Juego

wishful thinking

Time Management

for Creative People
Manage the mundane - create the extraordinary Mark McGuinness www.wishfulthinking.co.uk @markmcguinness First published on www.businessofdesignonline.com

Some rights reserved
This e-book published by Mark McGuinness, London 2007 Text © Mark McGuinness 2007 This e-book is published under a Creative Commons licence which allows youto copy and distribute the e-book as long as you keep it intact in its original format, credit the original author and do not use it for commercial purposes.

Web: www.wishfulthinking.co.uk Blog: www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog E-mail: wish@wishfulthinking.co.uk

Important note about the illustrations The images in this e-book are licensed from www.istockphoto.com for use within this document.If you wish to use them elswhere you should obtain a licence from www.istockphoto.com Image credits: p.1 www.istockphoto.com/ldf p.4 www.istockphoto.com/demarco-media p.7 www.istockphoto.com/foued42 p.10 www.istockphoto.com/kativ p.14 www.istockphoto.com/claylib p.17 www.istockphoto.com/tmcnem p.21 www.istockphoto.com/ju-lee p.25 www.istockphoto.com/leggnet p.28 www.istockphoto.com/arlindo71This e-book contains no affiliate links.

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Contents
1. Why you need to be organised to be creative 2. Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’ 3. Ring-fence your most creative time 4. Avoid the ‘Sisyphus effect’ of endless to-do lists 5. Get things done by putting them off till tomorrow 6. Get things off your mind 7. Review yourcommitments 8. Resources to help you get things done 9. If you found this e-book helpful... 10. The author and publisher 4 7 10 14 17 21 25 28 31 32

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1. Why you need to be organised to be creative

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Gustave Flaubert So you start the day full ofenthusiasm. You’re excited about a new piece of creative work and itching to put your ideas into action. Firing up your computer, the familiar stream of e-mails pours into your inbox, burying the ones you didn’t get round to replying to yesterday. Scanning through the list, your heart sinks – two of them look as though they require urgent action. You hit ‘reply’ and start typing a response to one ofthem… 20 minutes later you ‘come round’ and realise you’ve got sucked into the e-mail zone and have been sidetracked by interesting links sent by friends, as well as writing replies about issues that aren’t a priority for you. You minimize the email window and get back to your project… After 15 minutes you’re really enjoying yourself, getting into your creative flow – when the phone rings.Somebody wants something from you. Something to do with a meeting last week. You rummage through the papers on your desk, searching for your notes. You can’t find them. Suddenly your heart leaps as you lift up a folder and find an important letter you’d forgotten about – it needed an urgent response, several days ago. ‘Hang on, I’ll get back to you’ you tell the person on the phone, ‘I’ll ring you backwhen I’ve found it’. You put the phone down and pick up

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Why you need to be organised to be creative

the letter – this needs sorting immediately, but you remember why you put it off – it involves several phone calls and hunting through your files for documents you’re not sure you even kept. By now, you’ve only got half an hour before yourfirst meeting and you’ve promised to ring that person back. . Your design stares at you reproachfully. The e-mail inbox is pinging away as it fills up – already there are more messages than before you started answering them. Your enthusiasm has nosedived and the day has hardly begun. Creative work seems like a distant dream. ... Is this a familiar scenario for you? Swap the design software for a...