How I Spend My Time as an Independent Designer

Where does it all go?

May 28, 2023

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One of the best and worst things about being an independent designer is that outside of client demands, you have total control over your own time. There is no scheduled start and end time to your work day or week. There is nobody telling you when to switch tasks.

So I have to be disciplined and intentional about where I spend my time, and if I’m not careful I’ll trap myself on an endless treadmill of work.

I don’t do hourly work so I don’t track time for client billing, but over a decade in consulting has made time tracking pretty much a second-nature habit at this point and I do keep a decent record of where my time goes for my own analysis.

Things are going pretty steady right now so this week I thought I’d share where I spend that time. Below is an honest assessment of the past month or so, with some averaging out.

Total working time: ~47-57 hours/week

I know this might sound like a lot (or maybe not, depending on what your current situation is), but it honestly doesn’t seem like it. Everything I do is entirely self-directed (with client input, of course) and wholly for my own benefit. That makes an enormous difference to my perception of the work.

Client work: ~40 hours/week

The majority of my time goes to client work. I currently have two clients that are keeping my plate pretty full. They’re both really interesting projects and I’m enjoying being hands-on and directly involved on both projects. That’s about all I can say at this point.

Content creation: ~3-5 hours/week

This includes all of my posting that I do on LinkedIn and writing this newsletter. This does take quite a bit of time, but it’s really exciting to see the design community engage with what I’m putting out and tell me they get value from it. There are some days that are harder than others, but mostly this doesn’t really feel like work.

Social media engagement: ~2-3 hours/week

This is time spent interacting with people that comment on my posts, commenting on other people’s posts, responding to messages, etc. I try to limit this to 30-45 minutes a day so it doesn’t totally drain my energy.

Non-client business projects: ~0-5 hours/week

Each week I try to put some time towards tinkering with my own business projects, like my LinkedIn for Designers course. These are projects driven by my own curiosity and also my desire to develop multiple income streams so I eventually don’t have to rely solely on client work to support myself.

Business development: ~1-2 hours/week

Most weeks I spend some time connecting with new people who might be interested in working with me, reconnecting with people I’ve worked with before who might want to do so again, or meeting new potential partners for future projects.

Not all of these conversations go anywhere, but this is time well spent because as an independent designer you always want to have a few leads and a healthy pipeline of potential clients in order to keep your business going.

Admin work: ~1-2 hours/week

If you’re self employed (as I am), you need to take care of all the boring stuff about running a design business like bookkeeping and taxes. This stuff isn’t fun but it has to be done. I’ve recently started outsourcing some of my admin work so I can focus more on designing.

If you’re independent, I would strongly recommend outsourcing low-level admin work as soon as you can afford to. It might not seem like a lot to do a little bit here and there, but once its off your plate you’ll realize how big of a drain it can be.

I think the main takeaways from doing this assessment for me are:

I work more than I think I do
Being independent gives you an incredible sense of ownership, which sometimes makes work not feel like work.
Getting back to hands on design work is really fun, which again takes the edge of the number of working hours

I probably want to dial the amount of work back a bit over time and make room for more work/life balance, but for now, it’s exhilarating and rewarding to be independent and get to choose where all my hours go.

Have you ever assessed where your time goes? What did you learn?

Have a great week!

Design Things of the Week

Each week I share a few design-related things I’ve encountered.

🤓 A course to help you grow your design career through LinkedIn by yours truly (pre-sale).

LinkedIn for Designers Course. I firmly believe growing a LinkedIn audience was the best thing I ever did for my career. Last Sunday I started pre-selling a downloadable video course that I’m developing to share what I’ve learned about growing on LinkedIn so other designers can do the same. I wasn’t quite sure how it’d go (it’s my first digital product!) but its sold 60 copies in its first week! The course will drop on June 25th for the full price of $50, but until then you can get it for just $25.

🍎 The full Jony Ive interview transcript from Objectified (paywall).

