wintonkidd

How tracking 11,000 hours of my work time taught me to forgive myself and how I still struggle with finishing things and that's okay. (also CYOA Pt. 20 in higher res.)

Added 2025-07-30 21:28:58 +0000 UTC

Yeah it's a clickbait title, sorry.

I've come a long way from being a productivity-obsessed artist when I was younger, who expected to be able to work at least a standard 40 hours a week to realizing that I truly, genuinely do not get more done or learn more when I punish or push myself.

This post is NOT intended to be prescriptive. Your mileage may vary, because we have different brains. I'm just going to talk about the meaningful solutions I have found to protect myself from my own worst tendencies that were fostered by growing up in a pretty work obsessed culture.

I can't speak to anything beyond that but I hope it's still helpful. If you have any questions or want further clarification on anything, please let me know ❤️

TL;DR Takeaways. Just the facts:

Nothing goes to plan and everything gets compromised
I always do less than I think I'm capable of.
My process may not necessarily work for you, but it may help reframe how you think about how you work.
In spite of knowing better, I still consistently misjudge things and mess up.
Art is hard enough without an extra layer of self-criticism and shame, so forgive yourself and keep trying.⬅️(Note to self)
I'm dead serious about the last one, discouragement is a cancer.

My work process amounts to this:

Write down all the things I want to get done and estimate how long they'll take
Attempt to make that those things
Track the time spent working. Focus time, not distracted time.
Reflect on why my estimate was off and what it can teach me about my creativity, brain, or tendencies. (this is the part where I'll talk about the 11,000 hours)
Forgive myself, set up some new boundaries and expectations where necessary and move on.

Estimate

Beginning every week (or sometimes in the middle if my brain feels frazzled and shit hit the fan) I write down all the individual things I want to do as a checklist with an estimate of how long I think it'll take. It usually looks like this, but longer:

⏹️Write a short description of a task with an overly optimistic assessment of how long things will take in parentheses (:30)= thirty minutes (2)= two hours.

I write down everything, no matter how small because otherwise I'll feel like I'm constantly forgetting something, even if it's just posting that new piece on bsky.

These estimates are way off, and you'll see why in detail, but it basically comes down to my tendencies which are at once wonderful and horrible and comes down to asking myself "but what if...?"

Attempt to make the thing : Environment

When I need to do really hard, thinky work like writing or thumbnailing (these are most difficult for me) I try to give myself a set space and time to do them in. Usually this means I'll go to a coffee shop, plan on being there for two hours with a sketchbook, ipad and bluetooth keyboard and work through my ideas.

The change of space helps me because:

I like the ambient noise
I'm less tempted to check things (email, discord, bsky, youtube) when I've come there for a particular purpose
I'm there for a set time with a set purpose.
Having a drink nearby really helps me stay focused, for other people it's snacks, for me, it's a liquid with flavor. Coffee, tea, smoothie, etc.🥃

I can nurse a drink for like 1-2 hours if I'm allowed a refill and that's about as long as my attention span can go in one sitting anyways. When I was younger I used to think this was extravagant and that I was a big baby and should just toughen up and FOCUS no matter where I was.

Now I know better. My brain performs best in certain weather, environments and company, just like any other living thing, I try to just provide the best possible environment for it by removing as much unhelpful stuff as possible. having a really wonderful hour and a half with my brain is worth a full day of struggling in a poor environment.

One day last week I'd been frustrated and stuck all day long in the office, it was starting to get late and I hadn't gotten anything done.

My manager (me) told me to pack my backpack and he took me to a quiet bar and treated me to an old fashioned that I could sip on for a couple hours.
I took some time to write out my thoughts with pen and paper and finally was able to make some progress.😘Thanks, manager. (You're welcome, Winton)🥃

Attempt to make the thing : Art Process

I try not to judge my writing too much as I'm doing it, just put it down and see how it looks. I always change it again later anyways, especially right as I'm about to post it, when I keep catching typos.

