January, if not December or earlier depending on how big and massive this undertaking can be for you. Set aside no, okay, I see that rhythm coming. So I know that we're gonna, we're gonna dream about it here so that when we get into March, for example, we're not overwhelmed with the thing. Now, next thing is design. That's the third D and the four D process. What's the right time to refine all of those ideas that you got from your brainstorm? Now, a lot of people will love to sit into a, in a brainstorm and immediately refine all the ideas. Can I just strongly encourage you not to do that? Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, we tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget. That is not this meeting. And if you have people in the room that are contributing to the meeting in that way, you need to kindly ask them to wait for the next meeting because you're really going to want them. And that's this meeting that we're talking about here. It's the design meeting. This is when you're going to refine those ideas into a cohesive designed production, a pitch, a package, a concept, whatever it is. You're gonna take the three to 500 ideas that you came up with in your brainstorm and you're gonna distill them down into the things that work for you, that are within your timeline, that are within your budget, that hit the goals that you're looking for more accurately.
And you have those because you have all these ideas to choose from and you have the margin to choose from them because you brainstormed or you dreamed at the appropriate time in your 12 month rhythm. Now that you know what you're going to do, you've designed it, now it's time to get the work done. How long is it going to take you to develop this? If your initiative is in March every year and you know it's going to take you at least eight weeks to pump this out, then you know that by the time you get to January, if you're not already starting the work. you don't already have that thing defined, dreamed and designed and ready to start development by January, then you're already behind the eight ball. So look at that from a 12 month timeline and lay it out. I have a template for you at dustinpead.com. You can click around and find it. Look for the 12 month rhythm timeline. And now that you have that, you're going to plan those things out based on the 4d creative process, which you'll see on the timeline at dustinpead.com. Now that you have that, you're going to work the plan, right? You've planned the work. Now it's time to work the plan. So as I close this with you, something to think about before you get into 2024, these 12 month rhythms, how can I help you implement the 12 month rhythm? Sometimes it helps to have an external eye and see the things that you're going to miss. So let's chat, go to dustinpead.com, click on the let's chat button. I would love to have a free 30 minute conversation with you and how I can help implement this 12 month rhythm into your personal or team creative environment in 2024. It's going to be an amazing year. You're to get all sorts of things done. Let's just take a minute and plan the work and work to plan. We'll talk to you next time. Next week, we're going to wrap up this whole creative gift side, some gifts that you can give to yourself with a little thing called the Eisenhower matrix. It's something that blew my mind a few years ago and I can't wait to share it with you. We'll talk to you next week on creativity made easy.