How to get sh*t done (for designers)
Part 1: Getting the right things done
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KeyShot World San Francisco
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I’m doing a lot right now.
I’m running my independent industrial design consulting business, growing this newsletter and my social media, and I also just launched my first digital product, LinkedIn for Designers, today! 🥵
(BTW, the course is now live for the full price of $50, but Design Things readers can still get it for 50% off for the next 24 hours with the discount code LASTCHANCE).
It’s a far cry from when I was deliberately doing nothing around this time last year so I could take time to re-orient my life after a massive career shift.
As designers, it feels that we are uniquely challenged when it comes to productivity. A lot of our work is creative and unpredictable, but there are also a lot of uncreative, hard constraints on our time (meetings, deadlines, etc.). On top of that, our myriad of interests can pull us in so many different directions and make it hard to progress in any one area.
I’m pretty proud of what I’ve achieved this year, and I think a lot of it comes down to some key ideas around productivity that I’ve learned over the last decade. Last year when I started working independently and had near total control over how I spent my time and energy, I decided to try to implement as many of these ideas as I could.
I’d like to share a few of them with you over the next few weeks as a multi-part newsletter series. This is part 1.
Part 1: Getting the right things done
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
- Peter Drucker
This is absolutely the MOST important idea for anyone trying to make progress in the things that matter to them.
So many of us go through life going from one task to another, each commitment to the next. Never stopping to question whether we what we are doing was truly what we wanted or intended for ourselves.
Years can go by living and working this way.
Then one day you look up and wonder how you got somewhere you didn’t really intend to go. You can be extremely efficient in your day-to-day, but not that effective in achieving things that are actually meaningful to you.
I’ve been acutely aware of this for the last year after leaving the best job I ever had and looking for a new direction. At the beginning of 2023 I decided to do some deep soul searching and make an annual plan (something I had never actually done before).
I essentially had a blank slate of a year in front of me and I wanted to approach it with clear intention and put action towards things that I had consciously identified as meaningful to me.
The whole exercise was quite involved and I won’t go into the details here. You can actually watch a 2-part YouTube video from August Bradley on it if you’re interested in following a similar process.
In a nutshell it was:
Identifying what I valued (really hard, actually!)
Setting some achievable outcome goals related to those values
Identifying “projects” that would lead to those goals
Identifying habits and routines that would support those goals
This was a really clarifying exercise for me. It wasn’t easy. Actually, it was quite frustrating to find it so hard to articulate what mattered to me. It took a few days of dedicated time and plenty of procrastination in-between sessions.
Today I’m looking back at the goals I set out to achieve this year, and I find that many have already been checked off. And that’s a great feeling.
Here are the professional goals I identified. The check mark means I’ve done it! There were about an equal number of personal ones too, but those are just for me 🙂
$10,000/month average self-employed income ✅
Complete my taxes by February (lol whoops, didn’t happen) ❌
Launch a new portfolio/business website ✅
Grow Design Things to 1000+ subscribers ✅
Design 1 product I am proud of (WIP!)
At least 20 blog posts/newsletter issues (11 out of 20)
10,000 LinkedIn followers ✅
Launch a short digital course ✅
I was supposed to check in on the plan regularly to make sure I was on track and course correct if necessary.
I actually never really did. Life just kind of happened.
But I think the exercise of setting aside time and deliberately calling out what I am setting out to do and why had a way of unconsciously aligning my day-to-day actions towards those goals.
I never expected this plan to work perfectly. And in fact, the professional list looks pretty good but on this review I’m realizing that it was at the expense of the personal list.
The point was never to have the plan work perfectly. It was just to think critically about where I should be putting the limited hours I have on this Earth. And I think in that way, it worked just fine.
This is an exercise I would highly encourage all designers do. It doesn’t have to be as involved at what I did. I think the critical components are reflecting on your values, setting goals that are in alignment with those values, and then translating that to some clearly identifiable actions. Then checking in with yourself on a semi-regular basis.
August Bradley, the guy I learned this annual planning process from said something that really stuck with me and I’ll leave it with you here:
It is far better to be inefficient at doing the right things, than extremely efficient at doing the wrong things.
- August Bradley
I hope you go into the next week doing the things that are your right things.
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Just the ID Jobs - 18x Full-Time, 1x Internship
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Are you hiring?
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Jasco Products Company LLC - INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INTERN
Oklahoma City OK
Consumer electronics
0 years experience minimum
Culture Fly - Packaging Designer
New York NY
Packaging
$50,000 - $55,000 a year
2 years experience minimum
Klein Tools - Industrial Designer
Mansfield TX
Tools
1 years experience minimum
Big Agnes - Senior Product Designer – Tents/Furniture
Steamboat Springs CO
Outdoor products
$75,000 - $97,000 a year
5-7 years experience minimum
Schylling - Junior Toy Designer
North Andover MA
Toys
5 years experience minimum
Whirlpool - Industrial Designer - KitchenAid / Whirlpool
Benton Harbor MI
Appliances
3 years experience minimum
Ovyl - Lead Industrial Designer
Nashville TN
Consulting
$105,000 - $130,000 a year
10 years experience minimum
Harman International - Industrial Designer for Car Audio
Novi MI
Audio
2-5 years experience minimum
Vista Outdoor - Sr. Industrial Designer
Irvine CA
Outdoor equipment
$75,300 - $112,900 a year
5 years experience minimum
Everglades Boats - Industrial Designer (Boat Building)
Edgewater FL
Boat design
5 years experience minimum
Precision Design, Inc. - Industrial Designer
Ludington MI
Security products
$60,000 - $95,000 a year
1 years experience minimum
iKrusher - Industrial Product Designer (FT)
Arcadia CA
Consumer electronics
$65,000 - $70,000 a year
3 years experience minimum
Honda - Industrial Designer - Automotive
Torrance CA
Automotive
3 years experience minimum
Edgewell Personal Care - Sr. Industrial Designer
Milford CT
Personal care products
$80,000 - $110,000/ yr
4 years experience minimum
Mobile Pixels Inc - Industrial Designer
Burlington MA
Consumer electronics
$60,000 - $70,000 /yr
0 years experience minimum
Munchkin - Senior Industrial Designer
Los Angeles CA
Toys
$90,000 - $120,000/yr
5 years experience minimum
Fellowes Brands - Industrial Designer
Schaumburg IL
Office products
1 years experience minimum
WernerCo. - Industrial Designer
Mooresville NC
Equipment
2 years experience minimum
Stanley - Senior Industrial Designer
Seattle WA
Durable goods
7 years experience minimum