One of the scary things about attempting to turn your creative love into a career is the multi-tasking that is required to get it off the ground. You might be a fabulous musician, painter, graphic designer or writer, but a whole further set of skills is required to turn your creative output into a career. These skills include admin, marketing, pitching, hustling, web-site designing, networking, cold-calling, and might not be things you'd class as strengths.

So one of the techniques I've used to get over that in the past is a game called 'employ yourself' - it starts with you drawing up a job description based on what you'd expect a part-time assistant to do if you were hiring for the post. Imagine you had £10K available to employ someone for 2 days a week:

• What would you want them to do?
• How long would you want them to spend on each task?
• What would their priorities be?

Removing your own personality from this task-list can be a great way to apply some of your creative power to "Working Out What Needs Doing And Doing It" (thanks to Benjamin Ellis for the phrase). When you see the tasks laid out in that way, it's easier to view them not as 'outside of your skill set' or even worse, somehow beneath you, but just as 'what needs to happen' to facilitate of your dream of making a living from your creative enterprise.

It might also help you to spend some time thinking about how your imaginary employee should describe you to your prospective audience or contacts. Telling people how great you are is a pretty uncomfortable task for most of us, but when you detach it from yourself, and see it as a role for your new employee, it gets much easier.

I'm an independent musician and run my own record label to release my music, so my list includes:

• Gig booking - contacting venues and promoters
• Maintaining a website and social media portfolio
• Answering email questions from fans
• Liaising with shops and websites that stock the CDs
• Arranging promotional materials like press bios and photo shoots
• Sending out promotional materials to venues, radio, magazines, reviewers etc.
• Chasing up support slots with bigger artists
• Arranging the logistics of touring - transport and accommodation
• Managing accounts and administration

It's a big job, but it's much easier to disassemble when I stop thinking about which tasks I'm 'cut out for', and instead work my way through this week's list. Individual tasks can be crossed off as I go along. The press kit materials that came from the process of deciding how my employee should describe what I do can be used when emailing or calling booking agents and journalists.

So, whether you're already pursuing a career in a creative field, or are just thinking about it, what's on your list?