I’m gonna give away 5 tshirts to random commenters on this blog post. Since this blog only has 2 readers, if you’re reading this the odds are pretty good you’ll get one. So get in there and leave me some comment lovin.

We’re The Ones We’re Waiting For
~Tom Kemmer

My studiomate scrawled that on the walls of our studio. I’m not sure where it came from, or what he was referring to. I am struck by it’s truthfulness and pointedness.

I managed to get get through college. I got exceptional grades, studied a wide range of topics and overall was the picture of success. When I got done with school I waited tables, sold coffee, and did random menial jobs. There was a disconnect for me. Even though my collegiate career had been a success, I for some reason was convinced that other people were supposed to get the cool jobs and lives, and I was supposed to grumble about how other people got the cool jobs and lives. I hit the mid-twenties rut and I wallowed in it. I wish that I remembered what it was that turned it around for me, but at some point I remember thinking, “Someone out there gets to do all this cool shit during the day. They wake up, go to a cool job, work on fascinating creative things, and then go home to happy, interesting, and fulfilling lives. They ride vintage Vespas and travel to exotic locales. They are valued for the merit of their ideas, and not just their ability to show up for work.” What does that dude have that I don’t? Actually as it turns out, quite a bit. But it was all attainable through our good friend the internet, and Barnes & Nobles.

So, I downloaded free software trials. I bought books. I hacked my way through tutorials. I learned the skills that I knew those happy dudes had. I got 2 internships, and worked my ass of for free, while waiting tables at night and on the weekends. I made projects for imaginary companies to build a portfolio. This is not the most efficient way to achieve your goals. In hindsight – I should have asked more people for help. They’re out there waiting for you to ask. But regardless – brute force and persistence is all you really need to get to where you want to go. Brute Force Creates Momentum.

How does this translate? I was reading Seth Godin’s blog the other day, and happened on this post called Graduate School for the Unemployed. He proposes a list of things that unemployed college grads could be doing with their time to give them the additional experience they need to succeed in the work force. I’d take it a step further. Picture not the kind of career you’d like to have – but the kind of life you’d like to have and make this same kind of list. Then… and here’s the rub… here’s what people forget to do…. do those things. Every single day, work on something that is on that list. Momentum will follow.

“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do”
~ Oscar Wilde

I’ve been doing the self employed thing for almost 2 years now. The question I hear the most is “How do you get anything done? I’d just sit around all day and eat popsicles.” Ok – so maybe they don’t mention popsicles. As time goes, I find myself getting more and more productive, and constantly finding ways to be more efficient. Part of it is practice, part of it is a little bit of research. Here’s how a normal day breaks down, this could apply to you whether you’re a designer or not.

Step 1: Wake up. Drink Coffee.

I don’t mess with this step. Ever. Period.

Step 2: Triage

I scan all email and decide if there’s anything on fire. If the internet has blown up, I like to go ahead and deal with that right away. Or if a client has forgotten an ad submission deadline and it needs to be dealt with immediately – it’s good to be on top of those things right away.

Assuming there are no catastrophes to deal with, I sort my email and assign things to iGTD. iGTD is a great, free little software app to keep track of all the things that you need to do. You can take it to obscene levels of detail – or if you’re like me, you can use it as a quick and easy way to create todo lists. It’s got great key shortcuts – so if I’m reading an email that needs me to do something I hit F6, and that email is copied to iGTD and added to my todo list. Same goes for web browsing, if I find something that is interesting and requires more attention F5 copies it to my iGTD.

Step 3: Hierarchy

After skimming my email and assigining todos to iGTD – I take a look at all the things sitting in my iGTD todo list. It’s got things from the days or weeks before that I haven’t yet accomplished. I spend 10-15 minutes assigning priorities for things.The goal of this step is to identify the 4 things that I absolutely want to finish today.  Everything else after those four things is gravy. This cuts down on wasted time waiting for assets, or trying to decide what I’m in the mood to do.  It’s surprising how little of that I used to do. I would just start working and hop from one thing to another. I’d finish working when I was exhausted or pulled away. Now I have a really strong idea of what things need to get done, and what things can be scheduled for later dates. This has really helped on the work life balance.

I should emphasize, having things scheduled and recorded will do leaps and bounds for your peace of mind. It allows me to relax into the work, and not worry so much about the business side of things, while I’m trying to do creative or productive work.

Step 4: Stay On Top Of It

Throughout the day emails come in, and phone calls get made. I try not to tarry too long on any one email unless it requires immediate attention. Generally things just get tossed into the iGTD bucket and I forget about them until after lunch. With a few hours left of the day, it’s a great time to spend 5 minutes reevaluating the list and identify what needs to happen for the rest of the day, and tomorrow.

