Productivity and time management is important in your graphic design career. Increased productivity for a designer is increasingly needed. And now I am happy to share some tips on how to improve the productivity of work that is often used and is run by a professional graphic design workers, perhaps often unconsciously you ever experienced. You might find some tips that are similar to the work productivity tips from the designers or motivator.
Most of the design tips on the list can be applied and by creative people. I hope you find this useful series of tips and can help you shorten the time and of course to do even more. And of course I would love to hear about what technique do you use in work productivity. Please share it your experience through comments!
1. Planning
Planning is the best thing to save time and become more productive. You definitely have a lot of things you want to do, right? Start it as soon as possible! Now to think that in this way you will be able to do anything with faster and better. Wrong! You should spend more of your time to plan the most important thing to do, what is less important and then determine which jobs can not be postponed. I personally use planning and sketching before making any tutorials available on this blog. First, I made a simple sketch with a pencil in my favorite notebook, then gradually add detail, after correcting some errors and thats it! Much time is wasted in the design and experiment, but for composition and visual details can be saved.
2. Use the To-Do list
To-Do "list can help you to stay organized and focus only on important matters. It can also be a tool to remember the things that you usually forget to do it. I'm talking about small tasks such as telephone calls, e-mail replies etc. You can use real-post-it notes or a virtual (eg hottnotes).
3. Get rid of Distractions
Sometimes it is very difficult to start your job because of many distractions that consume time and attention. If you really want to be productive and focus at work, turn off your Skype! (or other applications that you use as a messenger). Even emails and facebook that provides updates every 5 minutes is your greatest enemy of productivity. Distractions may also form a TV, radio, or even family pets. So look for places where you can be comfortable and productive as possible and start working.
4. Make your self-discipline
Make a realistic form of discipline about what is more important, try to work on similar matters. For example, setting the time to check Facebook, Twitter and email account. Set a time limit to read blogs, news or other things that you like.
5. Don't work too much
Yes it sounds INSANE! but working with less time, you will be more productive and the quality of your work will always be in top condition. Do not try to work 12-18 hours / day because eventually you will be much slower, your mind will be somewhere outside of work and what is most alarming is the quality of your work will be lower. Research shows that working less than 6 hours in a day will make a person happier, more productive and healthy. Indeed, only few people can do it, but try. At a minimum it can reduce the burden of your work
6. Work in short time
I have read many articles about productivity and time management. I really liked the "25 minutes of work" technique. It begins with a period of 25 minutes, 30 minutes or 40 minutes and it works, you just need to focus on your work, yes I know it's hard, but then you will have adequate rest, drink a cup of water or breathe fresh air outside, wouldn't it motivate?
7. As stay focused on a single task (Serial)
If you have to make a business card, then Design it, but do not try to write a blog post or creating a logo at the same time, or you will do it with lower quality, and you will lose attention. In addition, you will spend more time doing tasks in parallel, because you spend a few seconds to switch from Photoshop to a text editor or the dashboard of the blog in your browser, etc.
8. Think about your goals
Before starting a job better think about the purpose of the most exciting and highly motivating you, for example you want to go on vacation to Bali so you think about sunlight, wind accompanied by a glass of juice, waves, relaxation massage and maybe you'll manipulate your mood into the scope of work and in the end you will be more productive.
9. Listen to music
Listening to music at work is not for everyone. This may apply if you are someone who likes listening to music while reading. The most important thing is that you must choose a genre that does not divert your attention to your design work. Music will help you to become more productive or creative (music that evokes passion and motivation). Personally I listen to rock music with enough volume.
10. Stay Organized
You are a designer, developer, illustrator, you're using resources. Textures, patterns, fonts, icons, vector, drawing pictures of all things that exist in your hard drive. Every time you try to find where they are and you'll spend a lot of time. Create a folder, such as Design, Code, Graphics, and put all files into that folder. Don't be too regulated, don't create too much folder, I guess it i sn't wise because you will only spend seconds to open and close the folder, seconds become a matter of minutes and even hours in the long term, for example you have ten folders that are useless, then you spend 0, 5 seconds to open each one and 0.5 to close it.
If you use them every day: 10 folders x 0.5 seconds x 2 x365 = ~ 1 hr / year just to open a single folder! (what?!) Think about this. If you need to create a shortcut on your desktop but again, don't be too excessive because you can simply make your favorite wallpapers covered, if possible, use a global keyboard shortcut to get into that folder, it's been a lot of software that cover this issue.
11. Use Templates
Do not try to create anything at any time. If you are a web designer create a blank psd templates in the same resolution, add the guidelines, grids, create groups and save them in PSD format for future projects. Think about how much time you spend every time you perform these tasks. Similarly, if you are a graphic designer, using a template is not something despicable or degrading the quality of your design. At least, the template that should be able to produce something different impression must be handled properly.
So what about you? What have you try to increase the productivity of your work as a designer? Please, share with us. :)
2 Comments
planning in creating graphic design is very important. so we can get the picture of our target.
ReplySincerely this post is what I need. I think I'm gonna print it and I'll try to do what are you saying here because I need to be more organized and to focus on what I need to do. And about music, I always listen to music when I'm doing something, especially rock or slow music.
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