Use your time wisely

You only have so many seconds, minutes and hours in a day. Use them wisely. Make sure you make your customers’ time just as valuable.

Set aside time in the day for brainstorming, uninterrupted production, project briefing, and communications. If you segment your time to the hours of the day you can utilize time to the best of your ability. I find the early morning hours are the best for intense productions and complex tasks, towards the afternoon you may need a break to check your emails and regroup. Just always remember that your client is paying you by the hour or project. If they are paying you by the project, utilizing your time well will give you more “bang for your buck”.

Find the time savers

Set up your workspace to be streamlined and efficient. Take a few hours out of a day to set customize your preferences in your Adobe design programs. In Photoshop Batch images that need to be similarly formatted. Set up shortcuts and learn them by heart. Create commonly used templates for business cards, letterhead, #10 envelopes, and brochures. These are little time savers that will add up to save you hours.

Experiment with different combinations and time-savers to find out the best technique for you. Time is not only important for money and value, but for deadlines too. You need to get good at delivering on a schedule. Try to deliver ahead of schedule whenever possible. Prioritize your projects by importance and due date. Squeeze out the most of your day, for both you and your customer.

Thank you for reading graphic design tip #8, “Utilizing Time Management.” Be sure to subscribe to our blog and share with your friends.

ThePerfectDesign.com Team