Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Bruno Figueiredo

A small set of tips to, at least, enhance your multi-project work days & better enjoy your life.

#monitorman

I have not come here to gloat, in fact I’m actually more zero than hero in this area, but multi-tasking is, non the less, a giant part of my day in almost everything I do from drinking coffee while spreading butter in my toasts for breakfast to manage multiple side projects while I’m at work, and that’s why I’m writing this piece.

Currently I’m working as a Lead Graphic Designer for the marketing team at OutSystems, but just little over a year ago I was a freelance designer. Back the I had all the time in the world to do multiple projects without having to concern myself on how I managed my time. Those were simpler times… or at least that’s what they seem now, and the fact that I am now on a full time job has its perks, but has also an heavier time load, and I need to better manage it if I want to keep doing more than just my job.

So, how to manage this?

I don’t have a bullet proof method, and as I said before, I’m not even close to be close to what a Time Management guru is, but I want to share 5 of my top tips & experiences so that people that, like me, want to be able to keep up with a stable balance between work-life, passions & personal life (yes, it’s bonkers, I know), can do it in an easier way.

1 — You’re not a Time master, but you can master your time.

I’ve learned that booking specific times during the day (like really using a Google Calendar an booking a slot of time) to deal with different projects can make your life easier. Example being I have weekly and bi-weekly meetings to manage my side projects, but daily slots of 30min to 1h where I develop them.

With any luck your “work days” will eventually go from 12h to 8h and you’ll still have time to go to the catch a movie with your beloved girlfriend or boyfriend.

2 — Your time must be as fluid as water, and this is a good thing…

Ok. This isn’t actually a good thing if you can’t control it, but you do need to understand, nothing ever goes as planned, so you should also plan as you go. This isn’t a definitive truth, but you should always be aware that these times you book for your projects might not happen as accorded.

On a second note. If you ever feel like you can’t concentrate on your work and need an escape, you can always divert your creativity to your other projects, but you should manage those times you have previously thought out. This way you’ll never end up working too much on a side project and too little on your day to day job.

3 — It’s all about context switching (the most important thing for me).

There’s a reason that I am not a good “multi-tasker”:

I can’t really work on more than one thing a the same time, but I can think of four simultaneously.

This might be hard for some people, but for me it has been the cornerstone of my multi-project filled life.

Context switching is, for me, the most important tool for fast action, more than any task manager software or project templates. We live in a sped up world, where news are given at the second and, in my case, marketing work is done on a day to day fast track, where action-reaction moments happen every few hours. This means that being able to jump from designing a website, to prepare assets for a video animation, or even planning a 12 episode podcast to launch during 2018 (top secret project btw), is the type of essential skill needed on a XXI century workforce.

4 – Make sure you know where your stuff is!

I have a dichotomy of work-spaces organization.

My table is a mess! My notebooks are wretched (and I have at least 5 notebooks at the time) and all my sketches are spread around papers, napkins, old prints… but all of this doesn’t mean I don’t know where my things are. I know where I keep my drawings, where I’ve taken notes of said meeting or even which of my dozens of Magazines has that article that explains better what I want to do.

On my other work-spaces though, my digital desktops, you’ll find something like 2 to 3 folders, neatly organised and with the icon size set to as Big as possible. Inside those folders, projects can be found ordered with ID numbers or dates, clear titles and organized in a set of 3 folder for each and every project:

Assets — for every file, picture, font,… needed to do the job.
Dev — for every file I create in Illustrator, Photoshop or any other editing software for design, video or audio.
Final — for all my final artworks, so it’s easier to find these when in need.

Everyone has its own methods, but as I said at the beginning, you just need to know where your stuff is.

5 — New tools = new needs to evolve & adapt

I’m not on for saying things like: “I need nothing more than the tools I have.”

We’re at an age of fast development, which means every week or so there’s an exciting new tool, new software or new hardware for you to get fascinated by (I’m a gadget lover too, so keep with me).

I use mainly Adobe tools for my work (they are in fact market leaders for creative tools), but in the last few years I must have beta tested at least two dozens softwares for graphic development, video editing, animation, project management and so on. Some stayed with me, some not, but the constant urge and need to learn new things helped me keeping my ideas active. The same can be said for Hardware.

I’m an Apple fan but I work on a Windows laptop for a year now, and I have an iPhone & iPad but I love some android devices. These are just a few examples of how I learned that every tool or gadget can be a good tool for you, but this also means you should never say a hard NO without testing everything before.

Finally, I would like to leave you a list of a few gadgets and softwares I suggest for visual designers & project managers:

Bonus Point — Here come the clichés

To finish this list I just wanted to say one thing: There’s no such thing as one size fits all, and my solutions can easily not fit your work frames, but I hope these take outs can help you better manage your projects and creative moments.

Myself drawn on Paper by 53 w/ my Adonit Pixel

You can follow all my projects & work at:

culturartemag.com (Portuguese Cultural Magazine);
facebook.com/sofarsoundscoimbra (Secret concerts in Coimbra);
twitter.com/picriativo (Top Secret Podcast project to be released in April);
instagram.com/bfigas & figas.vsco.co (Where my inner photographer lives);

Can you even Multi-Task? was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can you even Multi-Task?

Cool stuff, every week

More Articles