When I started getting so much work that I needed more advanced scheduling tools, I started using Google Calendar (synced between iCal and my iPod Touch) and OmniFocus. It was through OmniFocus that I started to adopt Getting Things Done (GTD) practices, and eventually adopted the GTD methodology completely.

I still used the calendar though- I used to sit down and plan out my days and weeks using the calendar. I’d assign blocks of time to different parts of a project or to different clients; two hours on a Tuesday morning to fix a reoccurring issue with the CMS; four hours to implement a certain part of a project; etc. Then within this time block, I’d go through the tasks in OmniFocus, relating to the task at hand.

The problem with the Calendar

What I found though, was that there was a huge amount of time wasted between time blocks. If I finished something sooner than I should have, I inevitably wasted the remaining time, a sort of reward for being productive. I didn’t necessarily do this deliberately, it just happened, as these things do.
I identified the calendar as the problem- I had conditioned myself to follow the calendar regardless, even if it meant I was actually unproductive rather than productive. The calendar gave me an excuse to spend the last twenty minutes reading the latest news articles.

The change

Earlier this year, I switched from using an old G5 to a nice shiny Macbook Pro. This portability offered me new working options. After a particularly warm summer which resulted in a particularly warm office, I started working from my home office, as I had previously done, prior to moving to my office.

Since I was no longer doing a strict(ish) 9.30am to 6.00pm work schedule, I found that the calendar wasn’t really necessary. I looked at all my projects from a long term perspective- when was the project deadline- and then split the projects into different groups of tasks. If, on Monday, I had five separate groups of tasks to complete a project by next Monday, I did one of these five groups every day of the week. I didn’t worry about how long it would take, I just did it.

I should mention that when I had previously written about working out costs- a part of this was keeping track of how much time different elements, of a project, take to complete. I still keep track of the time it takes to complete the different elements, so I am aware of any issues arising from spending too much time on a certain element of the project. This only happens when I am working on something new- I’d always spend less time completing tasks than what I would have estimated.

The benefits

Splitting projects into groups of tasks meant that if I decided to do two task groups on Tuesday, I could rearrange my other task groups and get the job done sooner than the deadline. Sometimes planets would align, I would become super-productive and knock out a heap of work. This doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does, it’s good to have a system that encourages rather than stifles a burst of productivity.

If you don’t work for yourself, perhaps there’s less motivation to adopt a task-based process, but if you are self-employed, one aspect of the Getting Things Done methodology that hits home, so to speak, is the idea that you shouldn’t distinguish between work tasks and tasks outside of your work. If I finish my work tasks early, I have time to do other stuff- my work days are no longer blocks of eight hours, they are days of tasks to complete.

If I finish my work early, I have time to do other stuff in my life, which are just as important as my work- they mightn’t bring in a paycheque but they help keep me happy and content, encouraging more productive and ultimately better work for my clients.

I like getting things done

I haven't looked at my calendar in months, I love the freedom I now have and feel that I have become more productive now that I am no longer confined to a series of immovable timeframes- I have a deadline and I know what has to be done. Simples.

I have been working on a blog post about Getting Things Done for a number of months, if you constantly have the feeling of not being able to finish or achieve anything, it's definitely a clever psychological tool to help you get things done, check it out.

There comes a point in a project where everything is set up, you have the website checked and double checked, it works perfectly in every browser, there's no broken links and the CMS works like a charm. Now how do you hand over the important details to the website owner/administrator? On any project, I could easily have login details for the CMS admin area, email administration, Google Analytics and any social network accounts that I created for the project

Nearly all contact that I have with my clients is in electronic form- we send emails back and forth, we use Basecamp, invoices are even being sent via email. The issue I have with sending important details via email is that it can be deleted easily, sending the client back to me, looking for their details again or the more extreme case, interception by shady government operatives. It's just a chance I can't take.

I have been thinking about this problem for a while now and the solution I came up with was to produce a small booklet that can be handed over to the client at the end of the project. It had to be small enough that it wouldn't be such a nuisance that it would not be used, yet significant enough so that it wouldn't be easily lost. I also thought that it would be a good opportunity to include some important information on things like the best browser to use and contact details for my business. Most of this information is stuff that is the same for each project, so I was happy compiling a single generic booklet to be adapted for each client.

Above is a photo of the current booklet and I refer to it as 'current', as it is a work in progress. With a lot of these things, they have to be adjusted and improved over time and with use. I decided to create a design that works on a single, double-sided A4 sheet. All I have to do is print out the artwork (with the correct details), cut it in half and staple the two parts together to form a booklet. I've posted a photo of the parts, before stapling, below.

The contents of each page, 1 to 8, is as follows:

1. Cover,
2. Introduction,
3. Recommended Browser,
4. Updating website through Administration area,
5. Email Accounts,
6. Social Network accounts,
7. Google Analytics info,
8. Help and Contact Details.

There's loads of room for extra information, as needed. I'll do a revise in a couple of months, once I've distributed enough of them to get some feedback.
As always, I'm curious to see what other people do. Please let me know and I'll compile a follow-up post.

When I initially meet prospective clients, I only want to know one thing about their planned project- what is the purpose of their unborn website and what do they want to do with it. For smaller businesses and organisations, this is not often thought about. When I ask, I get answers like "we want a web presence" or "we want to improve our sales by having a website and showing that we're a contemporary business". You must really watch out for this level of ambiguity.

