Time Management for Creative People: Manage the mundane – create the extraordinary.

Manage the mundane – create the extraordinary. I smile every time I read that line. It’s empowering.

Eight weeks ago, Mark McGuinness started a series on time management for creatives (that’s us) at Business of Design online.

For eight weeks, I faithfully posted my struggles on DWB.

Now that it’s done, I can truthfully say it’s an excellent way to learn how you really manage your time. By being accountable.

If you are a designer who blogs. A designer holding down a day job. Who knows, you might benefit from this method as well.

Mark’s Free e-book from the series, Time Management for Creative People can now be downloaded from Business of Design online.

Enjoy.
I did.

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Ok, I fess. Perhaps it’s not as long as should be could be.

But, after throwing a pity fit last week, I’m growing excited about the progress made since taking on Mark’s Time Management series.

I’m a workaholic. I’m used to waking my computer around 5am or earlier. And shutting down around 11pm or later. Weekends and holidays. Trains, planes, cars and hotel rooms.

Bouncing through the back roads of Kenya found me with laptop on my lap. Praying my battery would hold out.

Bali was one of the few holidays where my computer was quiet. Reason? Being exhausted from the overwork it took just to take the time off, I slept through most of the trip.

But now, learning how time management works for me, I’m pushing myself away from the keys most evenings and larger chunks of my weekends.

An unexpected plus? I’m sleeping longer.

An unexpected minus? Because I’m sleeping longer, my back feels like it’s breaking in two.

No matter.

I’m gaining more free time by weaning myself away from emails (mostly) at night and (mostly) during the weekends. Two weekends so far.

Mostly, not completely. Some replies need to be made. And others, well, I’m just made that way.

It feels great.

And it feels lonely sometimes.

And I bet you are wondering how I did it.

By taking Mark’s advice in Get Things Done by Putting Them Off Till Tomorrow.

Mark suggests taking emails from today, and placing them into a folder for tomorrow.

That didn’t work for me in the exact same way as I’m a ‘out of sight, out of mind’ type of lass.

How do I know?

Because I tried it last year. I put all my URGENT emails into their own folder. And there they sat.

I believe they were still there when my macmail went down. Swallowing them alive.

So what I did was tweak Mark’s advice to develop my own version of putting emails off to tomorrow (and further).

Batching it, I go through emails and:

1. trash
2. mark as spam, then trash (this happens rarely with gmail)
3. answer the quickies (one sentence responses), then trash or label and archive
4. answer urgent, then label and archive (unless I need a visual reminder in my inbox)
5. leave in inbox if the response will take more time
6. without reading (so they still have screaming bold and black text) if it’s a batch response I label and archive

By leaving unanswered emails in the inbox, I know what I need to get back to at some point.

And if I’m snowed under, I have the 50 rule. If my inbox has reached 50 unanswered emails, I try to make the time to answer soon. Or then. Depending.

What works for me might not work for you. Taking the time to read Mark’s well written post Get Things Done by Putting Them Off Till Tomorrow could save you time. It has for me.

My responses to Mark’s weekly questions:

What difference would it make to your work if you knew every morning how much work you had to get through that day?

It would be a dream. I still have too many outside distractions taking me away from my work. It’s getting less, but as it’s only been a week I’m keeping to the ‘I’ll have to wait and see’ of the past five weeks.

Apart from ‘do it tomorrow’ how else could you create ‘buffers’ between incoming demands and your response?

Good question. I’m still at the mercy of workmen (as well as other non email distractions). If I don’t make time to go with their schedule, things don’t get done (delivered, fixed, created).

I’m told a reno is like that. That life feels like it’s always going to be chaos.

But, the dust has settled. The reno to-do list is shrinking to a short list. My time will come.

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Well, it’s Monday. The fourth Monday of the forth week of actively working on Mar’s Time Management series. And since it’s after 6pm, it’s been Monday all day for me. A Monday of two steps forward one step back.

I won’t bore you with the details. But, I will say that Tuesday will be spent trying to do what Monday should have done.

I’m just grateful I’ve been able to use Mark’s series to work though this mess.

After this, I should be able to handle a tornado coming through my head with both left and right sides playing patty cake.

Mark makes two points in his recent post, Avoid the Sisyphus Effect of Endless To-do Lists, that speak to my Monday(‘s’ as in plural).

1) You need to install a buffer between others’™ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.

2) You need to find a way of fulfilling your commitments and giving others what they need from you within a reasonable timescale. Otherwise you’ll quickly gain a reputation for unreliability and pay the penalty.

Needs. Yeah. I have needs. They have needs.

And I’ll be right there next week when Mark reveals how to balance my need number one with need number two.

