If only I had the time… The architect’s lament

Sept. 3, 2015 - PRLog -- Effective time management can spell the difference between brilliance and mediocrity, between stress and mental equilibrium.

I had a penny for every time I said that, I would be counting my millions today. For many years during my early career, I was always short of time. Running from one meeting to another. Running from my office to the site to the client’s office. Trying to answer emails while I attempted to explain to my team why I needed a particular veneer and not any other. And at the end of each day, I would bemoan the fact that I had spent precious little time in actual designing or creating, which is why I became an interior designer in the first place.

I would tell myself that creative people cannot be expected to be effective time managers. That an architect or interior designer who was calmly organised, who followed a time table, who went home at six every evening, was a fictional character! I would look around me at other designers and find that they were no better. The same indiscipline, the same ad hoc approach and the same last-minute crazy rush to meet a deadline. I soon realized that I was simply making excuses for my own inefficiency and not making any progress towards tackling the problem.

I eventually brought myself to accept that being in a creative profession did not necessarily mean that my life had to be an endless scramble. If a factory manager could plan his day smartly and have time to enjoy life, why couldn’t I?

I then began to make an active effort to be a good time manager. I realized how much time I spent searching for products, materials, technology and people. I would find something I liked, use it, but never be able to find it again. So, I got an intern to aggregate and categorize our many collections and make the entries more accessible. It’s still not perfect, but it’s not as frustrating as it used to be.

Architects (http://blog.isticker.com/) could pick up some new ideas here (http://blog.isticker.com/if-only-i-had-the-time/).