https://uxdesign.cc/how-can-you-find-time-to-design-cc9a4e3a2b5d
For the past few months, I’ve noticed an increasing number of designers online complaining about their lack of time to design.
They have a packed agenda full of meetings and, if they’re lucky, they have little blocks of an hour of less to design.
This is nothing new, I’ve been there. I’ve seen designers complain about this throughout my entire career. I’ve done it too.
I’ve also seen managers trying to address the problem. I’ve had meetings about having too many meetings and, the funniest part is, the outcome of that was spending even more time discussing it in smaller teams, trying to fix the situation. LOL
Sure, managers have their fair share of accountability, after all often they’re the ones booking most of the recurring meetings. But what about designers? Are we just passive victims of a system that is trying to drown us with meetings?
Of course not. If you don’t have time to design, it’s also your fault.
But I’m not here to point any fingers. As a designer, I don’t like to just find problems, I like to fix them. That’s why I want to share some tips that helped me gain some of my time back from the meetings overlords, and I hope they can help you too.
Here’s your first mistake:
If your calendar for the next month looks something like this, what do you think those empty spaces communicate? It looks like you’re pretty open and I can book anytime I want – and before you know it, your calendar gets packed.
To avoid this you can simply block slots of at least 2 to 4 hours where you want to design.
Call it what it is – design time – and be strict. Don’t accept meetings that overlap that time, unless it’s something important and exceptional.
Don’t block your entire calendar though, otherwise, that will give you the same exact result as if it was empty. If people want to book time with you, you should have empty slots that people can use for that, otherwise, they will just see your “design time” as the closest thing to an empty block, and will try their luck.
If you don’t think you can carve such a big block out of any of your days, let me tell you that you definitely can.
At Shopify, Wednesdays are meant to be a meeting-free day. Everyone is encouraged to avoid booking meetings on that day and they also empower you to decline any invite that pops up on a Wednesday.
That mandate comes from our leadership, and I’m really a fan of that. It really shows that this is a company made by makers that understand that people need time to get stuff done.
If Shopify can do this I can’t see why other companies can’t.
You don’t even need to wait for your company, you can always start small and aim to do something like this just within your team.