Design–Build-Adapt
Creating Structure That Supports How We Work as Artists and Creatives
Creating structure that actually supports creative work is one of the most common challenges artists and creatives bring into my coaching practice. Many of us know we need some form of structure to thrive, but when we try to create it for ourselves, it can feel surprisingly difficult. Especially if we’re accustomed to relying on deadlines, external accountability, or pressure to keep us moving forward. Without those forms of structure, we’re left to create our own.
In my previous post, I invited us to rethink inherited ideas of structure and to notice how beliefs shaped by school, workplaces, and cultural expectations continue to influence how we approach our work long after they stop serving us. In my own creative work and in coaching other creatives, I see how these deeply embedded ideas about what structure “is” make it hard to imagine other ways structure can be.
Learning how to design supportive structure is rarely something artists and creatives are taught. It’s something we develop over time, often by unlearning familiar ways of working and experimenting with new ones. In my 1:1 coaching work, I support clients in approaching structure not as something to rigidly enforce, but as a set of intentional, personal practices within their creative work and lives. Practices that can evolve as they do. Designing structure, I’ve come to believe, is a creative practice in itself.
Miles Davis once said, “You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” I often think about this in relation to how we work. Just as our creative voice develops over time, so does our understanding of how we work best. Personalizing our way of working isn’t something we arrive at quickly. It’s something we learn through experience.
That means making it part of our creative practice or business to experiment, to notice what supports us, and to build awareness around the routines, environments, and frameworks that work for us specifically. Like our creative work itself, this process requires attention, practice, and iteration.
Expanding What Structure Can Be
In coaching conversations, calendars, time-blocking, and rigid routines are often the first solutions clients reach for. While these tools can be useful, structure for artists and creatives isn’t limited to them. I often invite clients to expand their thinking and explore how structure might also live in:
