Those that find it challenging to make time for personal creative outlets such as writing, gardening, painting, scrapbooking, photography, playing music or cooking might want to try getting by with a little help from their friends. It could be just the trick to help make time for creative fulfillment. Scheduling a creative, virtual play date on the telephone with a friend provides gentle accountability and adds a dash of camaraderie to the creative process. Here’s how.

Set the date. You and a friend decide on the day, time and length of your creative play date. It can be as short as 10 minutes or as a long as an hour. Spending as little as a few minutes immersed in the creative flow can add hours of happiness to the day.

Make the call. At the appointed day and time, one of you calls the other, and then you each very briefly share what creative project you will work on during your date. This should take no more than a minute or two. There’s no need to go into great detail. Sharing that you’ll be writing or making a collage or planting some flowers is plenty of information. This is about actually doing a creative activity, rather than just talking about it.

Take the pledge. The vow you make to yourself and each other is that when you hang up the phone, you’ll immerse yourselves in the creative process. That means no checking email, no doing laundry, no making phone calls, no hopping up to let the dog in or out and no suddenly giving in to a strange urge to clean out your fridge—no procrastinating at all. You simply assure each other that this next chunk of time is yours to truly enjoy by diving into the creative flow.

Set the timer. You may be surprised by how quickly time flies when you have no distractions and have given each other permission to just focus on and enjoy the creative activity of your choosing. Setting a timer allows you to fully engage without checking the clock to see when your time is up.

End the date. When the agreed upon time is up, the other person calls back for a check-in. This is a good time to quickly report how it went for you and set your next date. After you hang up the choice is yours. If you have more time and are enjoying the creative flow by all means keep going! If not, you can feel good about the fact that you and your friend helped each other to enjoy some dedicated creative time. It’s easy, effective and fun.

Other great ways friends can support each other on their creative journey are to take a class together, join a writing, knitting, scrapbooking or other creative interest group or bring together a group of friends and hire a creativity coach for group coaching.

Creative Oasis Dates are so named because they’re like experiencing a blissful oasis in an otherwise busy schedule. Jill Badonsky, founder of Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching offers a free call she named Parallel Universe Time each week, when people from all around the world call in to support each other in their quest to dedicate time to their creative passions.

Jill Allison Bryan is a certified master level Kaizen-Muse creativity coach, founder of Creative Oasis Coaching and singer/songwriter. Learn more about her one-on-one creativity coaching, classes and workshops at CreativeOasisCoaching.com and her blog CreativeOasisCoaching.blogspot.com.