In the meantime, I’d like this Monday to be over. Like, yesterday.

My responses to Mark’s weekly questions:

What effect do interruptions have on your creativity?

I get cranky. Just like today.

Do you recognise the Sisyphus effect? What does it do to your motivation levels?

What motivation?

Today I had eleven things on my list. All eleven were doable. Due to day long snafus, only three were x’d off.

Half of those were left over from last week. The half still on the list.

So, what started out as this morning as YEAH I have a list!! and Yeah! I’m organised! has changed to unmentionable mumbles.

My personal motivation levels at this moment?
Low. Very low.
I’m wondering what on my list I can make do without.

What difference would it make to your working life if being derailed by others’ demands was the exception rather than the rule?

After the last couple of weeks, I’d say early retirement would be in the cards.

Note: I can’t blame it all on other peeps. I’m at least partially to blame in this mix of a mess this past week.

BUT, I can blame at least 90% on the reno progress, the computer shop, the postal system, the traffic, the water delivery people, the lack of sleep …

What difference would this make to your creativity?

What creativity? :-D

(I’m not whining. Honest. Well. Ok. Maybe just a bit)

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Last week when I responded to Mark’s post, Prioritise Work That is ‘Important But Not Urgent’, I shared an ah, ha! moment.

The ‘room at the top of the stairs’ moment.

This week, I’m reaping the rewards.

Mostly.

Enthusiasm aside. ‘The chores can wait’ aside. It’s going to take awhile to absorb skills needed to deal with new distractions.

For instance, I get thirsty.

Yes, I know. We all get thirsty so please bear with me …

I head for the kitchen where the watercooler is. By the patio door. So far, so good. But today, I took a right turn out the door to answer a buzzing dryer. Half hour disappears. I have clothes folded, a new lot in the washer and dryer. And the mail read.

(note to self: turn off buzzer)

Or how about making a cuppa.

Once more, I head for the kitchen. I glance outside. A plant needs rescuing. The next hour? Spent repotting plants, pointing a hose at the green and enjoying cool water on my feet.

(is there such a thing as mid-life ADD?)

Ok, it’s clear I need to concentrate on better time management. But first, I need to finish this post.

In his latest post, Mark shows us how to Ring-fence Your Most Creative Time by grabbing the choice time of day for ourselves.

If you’ve read the above, you’ll notice I have no qualms about grabbing time.

And as a third child of two brothers and only daughter of daughter-doting parents, I love the idea of spoiling myself (surprise!) by ring-fencing quality time.

Mark is suggesting something similar to taking the juiciest, ripest piece of Durian. And keeping it all for myself.

All mine.

So instead of giving away precious time, I now have permission to snatch it for mine.

That, I like.

Ok, so I’m grabbing spots of time for myself. Constructive time. Quality time. I’m sitting in front of the computer. Fingers ready to go. Now what?

To get the flow going, Mark suggests ring-fencing your attention by using triggers to get yourself in the right state of mind¯.

Triggers for designing I have.

Butt on chair, computer, software, sketch pad, design brief = disappearing into design mode for hours.

Until it gets dark. Or my stomach growls. Or my eyes burn. Or I’m interrupted by a human form nudging me back into now.

What I don’t have triggers for is writing. I have a stubborn child fussing, fighting and whining. And I have excuses. Lots of excuses.

I need to buck up. Shape up. I’m still in need of that plan.

“Maybe you have a special place you go to for focused creative work – a secluded office, a particular chair, a seat in your favourite café. Or you may have a favourite notebook, pen, software application or make of computer – using other tools doesn’t feel quite right. Once you get into the habit of using these triggers, they form a kind of ritual, or process of self-hypnosis if you like, to help you reach that state of focused absorption Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘creative flow’.”¯

Ok, I’ve located my ‘room at the top of the stairs’. It’s now in the ‘room in the middle of the hall’.

But yesterday (a longer story than this so forgive if I pass on the telling) I learned I can’t always be there.

That sometimes it will just have to be on the sofa. Or maybe outside with the birds. Or, stretching to the realities of living, on a plane or in a hotel room.

So what I need is a common trigger.

Music might work.

Google, google, google …

Ah, Amazon.com to the rescue.

Nice. I’ll give it a try and get back to you.

Additional suggestions from Mark:

• Turn off mobile phone
• Put landline on answer phone
• Close email applications
• Listen to music

Suggestions anyone?

Catherine (cat) Morley
Project Manager

As promised, my answers to Mark’s questions:

When is your most creative time, when you are most alert and find it easy to focus?

When the caffeine kicks in. When I’m rested. On a second wind. Or a third wind.

If you could arrange your ideal schedule, what time would you ring-fence for focused creative work?