Step 5: Track Your Time

I used to be notorious for not tracking my time. No longer. Detailed time tracking allows me to make accurate estimates and put together work plans that actually make sense. Organizing your self isn’t going to do squat if all of your estimates suck. I’m still not a stickler, but I do try and keep up on it.

Using software makes it a lot easier to track your time. The key is to make it fit into your workflow without constricting your workflow. I like Bkeeneys Time Tracker (link), and have also used Time Edition (link). Both are great simple solutions that allow you to track Project, Client, and Activity.

I should mention, I’ve also used and appreciated Harvest (link). It’s an entire invoicing and time tracking solution. They are really great guys and the software rocks. If you’ve got more complicated book keeping needs, it’s not the right solution. If you’ve got a handful of clients and projects running at any one time – it’s a fantastic solution.

Step 6: Relax

That’s basically it. There’s a final step that involves getting those hours and transferring them to your invoicing system or project management system, but that’s more about business process than it is about productivity.

Bite the bullet. Spend a month using this process and it will eventually become a habit. You’ll find you do more during the day, and have more free time to show for it.

Anybody have any suggestions? Tips? Tricks?

Need more inspiration? Check out 45 Royale. They’re a great design and dev company with a whole series on project management that’s really helped me. Check out their post on time tracking.

The video dawdles on until he gets to his point, which I think is probably fine for his audience. Upon building 1000 people watching his broadcast he goes into his pitch, which is obviously scripted but not painfully so. The campaign itself sounds interesting, utilizing user generated content to build a awarness campaign. That seems like the best approach – illicit user generated content, then use experts to craft that content into something coherent and polished. I have no doubt that it will make a great video piece, and the corporate sponsorship will certainly help hungry people. I’m not dogging the effort by the people involved here – even Ashton Kutcher is donating social capital – but we can create marketing campaigns and donate cash until there are piles of organic veggie dogs on every street corner. Until there’s a cohesive plan to battle the root causes of hunger people will still go hungry (Sorry about the soapbox rant).

What are the implications of this kind of effort for us normal folks? How do we translate these new communications venues into practical vehicles to aid and promote our own projects? More on this later, need to get some work done.

The conference itself was great. They did a nice job putting it together. There was decent food, a constant supply of coffee, and snacks. A nice tshirt, and an afterparty with an open bar – all for $30! Defintiely a worthwhile experience. If I was uber motivated I’d look into organizing one in the Twin Cities… hmmmmm….

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.
~ Billy Joel

Before we start – Yes I did just quote Billy Joel. You want to make something of it?

There’s a fine line that designers and working creative types everyone needs to walk. How much or how little of yourself to invest in your work. Invest too little of yourself and obviously your work will suck. That’s true of designers, developers, accountants, circus jugglers who ever. It takes a certain amount of personal investment to do any job well. But… what about being to personally invested?

Me, I’m a pretty passionate guy. When I like things – I generally really like them. When I design stuff, I put a lot of heart and guts and sweat into it.  Every single time.  That’s how I’m hard wired. It’s a good trait.  Most of the time. Sometimes it bites me in the ass. The single hardest lesson for me to learn as a designer was to not take my work to personally.

At first it was the rejections.

As a rough estimate, I present 3 design solutions to any 1 project. 2 out of the 3 don’t make the cut.As a junior designer I was often only responsible for 1 of 3 comps presented to a client.  At the time I was a pretty crappy designer, so I didn’t expect my comps to make it very far in the process. And they didn’t.  I’d go months without an original Reid idea getting produced. But as I got a little better I was soon putting together a set of different comps for the client, and they would choose one path out of 3-4 options.  That means that every project I worked on, the client was vetoing 66% of my work. After hundreds of projects that works out to multiple hundreds of designs that went straight into the crapper. That’s a lot of rejection to deal with. Now some of that work would resurface in other projects, or multiple designs would morph into new versions, so it’s not all lost work. But at it’s heart this business is about the magic third.

If you can detach yourself and come to terms with the fact that a lot of what we do is process and not product, the better designer you’ll be. I see a lot of young designers latch onto an idea or concept and struggle with it until they drown. They get personally attached to that idea, and it’s failure =’s their failure. They can’t see past it, and therefore don’t get to where they need to be.

If you’re free to let your ideas succeed or fail without it being a direct reflection of your personal success or failure – you’re going to be a lot happier. It will make you more open to criticism.  If you’re personally tied to a piece, you won’t hear “This is a good start, but we need to change this and this and we can leverage this concept over here.” Instead you hear, “You’re a sucky designer, that sucks balls, and you’ll never make a living, and you’ll starve and you’re fat.”

I guess my point is this.

There’s no crying in baseball.

I will be holding down one of the spots at the Genius Bar for an hour. I plan to be humbled quickly – but hopefully I might learn a few things and pick up some new tricks.

Post Wordcamp I’ll be spending a few days in sunny Santa Cruz, hopefully get a chance to drown myself on a trainer surfboard and eat some good food.