# Defeat Procrastination: Design Your Own Personalized Creative Workflow - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/defeat-procrastination-design-your-own-personalized-creative-workflow/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Solid intro · Rated 6 /10 # Defeat Procrastination: Design Your Own Personalized Creative Workflow Updated August 2026 Sarah Edwards · Art Director & Creative Success Coach All levels · 85 min A neurodivergent art director's deeply personal system for building a workflow that fits your brain, not a productivity template. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdefeat-procrastination-design-your-own-personalized-creative-workflow%2F1717503555) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What the class actually builds This course is not a productivity hacks class. It is a structured self-assessment that ends in a personal project framework. Sarah Edwards, an art director who describes her own history with anxiety, OCD, and cerebral palsy, opens by rejecting one-size-fits-all systems and then spends the bulk of the runtime proving that point through exercises rather than assertions. The arc moves from mindset (Power of Process, Secret Sauce, three productivity myths) into a seven-exercise build: superpowers and kryptonites, a four-category brainstorm, a brain dump, framework construction, detailed to-do lists and schedules, and a final pass on burnout and workspace. The strongest stretch is the brainstorm-to-framework pipeline. Students fill four buckets (skills they have, skills they want, visuals that inspire them, questions they wonder about), then combine entries across buckets into a specific project spark, Edwards' own example is a watercolor depicting a panic attack in a Renaissance color palette. That spark then feeds directly into big-picture categories (education, materials, execution) which get broken into dated small steps. It is a genuinely coherent method for turning vague creative restlessness into a scoped project, and it holds together better than most brainstorming exercises because each stage visibly builds on the last. ## Where it thins out The back half leans heavily on mindset language: grace, redefining failure, decision fatigue, accountability partners. Useful reminders, but they are reminders more than instruction. There is no discussion of how to actually estimate time for a task, negotiate deadlines with collaborators, or handle a multi-person project. The tool recommendation, Milanote, is optional and the course insists paper works fine, but every demonstration happens inside that one app, so students working on paper have to translate board-and-drag-and-drop language into their own medium without much guidance. The workbook, cited constantly throughout, is where the actual template scaffolding lives. Watching the lessons alone gives you the concepts and Edwards' own worked examples, but the fill-in-the-blank structure students need to complete their own version sits outside the video content. That is a reasonable division of labor for a Skillshare class, but it does mean the video portion functions more as narration and encouragement than as a self-contained instructional unit. ## Who benefits The value here is proportional to how badly generic productivity advice has failed you. If Getting Things Done or a Pomodoro app already works, this class will feel slow, its 85 minutes carry a fair amount of personal narrative and repeated reassurance rather than density of technique. But for creatives who feel like every planner and framework was built for someone else's brain, the superpowers and kryptonites exercise alone is worth the time. It reframes weaknesses as data for scheduling rather than character flaws, and that reframing is used consistently through the later modules, including in the closing section on revisiting your framework after a setback. The course does what it promises: it produces a personalized structure rather than handing over one more universal system. It just requires more self-reflection and workbook time than passive viewing to get there. The standout The four-category brainstorm that cross-references known skills, desired skills, visual inspiration, and open questions to generate a genuinely personal project idea, rather than a generic one. ## What you will learn - · Identify personal strengths (superpowers) and weaknesses (kryptonites) before building any process - · Run a four-category brainstorm (skills you have, skills you want, visual inspiration, big questions) to generate project sparks - · Do a brain dump to offload mental clutter before structuring a project - · Build a framework of big-picture milestones broken into small dated steps - · Add maintenance layers like budgets and recurring check-ins to a project plan - · Reassess a plan against your own strengths and weaknesses when you hit setbacks Best for: Creative people who have tried generic productivity systems and abandoned them because those systems ignored how their specific mind and life actually work. Skip it if: Anyone wanting a fast, tactical productivity toolkit or software tutorial rather than a reflective, workbook-driven process built around self-assessment. Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Actionable Steps Clarity of Instruction [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdefeat-procrastination-design-your-own-personalized-creative-workflow%2F1717503555)