They were both slapping their knees with laughter.
Tears rolling down cheeks, I had missed obviously missed something hilarious. A smile spread across my face, what happened, what did I miss?
Quite pleased with myself, arriving home a full 10 minutes earlier than estimated, I shook my father-in-laws hand and thanked him for collecting the kids after school, so we could quickly get ready to go out for dinner.
“Mate, I’ve got to let you in on something. She told me the key to getting you here on time is giving you a deadline 30 minutes before the actual deadline, knowing you will 100% be late. Hahahahaha!”
Hilarious. But it had worked, apparently for years, unbeknownst to me.
Where they right? Did I really have no concept of time?
Time is money
Or so the saying goes.
But what about where creativity equals money?
And don’t time constraints stifle creativity?
And further, without money, can there even be professional creativity?
These questions are very real to the creative professional. I battle, wrestle and dance with them every day. Let’s try and unravel this conceptual knot.
If I have learnt anything from 20 years of being creative, inventing solutions, and resolving problems across different deadline landscapes, some low stakes, some extremely high stakes, it is this.
Not all time is equal.
Industrialism
Time does in fact equal money.
Industrial Era principles taught us to increase efficiency (how quickly you can complete your known, repeatable, billable tasks), minimise overheads (costs such as salaries, studio rent, software licensing, printing) and presto! - instant profit:
Revenue – Expenses = Profit.
Revenue / Month (variable) = depending on speed of completing deliverable design and drawing tasks to invoice in a given month
Expenses / Month = Fixed rent, utilities, salaries (we’ll keep it simple)
Profit = the difference (+ profit, - loss)
Processes in that mindset therefore are optimised to always look for faster delivery - woochi! (< whip cracking sound ), less deliverables and cheaper labour.
Think Henry Ford on the Model-T factory line.
There is an obvious challenge here in creating beautiful, original, inventive, detailed architecture
The simple answer is to produce mass produced, repeatable, cheap drawings. But that's not me, and as part of our tribe here I doubt that is you.
Let’s take a more nuanced view of Time, one that allows you as creator both the breathing room for invention, and deadline delivery ability to keep you in business.
Golden hour
Time Type A > Invention
This, as all creatives know is a very special, elusive type of time. The holy grail.
I always referred to this special, often late night place, as being in the zone, management theorist’s describe it as flow state, but I think my favourite was a term coined by Scotty, my 1st ADAD graduate employee, in honour of it usually occurring for us very late at night.
How do you know you are in your Golden Hour?
Well, for me, a sense of actual time has disappeared, and probably has for some minutes or hours beforehand – who knows I’ve lost track – but something has clicked.
Those multiple design parameters; the tension between concept and resolution; between section and plan, across junction and parti, you just have the answer – or more to the point, you have the direction of the answer.
Beautiful.
Anyway, we are not here to describe being in the zone, but it is very important to cultivate the most favourable possible physical parameters to allow it to happen.
And once you are in there let nothing pull you out.
Zone-time
To all that know me well, It will surprise you that we have come all the way to note 005 without a single David Lynch or The Simpsons analogy for these written life lessons so far. Lets fix that now.
David Lynch often describes reading Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit early in his creative practice, pre-film when he was mostly painting as having a large influence on him. There is one line he repeats that I 100% agree with. To paraphrase (both artists):
“If you want to get 1 hours good painting in, you need 4 hours of uninterrupted time”
I live by this rule, and protecting that space.
My very important addition to the advice is this, your 1-hour In-Zone design time may come earlier, but if you are 2 hours in and you have not yet hit it and are interrupted, you go back to stage 1. Do not pass go.
Psychologically, this is an extreme form of switching costs but for the purpose of this note, I’ll boil my advice from the battlefield down to this:
Protect your design time in the Zone with your life. Turn off notifications, email, phone on silent, no chance of interruption.
This does not mean every day, or every project, but for me though I insist on this initially for every new project, new site, new concept, and new ideas.
Time-block out, on your calendar, when and how you will cultivate your Golden Hour mental space.
Production-time
Time Type B> Production
When outside the Zone, I am ruthless in being self-aware of where I am within each project stage, and where I am within each sub task of each project stage.
Because the yin needs the yang.
We are creative professionally here, so what we are striving for is dancing between precious moments of design exploration, then ruthless times of production.
We need to create wonderful ideas: Value Creation, but must also deliver on our deadlines, Value Delivery. The Zone cannot exist without Production.
I also find this exciting depending on the project, crank the music, produce and resolve. Sections following on form your nailed-plan. Vice versa. Window schedules from your resolved elevations. All threshold details from that one special one you invented. And so on.
Production Time / v Zone Time is what I allude to with my Mantra Protect your Process in Note 002: Fees, where my strategy for concept work especially is to ensure I have the time blocked, to work hard, unbothered, for the magic to happen
Seasons
You probably already know when you do your best work, when you have a higher chance of entering the zone.