The Tell

I get website briefs for e-commerce websites, product/service catalogs and information websites for businesses, organisations and events, such as festivals. The good briefs usually have three things included with the overall description- some idea of how it will be formed (usually including example sites that they like), how it will work for their visitors and how they plan on using it. I can then plan a website which will fulfill the brief. Relatively straightforward stuff.

Warning bells sound, when a prospective client comes to me with a project brief of "I just want to get my business out there, you know, on the interwebs". How do you even start to plan for a website like this? The tell of a potential time-waster is a level of vagueness when it comes to describing what they want to do with their website and what they want to achieve with it.

Helping the client

Unfortunately when you have someone with such a vague idea of what they want, it usually means they haven't really thought about creating a website and are simply here because their niece said it was the latest thing and they were totally behind the times if they don't have a website (and if they're not "socialising on networks").
I try my best to help a prospective client come up with some concrete plan for their site- what a website could do for them and their business, what they would have to do to get it created, what it will take to keep it updated for the life of the website. More times than not though, as soon as they leave my office I never see them again. They're overwhelmed with the work that they will have to do, which is usually not considered. An hour of my time, down the drain, for no return.

Standard Practice

My current standard practice is to have mini-meetings with prospective clients, usually through the telephone and ask them the all important question- what is the purpose of the website that they hope to create. If someone can tell me, in a sentence, what they want to do with their website, I'll schedule a meeting. Otherwise I'll send them on my project planner and ask them to fill it in and get back to me. My project planner is a set of questions, which are a constant work-in-progress, designed to try pries information out of the client about their prospective project. This is a beneficial exercise for the client and if it reduces my wasted time, it's a huge benefit for me too.

A lot of larger web design studios, such as Happy Cog, Clearleft and Erskine Design (the only ones I can think of at the moment), have downloadable project planners. I would suspect that their planners help to separate time-wasters from real prospective clients too.

If you have any related practices to reduce wasted time at this early stage of a project, let me know and I'll compile a future post with more ideas. I'm working on the latest iteration of my own project planner and as soon as I'm finished, I'll post it, with a write-up, on this blog.

I was perusing a German knife shop online, looking for a new pocket knife, when I saw a section of the shop, devoted to 'lanyards'. Along with the usual knotted and looped lanyards, there were 'monkey fists'. A little tied ball with a cord, for tying to your knife (especially smaller knives) for easier removal from your pocket and for decoration. I was aware that it was common for lanyards to be added to pocket knives- I follow The Items We Carry group on Flickr, which has plenty of photos of lanyard adorned pocket knives.

I researched a bit further and found most lanyards are tied with 550 Paracord, which is parachute cord with a breaking strength of 550lbs. I also discovered that tying monkey fists and other lanyards was quite straightforward, and looked like fun.

I found a UK shop on eBay which sold different coloured Paracord, and I bought nearly 100 foot of different colours, for the princely sum of eight pounds (including shipping). I have been making them ever since I got the Paracord and once you get the hang of tying the knots, it's really a lot of fun making monkey fists! I need to start giving them away, so I have an excuse to make more.

If you're interested, I really enjoyed reading Stormdrane's blog, about creating all sorts of stuff using knotted cord. I bought my Paracord off this eBay shop, the Bushcraft store.

For the Athy Art Group annual exhibition (2010) I decided to create a couple of large digital prints rather than try create some new screenprints. I did this for two main reasons; time- I knew I was going to be busy in April and May (the exhibition is in June) and inspiration- I was really feeling inspired by an artist who produces mostly digital prints, Mr. Alberto Cerriteño. You should check out his blog, his Flickr page and his website (with shop), his work is really great, when I can, I am definitely going to buy some of his work.

I am always drawing and doodling into my sketch pads, but I find that when I redraw them (before scanning them in), I lose the spontaneity of the original sketch. To counteract this, I simply scanned in the original small thumbnail sketch that I initially created. Not perfect, by any means, but it was a start. From there I started toying with ideas and colours- I wasn't sure, beyond the very basic shapes, what way the prints would turn out like (at this point, I wasn't sure whether I'd get them done or not). 

I was going down the route of complete vector graphic, but then decided to add textures and shading in, which were Photoshop tasks, so I moved both of the prints out of Illustrator and into Photoshop. The files were large, but my trusty Macbook Pro handled them like a champ. I was stuck for imagery and textures to fill out the backgrounds and the little detail effects, so I had to go on a photo and scanning rampage- I took photos of a random assortment of textures and shapes and scanned pages from a number of very old books of illustrations. Combining photographs, colours and textures, the two prints were produced with similar elements to tie them together.

I had decided early on that I wanted to create large prints, and I was planning on using Ikea frames, due to my requirements of a simple, cheap frame, to keep the price of the exhibiting pieces low. Although I think the frames were fine, I would've preferred if the frame mount was either regular in width or wider on the bottom of the frame. Obviously designed for hanging either horizontally or vertically, it was a slight irritation for me and my portrait-orientated prints.

I really enjoyed creating these prints and I hope to do more in the future. I plan on creating cropped smaller versions for smaller frames and I hope to sell them online really soon.
Full set of photos on Flickr.