Creative Chaos

with Author-Illustrator, Mirka Hokkanen

In the whirlwind of holding down a job, market books, and take care of my health, sometimes it’s so hard just to sit down and write. And when it I do, all the things all my task list seem to swirl around me. Most days, I feel like my life is jumping from one chaotic moment to another. And it never slows down. (And I don’t have ADHD—that I know of!)

I’m one of those writers who want to do ALL THE THINGS. But when I try, I often get frustrated or my health suffers. That’s why I am so thankful that picture book author-illustrator, Mirka Hokkanen, agreed to share some tips today about how she manages the chaos in her life. I’ve learned so much from reading her words and can’t wait to give her calendar system a try.

Be sure to read all the way to the end for a special treat from Mirka!

Life in your 40’s with multiple kids, a household, and a creative business to run can feel chaotic at times. ADHD clearly runs in our family, but I’m the first one to be diagnosed, and even though there have been signs all my life, it wasn’t until this season of my life that I felt like I could not keep up anymore. After being lost and anxious for a long time, I wanted to share my experience of creating a long term calendar, and how I use it to keep myself accountable and on track.

About 2 years ago, I was feeling incredibly anxious about never having enough time and never knowing what project I should be working on. I’d be flailing in a dozen directions and felt like I never finished anything, and was always rushing to patch one emergency up after another. Everything was very reactive.

I felt like I never finished anything and was always rushing to patch one emergency up after another.

Everything was very reactive.

When the anxiety was the worst, I decided to sit down and write down all the things I was anxious about = all the tasks I had for work. The list was about a page long and included all the things like; working on a book, updating my webpage, creating videos for you tube, making a new class for Skillshare, writing a blog post, promoting a book, creating pins for Pinterest, and so on…

Taking the list in, I realized that it was a crazy amount of work to do and that I would have to prioritize items. So I divided the list into a few levels of priorities. Some items on the list were tasks that didn’t need to happen this month, but I was already stressing over things that needed to happen 6 months from now. But I was keeping them on the top of my mind so I wouldn’t forget about them when the time came. It made sense for me then to create a long term calendar to plug tasks into so that I would schedule time for them in the future, so that I could let them go out of my mind today and only concentrate on the task at hand. I’ve been using this process of scheduling myself out for 4-8 months out since then and it has helped me become so much more organized and less stressed.

Let me explain my process briefly in case you want to try it too.

Start with a black piece of paper, and write down all the things that need to happen in the next 6 months. (If you are scared of such a long time, start with 3-4 months.) I take my time with this and include tasks and projects that take one day or more (like working on a new book, creating you a tube video, illustrating a book etc). I don’t include daily things like checking email, or short things like a zoom meetings, those go on my daily calendar.

Create a blank calendar. I copy and paste upcoming blank months to a worksheet, and cross out weekends, days when kids have off school, holidays, and other big scheduled events that I need to block out whole workdays for. Then I’m left with the available workdays for the upcoming months.

Block off time for each task. I then look at the tasks I wrote down and figure out how many days I will spend on each task and start blocking time for them in the calendar. I do this digitally in Procreate, so it's easy to reorganize dates if I need to. I try not to work on weekends and leave free days here and there, because there will be times when things run long, or a kid gets sick and I need the extra time to catch up. I work projects into blocks of time so I don’t waste time switching between tasks. But in general, having the monthly calendar keeps me really well motivated and organized because I know what I will be working on at any given day and I try to finish tasks on time because if I don’t there is a domino effect to the other tasks that are happening after.

On a daily view, the way that I work is that I get up and get the kids out the door to school, then walk the dog and do some short exercises. Then I come to my studio and reply to emails. Then I work on my task of the day until the kids come home. If I need extra time, I’ll come back to my studio after the kids go to bed. I used to work late almost every night, but recently I’m trying to look after my health more, adding more exercise, spending time with my family at night, and not trying to work every available hour of my day.

I’m trying to look after my health more, adding more exercise, spending time with my family at night, and not trying to work every available hour of my day.

I really love what I do and could work all the time, but I’ve learned that the kind of work that I do, it doesn’t matter how much work I do, it’ll never get all done. So I have to pick my priorities and finish the most important things, and the little things falling off to the wayside were not that important to do in the first place. They were nice things to do, but busywork.

Here is an example calendar from the end of 2024 that I planned. On the bottom I made a list of all the things I wanted to happen, and then you can see that I color each entry as I put it on the calendar. The color blocking doesn’t have a system to it, I just pick different colors so that I can easily see where one task ends and another one starts and how much time visually I have for each task.

This system has helped me so much. I sit down every 4-8 months and plan and schedule my time out. It has helped my anxiety, made me more productive, and helped me say no to things that I now see I can’t fit into my calendar. I hope that it might be useful for you too.

If you need more in-depth help in figuring out your goals and priorities and how to craft a multi-month calendar, I teach a workshop on it. You can take it either via a Skillshare membership, or on Gumroad as a stand-alone workshop. https://www.mirkah.com/goalsetting

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A SPECIAL TREAT FOR YOU! I don’t usually do give-aways (maybe that will change after this month), but Mirka generously offered to giveaway a copy of one of her newest books (HOW THE FOREST FEELS or LITTLE SEASONS: AUTUMN LEAVES) to one lucky reader! Comment on the thread below or share this post on social media, Be sure to tag both me (@CarolynBFraiser) and Mirka (@MirkaHokkanen) when you do!). I’ll draw a winner on October 3 and announce it in the comments below and on social media (so please include your social media tag).

See details of each book below:

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MIRKA HOKKANEN is a neurodivergent author-illustrator who likes quirky animal characters and stories that make kids laugh. She’s created the graphic novel series Mossy & Tweed, and the Little Seasons and Kitty & Cat picture book series. She lives by Washington DC, Maryland, and is represented by Laurel Symonds at KT Literary. For more information, visit her website at www.mirkah.com.

Check out Mika’s newest books:

How the Forest Feels: Sensory Play Nature’s Way, Holiday House (August, 2025).

Forest school meets sensory play in this cozy picture book about a grandparent and grandchild on an exploratory walk through the woods.

Little Seasons: Autumn Leaves, Odd Dot (September, 2025). School Library Journal starred review.

A funny and informative nonfiction picture book introducing the life cycle of leaves and exploring the season of fall. Includes interactive back matter and memory card game.