For me, this has changed during different life stages.
During my university days, I was a total night owl - all the creative gold came very late
Lectures, tutorials, socialising and surfing throughout the day, it was not until deep into the night that I tended to do my best work. Architects were even known for this kind of sleepless life, the struggling artist myth, which while I would not trade my personal experience for the world - it is not healthy long term, and not what I do now, and not what I would recommend.
And now?
Now, I am a super-early riser - all the creative gold comes very early
What happened?
I would love to say that after extended periods of mediation and reflection, I rejected overwork and began to live a balanced, calm life. Not quite…
In January, exactly 2 months after completing 5th year architecture, was the birth of our 1st daughter. The bright side regarding work, (I tell myself), is that sliding directly from 5 years no sleep into parenthood meant I never had a good nights sleep to miss!
Parenthood, family, and work life balance will be a whole other Note (possibly many) in the future.
Paralysis
One of the best things about running your own practice is that no will tell you what to do, ever again.
One of the worst things about running your own practice is that no will tell you what to do, ever again.
My advice for when you don’t know how to start… Just start. Don’t know where to start? Just start anywhere.
Don’t get anxious, remember, time is not created equal and meditating on the correct way to approach a new problem, is squarely suited to zone time.
When Harry Margalit first taught me how to set up hand-drawn 2-point perspectives as a first year architecture student 20 years ago, he gave me advice that I literally use every day, my staff and students are sick of hearing it, even my kids are sick hearing it when they are stuck in almost any life problem.
“Work from the known, to the unknown.”
It is total myth that you must invoke the muse, have inspiration strike before you take action. Do the work first, inspiration comes as a result of doing the work, then it is a virtuous cycle.
Another hack that I employ for myself in those times you just aren’t feeling it - jump into something else. The beauty and curse of running a practice is that there are always 1,000 items that need attending, and batching these into production vs invention groups is important.
I even have a name for this productive-slipping across tasks and projects: Productive Procrastination.
If I am stuck on a design-turn in one project (creation / invention), I’ll have a breather by attacking a rote-documentation piece (door and window schedule), or even a tender analysis or proposal preparation, to dive into spreadsheeting and number problems - problems with objectively correct solutions and answers before returning.
I will inevitably get fatigued from the number crunching, but I am knocking off those essential tasks and very often the subconscious has been whirring away on the inventive solution for me.
Like a little invisible creative army hiding on our brains, working only when we are not paying attention to them
Time management reframed - my top 7 tips for architects
1. When is your Time?
Are you a night owl or a kookaburra? Block out a 4-hour window against all intruders at one point each week, per project in early design phases.
2. Golden Time
Your time in the zone is number 1. Production is wasted if the concept is not rock solid. And it must be continuous. Notifications off. Hold my calls. Zone time. Now relax, once here, this time is not to ever be micromanaged or rushed.
$$$-Alert: refer back to Note 2 Fees: I protect my (design) process by building a lump sum in around these time-blocked nuggets of joy (1. Concept Design (all), 4. Construction Documentation (key invented details)
3. Production Time
Ruthlessly crush your production work, music up, coffee on, get into the work, enjoy!
$$$-Alert: refer back to Note 2 Fees: I protect my (production) process by ruthlessly quantifying the known parts of the process that are known (3. Development Application (all), 4. Construction Documentation (most), 6. Full Contract Administration
4. Time starts now
Just Start.
5. When Time drags…
Switch: Productively Procrastinate
6. When Time snags…
Work from the known to the unknown
7. And most importantly, Deadline Time
Hit your deadlines - this may mean massive nights leading up to the finish line (for you creative director, not your staff, respect their work life balance above all else)
And remember, if all else fails, you can always bring your clocks forward half an hour :)
Do you have any awesome time-management strategies that have worked for you? I’d love to hear them!
See you soon,
Andrew Donaldson
One more thing before you go to enjoy your weekends: I cant believe we are 5 notes in now, thanks so much for all your feedback, kind words and support! Truly.
I have only invited the small bunch of you I know personally so far to this experiment, bus as it seems to be providing some of you with real value - why not share it with another friend who may be considering taking the plunge?
:)
Note 005 done and dusted!
Please give me any feedback whatsoever on this experiment, I would love to hear from you - after all, this is for you :)
PS - if you have a friend, colleague, or archi-buddy that you think would benefit from Andrew’s Notes, please feel free to send this to them or share with the button below: - lets grow this tribe :)
Such an awesome, motivational read....thanks for this Andrew :)
Absolute cracker Andrew - thank you 🙏 It sounds obvious but I've found that unless I deliberately block out a task in my calendar ahead of time it often gets lost. The good thing is I can move the next task to a later time/date if I'm well and truly in the zone however I have been known to move particularly tedious administration tasks every day for weeks which probably needs to be addressed..