Jony Ive: The Complete Objectified Interview -

Chance Operations

. I recently became a paid subscriber of Gary Hustwit’s Substack, and I would highly recommend it for access to great stuff like this. Gary is the documentary filmmaker behind iconic design films like Helvetica, Objectified, and Rams. Honestly, the $6 a month is totally worth it just to be able to watch those films whenever you want (a subscriber benefit).

✏️ A new way to work back to a sketch.

Exploration: Sketch styles -

Designing with AI

. Another awesome Substack I read. Sometimes as a designer you find yourself in a funny situation where you’re working something backwards into a sketch. Like a CAD file that you need to communicate as less-than-final. Instead of tracing over it by hand, I could see using AI to translate things into more “sketchy” images to be able to discuss them more loosely.

🎵 Funky tunes to design to.

My Analog Journal YouTube channel. I love music. But these days, I don’t have a lot of time to pick music and I’m sick of my same old tunes. I recently found this YouTube channel and have been having it on in the background on the TV a lot. It’s basically like having a DJ in your room.

🗨️ A quote to think about

“It’s interesting: we look at a finished object, we look at a physical product, but the design of this in many ways wasn’t the design of a physical thing. In many ways, it was figuring out process; it was figuring out all the processes that would eventually enable this.”

Jony Ive, from the interview mentioned above

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Just the ID Jobs - 16x Full-Time, 5x Internships

“Just the Industrial Design Jobs” is a segment of this newsletter that lists only industrial design jobs that were posted within the last week to various job board websites.

This week’s Just the ID Jobs is brought to you by Precor

Precor is looking for an Industrial Designer III to join them at their Woodinville, WA office. They’re offering a base salary range of $131,750 to $178,250 and comprehensive benefits.

About the job:

Lead complex design projects at the intersection of human usability, commercial viability, and manufactured reality. Your solutions impact the full spectrum of new product introduction, from exploration to launch and long-term support. You will join a team with ownership over the physical, graphic, and interactive facets of user experience, and with manufacturing sites footsteps away from the design studios, you will enrich your work with real-world operational parameters.

This role requires intuition for human-scale aesthetic and functional form, sensibilities attuned to solving for exerciser and enterprise needs, patience, curiosity, and the ability to build collaborative relationships. This is a perfect opportunity for seasoned designers who aspire to tangible involvement across all phases of product development, and who are passionate about shaping the future of fitness.

Precor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Peloton Interactive.

Apply Now

Genesco Inc - Men's Footwear Design Intern - Johnston & Murphy

Nashville TN

Footwear

0 years experience minimum

Design Things by Anson Cheung

How I Spend My Time as an Independent Designer

Where does it all go?

Total working time: ~47-57 hours/week

Client work: ~40 hours/week

Content creation: ~3-5 hours/week

Social media engagement: ~2-3 hours/week

Non-client business projects: ~0-5 hours/week

Business development: ~1-2 hours/week

Admin work: ~1-2 hours/week

Design Things of the Week

What did you think of this email?

Just the ID Jobs - 16x Full-Time, 5x Internships

Genesco Inc - Men's Footwear Design Intern - Johnston & Murphy

Cascades - Industrial Design Intern

Tangible Creative - 3D Modeler - Summer Internship

Garmin International, Inc. - Industrial Designer Intern

Noah Medical - Industrial Design Intern

Signify - Industrial Design Intern, Cooper Lighting Solutions

Kelvin - Senior Industrial Designer

Material - Senior Industrial Designer

PCI Pharma Services - Packaging Designer

Core Home - Packaging Designer

General Motors - Creative Designer - Industrial Design Brand ID

Lovevery - Associate, Structural Packaging Designer

Logoplaste - Technical Packaging Designer

Concept Designs Inc - Industrial / POP Designer

All Tech Engineering - Michigan - Industrial Designer -- Full-Time

Ovyl - Lead Industrial Designer

Super Color Digital, LLC - Industrial Designer

Marmon Foodservice Technologies, Inc. - Industrial Design Manager

Sterilite Corporation - Industrial Designer

YETI - Senior Industrial Designer - Drinkware

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