Before this series started the answer would be morning. No longer. Now I’m not convinced afternoon isn’t my best time. I’ll make a note to take notes and I’ll check back next week.

How close to your ideal schedule can you get within the constraints of your current situation?

Spot on as my schedule is in control. Or something is anyway.

Do you have a special place for creative work?

Well, as mentioned, I now have a ‘room in the middle of the hall’ to deviate from distractions.

So yesterday, when I went in to write this post, I turned on the computer. and wandered off into a site design.

Today, after going off on various distractions, I finally settled down on the sofa (away from all that lovely design software). Typing typing happily away.

This is going to take some work.

What physical triggers (such as pens, paper, computer hardware or software), rituals or routines do you use to get yourself in the right state of mind?

I don’t have any triggers for writing at this time. I’m a fresh slate. In the coming week I’ll play around with music to see how that goes.

Oh, one trigger I know works. Sometimes. Guilt. Yes, guilt sometimes works.

And this post proves it.
Ta da!

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What if you lived in a country without live music, libraries, decent bookstores or shopping. Or, forget decent, any art museums at all.

And what if this country was on an island (Borneo), where getting anywhere else (anywhere else = offstation) was an effort as well as an expense. And what if it was the norm to have help (help = amah) live in to cook, clean, iron, take care of house guests and additional staff, and look after the garden.

And what if you lived there nine years.

And if, during that time, you learned the how-tos of the design industry. How to: market your business, manage your work flow, handle delicate staffing problems, deal with demanding clients, work with printers as well as other professions. And, of course, the how-tos of design.

How much would you accomplish during your day?

A lot.

Then, what if you moved to one of the most exciting cities on earth?

Bangkok.

And what if there were no more live in amahs. Instead, what if there was live music, Quiz Nights, large Contract Bridge venues, accessible books, unlimited shopping, weekly foot massages, a new language and culture to discover.

What if all of this was available not by going offstation, but by walking out the front door and hopping into a roaming tuk tuk.

How much work would you accomplish?

Not a lot.

Not without fine-tuning the way you work.

Sure, in preparation for an increased workload I planned ahead. Taking a year plus, last year I got rid of unnecessary responsibilities. This year, even more.

Apparently, not enough.

This year I couldn’t work out why I was struggling so much. Not until this week. Not until I got to Mark’s second post in his Time Management series.

It took Mark’s series for me to realize the blindingly obvious. By exchanging my quiet island living for the beautiful chaos of Thai living, I had moved into just that: beautiful management chaos.

And I hadn’t factored in the biggest factor of all. The room at the top of the stairs.

Stripped down to the basic facts, bouncing from Brunei to Bangkok does not lack of management make. It’s because, previously, all I did was walk up to the home office at the top of the stairs. Shut the door. And get on with it. The amah did the rest.

While learning the design industry on the island of Borneo, I didn’t need to learn how to juggle work with cooking and dishes and cleaning and laundry and ironing. Chores that pile high if ignored.

I’m sure you live in a Bangkok of your own, so you already know where I’m going with this.

Bangkok is not Borneo.

Now, on top of work, I’m jumping up to put a load of laundry in the wash, running the dishwasher and emptying when done, making beds, folding towels, cooking dinner, shopping, arranging for workmen, cleaning kitty litter, feeding cats and gluing on their nails.

And all when I should be working.

Forget finding real time for myself – reading, painting, sculpting, learning the Thai language and the craft of writing – there is no organised free time.

Clearly, I need help.

I need better time management.

In Mark’s second post, Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’, he explained “the value of ring-fencing time for your own creative work, in the midst of more urgent demands”¯.

To ring-fence his passions Mark became an early riser. This gave him extra time to start a Wishful Thinking, editing Magma, writing poetry and achieving a Masters. Impressive.

Quoting from Mark, “Yet when I look back over the last couple of years, the time when I’ve created most value, for myself and my clients, has been those first hours of the day I’ve spent writing blog posts, essays, seminars and poems. It’s the creative wellspring that feeds into all the coaching, training, presenting and consulting I do when I’m face-to-face with clients.”

I’m an insomniac, so getting up earlier won’t work for me. My bad days don’t come one at a time, they bring company: they come in twos and threes and sometimes stay for a week. When this happens, I compensate by sleeping all I can. When I can.

So instead of waking early, I’ll compromise by keeping my mornings for serious brain usage. For learning time.

No more distractions. No more detours. No more reading forums and blogs and answering emails while drinking the first cuppa.

And clearly, I need to find another room at the top of the stairs¯.

A room where I just close that door behind me and get on with it.

The chores can wait.

