Time Management Part 2

10 Ways to Improve Social Life

1. Go out with friends at least once in the week. 
2. Spend less time on Facebook or Twitter and actually try and phone some of my friends up for a chat. 
3. Try and find something new to do every week, even if it's just something small and simple. 
4. Try to find a dance class to attend in Leeds.
5. Explore Leeds more, instead of staying inside cooped up. 
6. Persuade my boyfriend to visit me in Leeds more often so we see each other more than once a week when I go home. I also want to make more of an effort to travel to any comedy gigs he has at the weekend. 
7. Talk to more people in the studio. 
8. When I'm home I want to spend more time with my family instead of in my room.
9. Organise a summer holiday with friends. 
10. Invite people over the flat more.

10 Ways to Improve Domestically

1. Always wash up my dishes after I've had my tea and not the next morning.
2. Make my tea earlier, instead of waiting until about 9 in the evening and making a half arsed attempt that I barely touch. 
3. Wednesday = Laundry day
4. Wake up earlier in the morning so that I have time to make myself presentable, instead of tumbling out of bed and into the first thing I find. 
5. Spend more time cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom.
6. Hoover every week.
7. Reorganise all of my papers and drawers every month and clear out anything I no longer need.
8. Try harder to get to sleep earlier in the night.
9. Wash my sheets every week.
10. Bake more.

10 Ways to Improve my Design Practice

1. Wake up earlier in the morning so I can reach college by 8.45/9ish, and then I have that time to blog and write a to do list for the day.
2. Review and evaluate the work I have done each day on my blog. 
3. Spend more time researching into briefs.
4. Spend more time in the library looking at the design magazines and books available. 
5. Develop my software skills by using online/magazine tutorials. 
6. Draw more. 
7. Avoid the internet unless for researching and blogging.
8. Structure my time designing so that I have half an hour of solid work and then a 5 minute break, and then get straight back to it instead of being distracted. 
9. Annotate blog posts before posting them instead of going back to it. 
10. Ask more questions in crits to get more informed feedback. 

Time Management Review

As Fred predicted it would, time management started off well, and my glass was very much half full. And now it has descended into a late night blog post attempting to catch up with this week, which has gone far too quickly. And the half full cup has now been completely emptied and replaced with something to numb the pain of being a failure.

The plan for Wednesday was
Get up
Get the bus
Go to the lecture
Type up lecture notes
Eat
Photograph Eve's work
Screenprint
Blog
Eat
Sleep


Photographing Eve's work took far longer than expected, and because I was using a DSLR I got caught up in the workings of it, which was more difficult than I thought when photographing a large space and trying to make it look professional. Again, I didn't get chance to screen print anything for mother's day, and had to opt for a conventional present leaving me with a sense of creative guilt. I also never got round to typing up my lecture notes, what little there was of them, because I want to go back to the presentation on moodle and research more online.


The plan for Thursday was
Get up
Get the bus
Work on stamp designs
Eat
In Design - Finish Eve's DPS
Stamp designs
COP Publication Research
Blog
Eat
Sleep

Thursday morning was the least productive I have ever felt in my entire life. I came in, with the full intention of coming up with if not an amazing clever life changing concept, at least a concept. Instead, I spent the morning complaining to Suzanne about environmentalism and staring at the mac screen in the hopes that an idea would flash up on google specifically for me. The afternoon was more productive and I managed to complete(ish) Eve's double page spread, and I was actually really happy with it.
Then I tried again with the stamp designs, and had the same amount of success as the morning. Only as I was about to leave did I have the vaguest sense of an idea which I've developed tonight. Very disappointing levels of productivity for definite. Never wanted to punch my laptop screen more.

The plan for tomorrow is
Get up
Pack
Get the bus
Get in for 9
Print off concept boards
Prepare design sheets for crit with Jo.
Jo's crit at 11
Lunch
Prepare for Amber's crit
Have crit
Get the train home
Unpack
Spend 20 minutes maximum practicing the drums before panicking about annoying my drum teacher with my lack of commitment and technical skill
Go to my boyfriends
Watch Fringe
Sleep

Time Management - Review Day 1

Here was my plan that I made for myself yesterday to put into action today...

• Get up
• Get ready
• Get the bus
• Sign in, get a brew and get set up in studio 4
• Work in design principles and present the what is a line research to the class
• Eat
• Research into the COP publication brief
• Blog COP lecture notes and work more on the blog task
• Research stamp design
• Go to Vernon Street to screen print a mother's day present.
• Eat
• Blog
• Watch Masterchef
• Sleep

Instead of researching to the COP publication brief, I spent my time researching the What is a Line brief, and also spent more time working on the stamp task than I originally set for myself, but I have managed to do some initial ideas, so I haven't wasted the time. Unfortunately I have failed to go screen printing and instead have been continuing work on my blog and the stamp brief. Hopefully tomorrow I can design something and then fit it in. 

My plan for tomorrow now looks like...

• Get up
• Get ready
• Get the bus
• Sign in, get a brew and go to the lecture
• Make notes in the lecture
• Upload lecture notes
• Eat
• Photograph Eve's work for the double page spread task
• Design something for screen print
• Go to Rossington to Screenprint
• Eat
• Blog
• Watch Masterchef
• Phone home and Darryl
• Watch more TV
• Sleep

Time Management

It's time for time management! YEY.

Fred had us use grids to create percentages of time we think we use on different activities during the week. It was actually really difficult thinking of 9 things, because at uni I seem to have become very boring and anti social, and I'm either in the studio or at home watching tv and eating my tea. I also learnt how off kilter my time management is. My 2 main activities were sleeping (33%) and watching TV (29.2%), and then university work took up about 23.9% of my time. Because I have been spending more time in the studio however, I'm not going to beat myself up too much about my apparent laziness because I tend to keep on top of everything.

Fred then asked us to categorise our activities by domestic, social and BAGD related. 

My lists included Researching, workshops, crits, and blogging (BAGD related), cooking, cleaning, travelling, food shopping (domestic) and drumming, baking, meals out and spending time with loved ones (social). 

We then used the 3 other grids to time how long we spent on these activities in each of the categories. Again, I found that I spent most time of either social or domestic activities, which was surprising as some times it feels like I'm in the studio all the time. 

Now we are being encouraged to write daily plans and to do lists for the week to record what we plan to do and what actually gets done, which I have already found quite useful, despite the very long list, putting aside specific times for them should hopefully be more manageable, and like in high school revision (not that I practiced it then), dividing it up into bite size chunks will make it seem less scary. I hope. 

My plan for tomorrow Tuesday 13th goes a little something like this...

• Get up
• Get ready
• Get the bus
• Sign in, get a brew and get set up in studio 4
• Work in design principles and present the what is a line research to the class
• Eat
• Research into the COP publication brief
• Blog COP lecture notes and work more on the blog task
• Research stamp design
• Go to Vernon Street to screen print a mother's day present.
• Eat
• Blog
• Watch Masterchef
• Sleep

I'm positive I can stick to my plans, but we shall see tomorrow when I record just exactly what did get done.