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Benjamin Franklin said, “For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.”
So, ORGANIZE is the real buzz word here….
So when your life is not organised in the first place, your design life will definitely be unorganized.
Because, how you do anything is how you do everything.
1. Develop up a Routine
A routine is like a daily ritual which we follow in our everyday life, right from rising in the bed to going back to sleep in the night.
Whatever we follow repeatedly starts to become a habit, an habit starts to become our routine
Organization is like a important twig of our daily life tree
So when organization is inculcated in our daily habits it starts to become a habit and ultimately develops into a routine
A strong and structures powerful routine is the key to lead a clutter free life.
A little bit every day, will keep the mess monster away.
2. A Clearly Defined Home
A home is a physical space where you rise to and return after all your tasks
So taking the idea of the same phenomena
Even the things that we use need to fall in place or get back to their home after the work is done
So just imagine the impact it could make if all the things that we use go their homes after use
How Organised the entire cycle would seem?
And soon it will become a habit.
Have you noticed this?
Every living being on this planet comes to a place finally at the end of the day after finishing up his daily chores
It is because somewhere, knowingly or unknowingly they have been following the same path everyday
3. Keep Only What You Need
It is rightly said that,
“If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.”
This quote by Warren Buffet is related to finance but the same thing applies to our daily life also
We have a long old tradition of storing things which are not needed and even necessary
Necessity is the key which drives authority
You have got to take authority of your things
Otherwise things will start taking your authority
It all starts with organizing our wardrobe
Having said that the top famous personalities of the world have a very minimal wardrobe as they do not want to waste time in figuring out what to wear
Start living a minimalist lifestyle, right from owning materialistic things to your daily habits.
4. Don’t Procrastinate
Oh God!
This is our favourite habit in life
We often like to postpone things to tomorrow
Then tomorrow we postpone it to the day after that
And the cycle of pushing things starts to continue day by day and finally year by year
Due to this the fear of insecurity, incapability kicks in and many more…
But now for a moment just do a flip side
And start from organizing your bed first, because
The state of your bed is the state of your head
The former Navy Seal Admiral William H. McRaven has said it beautifully as,
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”
Making a bed might feel simple,
But the idea behind it is when you can do the simple things right
It is like a direct reflection on to our life has to how we can “make our life”
So if we can make our bed right, we definitely can make our life right.
5. Time Management
Time and Tide wait for no man
So try and make Time your best friend or in no time it may become your worst enemy
You have to make time your best friend
You have to take control over your time
You have to learn to manage your time well
The ability to manage your time can help you manage anything in your life
6. Goal Setting
Woho!!
We as architects love quotes like,
Ideas without limits, fears and boundaries
There are no limits to ideas
Design starts with an uninterrupted flow of ideas
With the uninterrupted flow of ideas you immerse yourself deep down
Time passes by and this process continues to go
In the whole process we don’t realise where exactly we are supposed to reach!
What is the outcome of our design?
And this is where the problem lies,
Instead, if the process would have started with setting a clear goal, intentions
The setting will provide a framework
With the framework we understand the step by step process to reach our goal
So it is very important to set goals for Architects/ Designers
So I always prefer to set the end goal first
So, relating to an example of working in AutoCAD for a presentation
Even before starting to design on paper the nameplate and scale of the drawing needs to be fixed first, so that there is no end rush
7. Desk Organization
The state of your working desk reflects the state of your personality,
The kind of designer you are,
It is your personalized and private space
It is the desk where marvellous ideas take birth
So if the desk is not tidy the ideas get produced may also not
Because everything suggests something
To work on design, consistent undivided attention is required
So when the brain sees a visual clutter, it starts to take sending message of a sense of discomfort
The part attention from the design gets divided
A working desk should be treated like a sacred space for an architect
Where no activities like eating, sleeping etc should be done
It should be meant as a zone of concentration.
8. Use of Digital Brains
The most important thing in the life of a designer is his workstation
Paper is found to be the biggest enemy of digital brain
Digital Brain here is referred to as the memory of our workstation
The digital brain has a potential to store all the information systematically
It provides with immense flexibility
So, digital brain is the solution right?
It is often said that some things which are good also have a downside
Similarly the digital brain being so flexible and efficient, it is the human brain that is the cause of its downside
Just by renaming and maintaining a proper folder system can solve a lot of it
There is a common pattern which is observed when it comes to “Renaming files”
Imagine when people are born and till the death they don’t have name
How difficult it would be when a group of people come together at once
So the appropriate naming is important in our life
We have a particular name by which people can start a conversation
We have a designation by which people can recognize and
The work we do makes people remember again our name
So it is all about the names, names, and names!!!
Names have meaning
Names have purpose
Names have some value
Here are some, most often architects give –
“new”, “newer”, “newest”
“final”, “final final”, “final full n final”
It becomes a digital dump yard and causes one a lot of grief
If this continues then except God, no one can help you
If you can make friendship with the so called, “Google Drive”
It will be a blessing not only for you but also your colleagues working on the same project.
So whatever work is done can be synched with Google Drive and there is no loss of your files or data and you can work peacefully on your project.
Do you want to know how I manage my digital brain
Conclusion
The only Pro tip which I follow and make people around me follow is to always be or think like an EDITOR, as they say “Editors are the best Directors”.
It is a simple analogy of discarding things which are not necessary in your mind itself before even they start to manifest in physical means
By following this simple tip and definitely you can lead a clutter free life as a human being and also as a designer.
How do you Stay Organized?
It doesn’t mean that when you are living a clean life your work life is organized, in fact it is not in most of the cases
Because, again
How you do anything is how you do everything
As staying organized is the one key to success,
Hopefully these tips can help you start organizing better and save your time
It will start to improve day by day, but starting is important
What tips and tricks do you use to take control of your projects?