Thumbnails are for me. I make them clear enough so that I can understand what they mean when I look at them later, but simple enough that they're quick to make and I can visualize how they will look in sequence, on the page and as a group.

Then I translate them into roughs. At this point I often realize I'm missing something or need to adjust things slightly. Clarifying ideas is a process that exposes problems/weaknesses and remember, nothing goes to plan, so that's fine.

Next is the making final art process. This is where the "clarifying exposes problems/weaknesses really explodes. New ideas emerge, inconsistencies become apparent and also you just have to draw the thing, which can be a challenge. I definitely redrew big Paier (and the party standing on the ledge many times before arriving somewhere.

This is also when I have to practice restraint, if I can, because I start asking "but what if..." a lot and it can lead to problems. I want every drawing to be perfect, but not every drawing needs to be perfect, or even exist at all.

It's at this point when I try to weigh what's really important for the story, what am I doing just for fun and make some compromises.

I'd drawn a thumbnail of Paier's foot stepping onto the threshold of the stairs and planned on taking it to completion, but compared to some other spot illustrations like this of Carab being separated from the group, or the goblin being cute, it just wasn't as important, so I cut it.

I have to remind myself that while I am imagining the best ever update and am disappointed with everything I have to compromise on, what you the viewer see is only the final art, not the endless variations I imagined along the way.

At the end of the day, something real, visible and compromised(flawed) is always better than something perfect, but imaginary and incomplete. This is the hardest truth in making narrative works like this.

I still struggle with what could have been or what might still be and how I wish I was better at doing this job so I could realize those things. Finishing things is how we learn, because we see the full process in the context of the completed work, not just the idea we started with.

Tracking Time

Tracking time can be difficult for some people because it immediately invites scrutiny and self criticism about how much you could be doing that you're not. It's the capitalist productivity and achievement brainworm we're all given.

I'm going to try to explain how I look at my time in a way that encourages me to be kinder to myself and fight that impulse, with science. I've been using an app called Toggl to track my work time since 2018. Here's how many hours I've tracked so far.

If you want to track your time as a creative, I would recommend looking at it in general, not in specific. Maximizing your time constantly leads to burnout, but if you know how you work in general, you can adopt a reasonable expectation for yourself, be realistic about what you can accomplish and make peace with that.

5️⃣This number is the valuable information, after 7+ years, this is what I data tells me the average I can expect from myself on a daily basis. No how hard driving or relaxed about my work I am, I end up with this five hours a day.

I cannot work a 40 hour week without feeling completely broken and this is a job I really enjoy. I can't.

I don't track when I start to when I finish (because I get interrupted a lot), it's just when I'm really truly drawing or focusing on a task. I can't squeeze more out and I shouldn't try to, it's my natural, balanced level, and if Cal Newport's Deep Work is to be believed-this is incredibly average.

⚠️Even as I share this I'm aware that some of you might judge yourself against this as a marker of whether you should feel good or bad about yourself. Do that at your own peril, we have different brains, different lives, different circumstances, please take those into account.

Ironically, I think being able to do 5 hours of good work in a day comes from embracing my limitations. Meaning I think I actually got less done when I was "working harder" because now I quit sooner, and recover for the next day without beating myself up.

Also bear in mind I'm talking about how long I find I can focus, not the quality that focus produces. Sometimes I struggle with a comic page all day, other times I finish it in a couple hours. The point is, we all have a limited amount of focus every day and it only goes so far!

Reflecting on Tracked Time

Why is this information useful?

It means when I write this optimistic list of to-do's every week. It had better not add up to more than 25 hours of work (5hrs x5 days) or else I'm working on the weekend.

Something has to be cut or delayed. I'm not being courageous or bold or determined, I'm being foolish. It doesn't add up, never has, never will (this is where crunch comes from).

This kind of stark realism is really painful, but it's at least accurate. It means I can look at my to-do list last week and see the Poppy & Oak Page(I meant pinup) and a bit of Daisy art would take up a whole day's worth of focus.

