Unfinished business

I've been working on some new ideas recently. I feel like my head is filled with all of these fantastic ideas just waiting to get out. But I just can't seem to produce anything completely finished. I feel like the ideas are almost complete.

I feel similar as to when I went to art school. I started when I was pretty young, around 8, and went there until I was about 16. I learned so many things, tried all these different techniques from oil paints to sculptures and, yes, I did a year dedicated to the art of comic books. But, I often ran into the same problem, I could visualize exactly what the end result is, but I don't know how to get it out. I know all these techniques on how to use all these wonderful tools and materials. I'm pretty good at the technical details, like I can easily visualize how the light hits different objects and how the shadows would appear or how to prepare clay to make sure you'll get the optimal results with your sculptures. I can execute it all technically without a problem, but I'm missing a step somewhere between the preparation, the technical details and the end result.

*cough*perfectionistmuch*cough*

This seems to be happening again. I have a clear idea in my head of several new products, but am having trouble translating it to reality. I think this is once again point 3 on my new years resolutions list. (Ha! I didn't forget I made one!)

I'm trying to figure out how to apply my techniques from work (the 9 to 5 type work) to my creative life as well. I used to have a similar issue earlier in my career. (All potential new employers, please note the words used to, then I became awesome once I figured out how to handle it all) I have always been a bit of a perfectionist at heart, the type to do things perfectly and not accept anything less. In my line of work there's no 'down time', you have to think on your feet and get everything done. The fact that I deal with customers who expect near perfection every time, doesn't exactly ease the stress.

So, what did I do? Came to a very simple realization; you can only do one thing at a time. You can of course think about 15 million things while you do that one thing, but you can only do. one. thing. at. a. time. Simple. Take every massive project at hand and start breaking it into smaller, more manageable pieces. Then start working on those pieces one at a time.

That is the very simple rule that I live by, so I can handle working with such complex projects efficiently and tend to finish on time, all the time.

Now, all I need to do is to apply this to my creative work as well... How do you prioritize things that are just as important and you want to work on all of them at the same time?

Do you have similar problems? How do you handle them?

P.S. the photos are of stationery sets made out of vintage maps. Click HERE to see more