Quarter One 2026 Recap: Let’s Check In
The Plan
My approach to growing my business in 2026 feels very different. This year I wanted to approach the year more systematically. I wanted to have a very clear destination to work towards and very clear goals to try to accomplish by the end of the year. My biggest priority has always been to grow my art business, but I spent a big chunk of time at the end of 2025 trying to get really specific about what that means for me. For the first time ever, I sat down and built out a five year vision. It was a bit nerve wracking, but it helped me get clear on what I want and what milestones might have to happen to get there. With this larger vision in place, I was able to build out my annual plan and my annual goals in a way that I never had before. Another first for 2026, is that I want to document my progress along the way specifically related to this annual plan.
This blog is often my accountability partner. I get a lot done and I make a lot of progress because I often have a goal to write an article and reflect on what I am doing in the studio on a regular basis. I got the idea to do a quarterly check in from Jasmine Star. I am an addict to her podcast, but she does a quarterly review that she calls laying bricks, where she will literally take you through her calendar. It’s not only insight into the life of an 8-figure entrepreneur, it is really interesting to see how seeds or connections she makes in Q1 could shift into something significant in Q4 or even later. So with that example in mind, I wanted to do my version of a quarterly check in, not only to hold myself accountable, but also to be able to compare the progress I have made with the plan I initially developed. (If you're curious about how I went about that planning process, check out the first post in my annual planning series How I Used ChatGTP to Create My Five Year Plan.)
The TL,DR of my goal planning process included:
My theme for 2026 is Foundation and Portfolio. My main priority for the year is building systems for consistency and sustainable growth, developing my surface pattern design portfolio, and building brand visibility, and creating systems that would match the seasonality of my creative practice. To help support this process, my word of the year is visibility. My estimate of my weekly bandwidth was 10-15 hours for all aspects of my art business.
For Quarter One, my primary goals included:
Redesigning my website to have a more professional presentation and to incorporate surface pattern design into the narrative of my business.
Complete miscellaneous tasks sitting on my to do list so that I had a free schedule for starting the Immersion Surface Design course in March.
Staying on schedule with the Immersion course, which lasts from March through early May.
Collecting Data
My tracking notebook.
At the start of this year, I knew that I was going to have to develop solid systems to ensure that I avoided the burnout that hit me incredibly hard in summer 2025. I wanted to have solid data for how I am spending my time. Central to this was starting to track my studio hours at the start of the year. Honestly this was like pulling teeth for the first few weeks of January. I kept forgetting to do it until I was an undetermined amount of time into working on something. I couldn’t figure out a system that I liked and bounced back and forth between the computer, a printed out calendar, and a loose sheet of paper. The system that ultimately ended up working for me was a small lined notebook. Now it has become second nature, and the notebook is always open on my desk with its own pen. I jot down when I start, when I finish, and what task I was working on. I also try my best to record each time I switch a task. For example:
Sunday, January 25, 2026
6:45-7:45am: Website
12:00-1:00pm: Website
2:30-4:00pm: Blog
4:30-6:00pm: Newsletter
Admittedly I am still learning what the best categories to track are, but at the end of each month, I enter everything into a Google Spreadsheet and I now have a much better idea of how much time I am spending working on my art business and an idea of how long individual tasks take.
I also started a metrics document. Again, it has been a bit challenging to remember to do this at a consistent time each month, but I wanted to be able to track a few metrics in my business: newsletter subscribers, Instagram followers, Pinterest monthly views, and monthly website traffic. I should also be tracking my Etsy traffic, but since that is not a focus of Quarter 1, I’m not too worried about it.
January: Finding a Creative Rhythm Again
January started the way one might expect after three weeks of holiday travel: slow and a little scattered, but the planning I did at the end of 2025 was a good starting point for the year. I eased back into painting, focused primarily on continuing a series of minis from the end of the previous year. I started to identify tasks and mini projects that I wanted to finish before starting on Immersion in March. I got into the habit of tracking my hours. Anecdotally, I’ve always said I have about 10–15 hours a week for my business. After tracking my hours, it turned out that I work closer to 20 hours a week. In January, I was also a little disappointed to find out that I spent a lot more time creating content about art (blog, Instagram, Pinterest, newsletter) than I did actually creating artwork.
Part of this has to do with my word of the year: visibility. One big goal of mine is to be more physically visible as part of my creative business, specifically I want to get more comfortable filming myself and being on camera. While I have enjoyed showing my art and creating things like timelapses, creating content where I am the person on camera is a completely different skillset than I currently have. I found that in January, brainstorming ideas, filming, editing, writing captions, and posting in this new format took much longer than I anticipated. Part of that is a learning curve that I know will gradually improve the more that I do it, but I also had to really think about what my priority is for this year. Yes, I definitely want growth, but content creation is a rabbit hole that you can spend hours on if you let it. I had to decide that I wanted consistency, but that I could not spend so much time on it. Two resources that help me with this was finding two Instagram specific resources: Brock Johnson and Shannon McKinstrie. Both of them are Instagram growth strategist and both of them have podcasts that I started listening to. They have helped me learn how to:
Identify content pillars that work for me - specifically Brock sends out a weekly email that includes meme templates that I now incorporate into my content when it fits.
Learn new ways to create content - Shannon has great content that include “use these hooks” each week.
Create better systems for batching and scheduling so that I am off Instagram more.
Don’t get me wrong, I still go down many an Instagram rabbit hole and sometimes I spend way too long creating a video, but my time on Instagram decreased in February and March from a high point in January.