It means when I was working on the CYOA art yesterday and I kept changing my mind about things, at a certain point I had to stop and call it a day because it wasn't going to get any better because I was basically reaching my allotment of good brain hours.

All of this means that it's a little bit easier to quiet the part of my brain that tries to shame me for not working hard/fast enough, because I know there's a lot of different factors at play.

Let's have a look at CYOA Pt. 20 --

I could certainly start by scolding myself for my estimate being heinously off in terms of time. What went wrong Winton? How could you let this get so over-budget. But let's let the "good manager" step in and analyze.

I think what I did here was estimate a bare minimum. I even left out the thumbnail process from my estimate. Whoops.

In fact everything ended up taking at least twice as long, what's my estimate mean then? It means that I liked the idea of a simple update this month, but wasn't really willing to compromise to make it happen.

Some ideas might be...I could have made 3 illustrations instead of 6 or picked simpler, less perspective-heavy compositions to work with so it was easier to get done in less time. I would have needed to cut things, simplify things and reduce the scope to meet my initial estimate.

⚠️ This is where the ❤️Kindness and self-forgiveness❤️ comes in. Skip this step at your own emotional peril⤵️

💖Forgive myself💖 set up some new boundaries where necessary and move on.

Deep in my artist heart of hearts, I want to make things as pretty as possible.

This means that when I feel like I have the time, I will spend the time. This week I felt like I had time to spend on the CYOA and I took it, even though it went beyond my estimates, because I wanted it to feel more special.

This is a pretty well established tendency and the only way I can get around it is by setting up really strict aesthetic rules for myself that I'm not allowed to break. Those rules are specific antidotes to my weaknesses when it comes to accurate estimates:

Winton's weaknesses when it comes to estimates:

Unwillingness to compromise quality
Drawing new characters or things I'm not used to
Working in a new art style
Having to write as part of the process
Giving myself too much freedom in terms of style, color palette, canvas aspect ratio, etc.

My solutions to combat these weaknesses

Setting time limits so it's not about making the best thing I can make, just the best thing I can make in an hour and a half.
Sticking with projects or characters for longer so I can reap the benefits of getting comfortable drawing them.
The same as the last but with art styles or tools.
Making word-less comics, or adapting stories from existing writing.
Giving myself monthly color palettes, templates to work within, certain brushes to work with.

Going forward, I have a few options for the next update, project, piece, whatever.⤵️

1. Commit to a simpler idea or execution, or reduce my expectations.

2. Accept what I want to do will take longer and adjust my schedule and priorities accordingly.

3. Do neither of the above, end up frustrated, stressed, tired and either don't complete things or feel a bunch of shame about being late all the time, which just slows me down and discourages me from starting on the next thing.

It's kind of that simple at the end of the day.

Conclusions:

I hope it was helpful to read about how someone else has examined their work, how they work and how they feel about their work when they're working on it.

In case you're wondering, it took me 3 hours to write this post because I'm a really slow writer, but I thought it was worth taking the time to share. ( I had to break for lunch in the middle.)

The only thing I didn't talk about in this long post was how different processes seem to take different amounts of energy out of me. After writing this you better believe I'm zoning out and drawing some Daisies because I can't focus on anything more demanding than that.

If nothing else I hope it helps to see someone else struggling with their work and to know that it is really difficult, but rewarding and valuable to try to be more honest about your process and how you work best.

Every weakness is just the flipside of a really wonderful strength and we're all full of both. You may have to make some difficult sacrifices (I'm not talking about your health or your life, I'm talking about your self-expectations 😤) in order to make the work you want, but great things can come out of that.

My CYOA working file has this color palette along the top of the page with all the colors I'm allowed to use. It's grown a little bit since I started by it's remained pretty consistent across the past (gulp) three years.

That simple compromise early on has made the work more consistent, easier to make and also, made me more creative about every other thing in the project like compositions and line quality.

Some compromises can be a lot less painful to make when you can see them as giving you greater freedom in another avenue by freeing up your focus to be aware of new opportunities or ideas.