Catherine (cat) Morley
Project Manager

As promised, my answers to …

Mark’s Time Management Questions

Think of the achievements you are most proud of, and that have added most value to your life and work. When you were working on them, how many of them fell into the ‘important but not urgent’ category?

NO!SPEC
Urgent and important (ongoing urgencies continue)

Creative Latitude
Important but not urgent (on going project)

Business of Design online
Important but not urgent (mostly not urgent)

DWB (Designers who Blog)
Difficult. I’m proud of DWB. Maybe it’s not as important as the others, but it’s important to me.

How do you feel at the end of a day where you have made even a little progress towards a cherished goal?

edited: Instead of feeling grumpy (like if it was hadn’t made even a little progress), I’d feel slightly more at ease with the process.

How do you feel at the end of a day that has been totally swamped by others’ demands and urgent tasks?

Irritated. Angry. Grouchy. Out of sorts.

What difference would it make to your life if you devoted more of your time to ‘important but not urgent’ work?

I’ll have to work on that and get back to you. But, I’m assuming I’ll be less stressed from not having to rush around. I’ll certainly feel less guilty because I won’t be failing myself.

Thanks Mark. As I’ve been too busy making busy, I don’t think I would have realised my basic problem this soon. Now off I go, to prioritise and ring-fence my week by deciding what’s urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important.

What about you?

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As mentioned in my intro post, Getting My Creative Butt Organised, every Monday I will answer Mark’s questions from his Time Management series on Business of Design online.

From Mark,

So, … paraphrasing from Mark’s first post in the series – The opposite of concentration is distraction, which brings on interruptions, turning into frustration. And around it goes.

I wanted to see how many distractions happened naturally, so I let them flow with interruptions. The frustrations came later.

Let’s see … I work out of a home office, so in addition to work I have normal interruptions: Tea drinking, friends calling, cats wanting (but not needing) to be fed, a bed to be made, clothes to be picked up, laundry to be filled and emptied and folded, dishwasher to be emptied and filled again. Oh, and the post arrived with four expected packages that I just HAD to open, sprinkling foam peanuts around the house needing to be picked up before the cats hid them in and under furniture. On the plus side, I didn’t allow myself to sit down with the two tempting books from amazon. No. I opened their packages and placed them on the sofa. Where they still lay. Waiting.

The work side of my day: I try to keep my morning free to concentrate on writing, but this morning it didn’t stick. Not all the way anyway. But, even with my moving slow (I’m an insomniac and last night was one of ‘those’ nights) I settled in from a week off, wrote three posts, sorted code problems, answered emails and arranged a loose schedule for the rest of the week.

Now to get to those answers ….

Mark’s Time Management Questions

What is your attitude to organising your creative work? Do you see organisation as soulless, uncreative routine or as a necessary, helpful part of your creative process?

It’s my nature to control, so I enjoy organising myself as well as others. So much so, I can get wrapped up in the process (just ask the gang at Creative Latitude and Business of Design online :-)

When I’m organised, creativity flows. If I take on a project and start laying out the schedule, the creative angles appear in their own time. For instance, when I get the project brief I’m already thinking of design ideas. The research brings more ideas. The need for specific design layouts (web, print, etc) tightens it even more. Then, it’s clear what I need to do and at what time (project brief, research, design layout, etc). Take out proper communication, a decent project brief and adequate research (all reflecting needed organisation), and justice won’t be done to the project.

What effect does feeling muddled and disorganised have on your creativity?

When I’m not in control I stagnate. I lose sight of what should be important, at times wasting time on what’s not important – the fiddly side projects.

Today I worked without a to-do list and found myself jumping up from my work to do chores, going off into a different projects (emails, answering blog conversations, cleaning my desktop) and making excuses. I’m not saying the emails and blog conversations are not important. They are. But in their own time.

Which areas of your work would you like to be more organised about?

Let’s see … emails are a problem (I feel I need to keep tighter control on the subject). Coming up with a doable schedule is another. Prioritising, well, that’s a third.

What do you like about chaos? Where in your work do you want to give chaos and randomness free rein?

Even though I enjoy chaos when I’m designing, it can take over when I’m in business mode.

On the creative side: Mark has just introduced chaos into the equation which has thrown me off. Can losing myself in design be called chaos? In a way, yes. Causing chaos to a strict schedule anyway, but not chaos to the design process. When designing, I jump from one design to another (at times, not always). So, can chaos = creativity? Sure. As long as it includes randomness and free rein.

On a project management side: When I give chaos its head, the opposite is generally the case as chaos makes a mess of control. Loss of control equals loss of time equals loss of revenue.

Well, that’s it for this week. I’m already looking forward to Mark’s next post in his Time Management Series. How about you?

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