My biggest win from January was redesigning my website. I honestly procrastinated on this for the entirety of 2025, but I knew it was something I wanted to happen in 2026 so that I could feel confident building my surface pattern design portfolio in preparation for licensing. What I thought would take the entire quarter was mostly finished in a few weeks. It now has updated copy, updated artwork, updated professional photos from a brand shoot I did with members of my Design Divas mastermind, and the addition of a portfolio section that I am hoping to build out further this year with my fine art pieces and my surface pattern design work.
New website homepage.
January Breakdown:
Total hours worked 78.25
January 2026 hours by category. That IG one was rough to see.
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February: Checking Off Tasks & Immersion Prep
My goal for February was to finish outstanding tasks from my to to list and to try to get ahead of content creation before Immersion started in March. Halfway through February, I really needed to take a hard look at what my priorities were. I had to consciously decide that I would not worry about working on a new painting collection or even painting too consistently. I decided that as much as I wanted to refresh my Etsy for the spring, that was not going to happen.
The biggest project I wanted to get to was refining my Blush & Bloom fabric collection. Last fall, I finally got back into the habit of designing. I reengaged with my Pattern+ surface design membership, and I submitted artwork for three different art calls. None of my designs were picked, but that meant I could revise and improve those collections to add to my Spoonflower shop. While licensing is the long-term goal, as I develop my skills and build out my portfolio, putting collections up on Spoonflower is a great way to practice and hopefully make a little income. Blush & Bloom was the next collection I wanted to refine. I have learned that taking a break and then coming back with fresh eyes is a crucial part of my design process. Over the course of February, I reviewed and revised each pattern in the collection, added a handful of new color options, and prepped all of the files to get each pattern available for purchase through Spoonflower.
During February, I also tried to build up a library of as much social media content as possible. I photographed all of my work. I filmed face to camera reels and edited videos of my artwork. I filmed b-roll to experiment with new ideas, and I drafted lots of posts in both Instagram and Instagram Edits. I had a few already drafted blog posts that I tried to finalize and get scheduled, and created an outline for a blog series focused on documenting my Immersion process in real time. I reduced the amount of time I was spending on Instagram compared to January, which felt like a huge win.
February really felt like a preparation month. I settled into a rhythm of working in my studio and tracking my hours. I worked to clear things from my mental to do list, made a list of ideas to consider once Immersion is done, and I started creating my plan to focus on Immersion come March.
February Breakdown
Total hours worked: 73.5
February Breakdown by category.
March: Welcome to Immersion
In March Immersion took over everything. I knew this was going to happen, I even prepared for it, but I still got hit with waves of overwhelm, a bit of imposter syndrome, and realized I had to even further refine my priorities in order to keep up. During March, I completed the first three modules: gathering inspiration, creating motifs, and digitizing artwork. During this time, I gathered reference photos for my collection idea, developed a mood board, created 28 pages of artwork, digitized everything in Illustrator and started building out motifs, including creating a few placement pieces as part of the course exercises.
A few things that I realized:
I really love designing patterns. It is such a different way of approaching my art and approaching how I view the world and I want it to continue to be a focus as I develop my art business.
I love how my surface pattern design and the forced break from painting is getting me excited for the summer and eventually switching gears back to painting. I think these two aspects of my creative process really complement each other and I want to explore new ways to combine them in terms of how I structure my creative practice and how I market my work.
Taking this course is a serious time commitment and even though I thought I had pretty solid structures and systems in place to free up my time, I have found that the content side of things even with all of my preparation is hard to keep up with. I am enjoying documenting the course in real time on the blog and on Instagram, but it is still time consuming.
I need time for serious rest. I tend to stop working earlier than my usual 8:30pm most nights. My workout sometimes need to be shorter. Sometimes I need to take full nights or days off from working on Immersion. Unexpectedly, I also found that I had to stop listening to my favorite business podcasts most days because I was feeling content and information overload. So I’m saving them for when I have the energy and the focus once this course is done.
Immersion is a little under halfway done (graduation is May 13), so I am hopeful that I will remain consistent through Quarter 2. This process is hard, but it also feels like I am making major progress.
March Breakdown
Total hours worked: 91.5
March breakdown by category.
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What the Data Actually Says
Across Q1, I worked a total of 242.77 hours, averaging about 17 hours per week.
The breakdown based on category was:
28% Immersion
17% Instagram
16% Pattern work
10% Pinterest
~7% Blog
~7% Artwork creation
For Quarter 1 my primary focus has been surface pattern design: including refining old collections and working on Immersion. While surface design is inherently creative and requires lots of art making in its own way, I do still feel like content creation is still taking too large of a percentage of my time. As I continue to blend my fine art practice, my design work and all of my content creation, I’m going to have to find a rhythm between them all. Am I thrilled that I have not been creating paintings this quarter, that I have not focused on the actual practice of selling my art, no. But I am prioritizing based on the time I have and my current focus. This season is about designing and I’ll be ready for the next season when it comes.
Looking Ahead to Quarter 2
My focus at the start of Quarter 2 will be finishing up Immersion strong and hopefully having a solid collection to add to my portfolio. I and already see how my style has evolved and how my design skills are more efficient and sophisticated. I’m also eager to give this collection a bit of space when the course ends so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes. By summer, I want to shift back towards painting: spending more time outside, hiking, and building a body of work that connects back to these designs. I do feel a bit scattered, like I do not have a very good weekly/ monthly rhythm and that will be something I work on once the intensity of this course is over.
If you have questions about this Quarter 1 recap, let me know in the comments.
You Might Also Like
On the Blog: How I Used ChatGTP to Create My Five Year Plan
On the Blog: Why I’m Retaking Surface Pattern Design in 2026
Jasmin Start Podcast: Laying the Bricks for Your 2026: Lessons from Quarter 4