The 4th ritual for art and income is turning your schedule into your own personal fairy tale. That means owning your time. It means not letting someone else take the reins of your day. It means having time to do the things you want and need to do — making art, working on your career or business, spending time with the people you love, and anything else you need to do.It means doing what’s important without feeling guilty or like you are forgetting a commitment.

Without further ado, here are three ways to take control of your time.

1. Find your soul-mate calendar situation. This love relationship doesn’t have to last forever, but it does need to be exclusive. Settle on one calendar set-up, and stick with it. I prefer Google calendar, but if a beautiful notebook with touchable, soft pages is what works for you, choose that. It has to be something you will use.

2.

Practice three ways to politely decline invitations or demands. If your default is “sure!” or “yes!” when someone asks you for something, it’s time to change your default response to demands on your time to something like: “No thanks.” “Let me think about it.” “Maybe…. can I get back to you?” This is the key to owning your time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and those who make the most of it spend those 24 hours doing activities they enjoy and that move them closer to their goals and desires.

3.

 Aim for a state of grace, not perfection. No one, least of all those with the gifts of imagination and creativity, is perfect at managing their time. We all forget appointments and commitments. Grace means saying sorry when you let someone down by forgetting a commitment. Grace means forgiving yourself and moving on when you let yourself down. Grace means high standards and higher levels of kindness to yourself and others. Take action on idealizing your schedule by asking a few people you admire how they keep track of their commitments. Then create your own unique system so that you can create your ideal schedule.