Starting an Etsy Business From Scratch Day 6 - Reducing Excuses and Getting To Work

I am a world famous procrastinator. In college, I was the kind of student, who would wait until 4 pm the day before a 20 page paper was due to sit down and aimlessly browse Facebook for an hour while my roommate nervously asked "Shouldn't you be writing that paper?". "Yeah, yeah. I'll be fine. Don't worry about," was usually my reply. I was partially right. She did not need to worry about it. I always managed to come through, get the seemingly impossible task done and time, and earn a decent grade. However, this also meant giving up sleep, and spending an unbearable amount of time sitting in one spot, banging at my keyboard, while trying to write about a topic that I had lost interest in hours before.  It was always miserable.

I did not want to take this procrastinate - marathon of work - procrastinate pattern of behavior with me on my journey as an Etsy seller. To accomplish this goal, I have implemented a few self-motivation techniques to keep myself on track. Below are two tips that I use to reduce my excuses and get to work!

Tip #1 - Making Lists

Each afternoon, when I have had enough of sewing, photographing, and blogging for the day, I make a list of tasks that I would like to accomplish on my next work day. I write this list on a post-it note and stick it above my workstation.

This way, when I sit down at my workstation each morning, I already know what I need to do. Not knowing where to start is a big source of procrastination for me.  With a list that I created the night before, I can just pick a task and get going with it!

Tip #2 - Improvise!

You are not always going to have every tool that you would ideally like to use on a job. Some things might be too expensive to purchase early in your business, some tools that you only need occasionally might be too large to store at home, and sometimes getting a tool set up might take too long to be practical. When this happens, I decide to improvise!

I'm not advocating for improvising substitute tools that will result in sloppiness or poor craftsmanship, but sometimes you really can get by with a creative alternative.

For example, I do not own an ironing board. In my house, there would be no where to store an ironing board, and it would just be in everybody's way all of the time. Instead, I simply lay a clean towel on the kitchen table and use what I do have!

When I decided to start my business, I also did not have a lot of room to store all the equipment that I would need. So instead, of spending days trying to create the perfect set-up, I repurposed the top half of my bookshelf into a storage rack for sewing notions.

In the past, I would have wasted a lot of time, trying to make sure that I had everything that I might ever need before starting a project. Now, I am learning to use what I do have and solve my problems more creatively. 

So far making a daily list of tasks and improvising have really helped me to stay focused so that I can keep producing adorable items to sell on Etsy!

Thank you for reading today's blog post! I hope that you found these tips helpful. Until tomorrow, please check out my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/shop/PearTreeStitches. Happy crafting!