Time Management for Designers

This 6-hour online course addresses the special time management challenges faced by designers in professions such as architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, planning, and others. These problems are the basis for widespread perceptions that designers are poor time managers and the expectation that designers will have trouble meeting deadlines.

However, these designersÆ time management problems are also sufficiently different from those discussed in the many books and seminars on time management that are aimed at either managers or the general public. So designers must study ætheirÆ problems to better understand them and find appropriate remedies.

This course helps participants examine symptoms, consequences, and causes of designersÆ time management problems, and discusses a number of remedies. It will show that these difficulties typically are not caused by one single variable but by many interacting factors related to the work designers do (design problems and their nature), the way designers approach their work (process), the work environment, as well as the outlook and intrinsic habits and frailties of designers themselves.

This course helps students carry out the needed analysis and to develop effective, realistic implementation plans for turning poor time management practices into more effective and productive habits. This includes the design of useful time management tools (æplannersÆ) for the specific needs of designers.

The presentation includes diagrams and examples of time management tools. At the end of each chapter there will be a brief test that summarizes the main points discussed.

This course aims to:

• Increase your awareness and understanding of
• time management problems in general, and of
• time management problems faced by designers in particular;
• the differences between them;
• their symptoms, consequences, and causes.
• Enable you to analyze your own situation so as to recognize specific time management concerns and challenges for that situation;
• Increase your awareness, understanding of remedies for these challenges as they apply to your specific situation;
• Increase your ability to develop and apply appropriate strategies, procedures and tools to improve your designersÆ time management effectiveness.

Specifically, as a result of the course, you should

• Be able to recognize symptoms of time management problems in your work and life;
• Become aware of potential consequences of such problems;
• Better understand causes, contributing factors and conditions of these problems;
• Recognize the ævicious cycleÆ interaction between symptoms, causes, and consequences;
• Become aware of the range of available remedies for individual problems;
• Understand the various parts of the entire time management process;
• Be able to take appropriate action to counter these problems and improve your time management effectiveness, by:
• Effectively analyzing your own life and work situation for the presence and interaction of designersÆ time management problems;
• Setting appropriate goals, objectives, and priorities
• Organizing your own work and schedules
• Adjusting your work environment as appropriate;
• Developing appropriate attitudes, productive habits and adopting effective procedures and work styles, and
• Selecting or developing appropriate tools to aid your time management;
• Integrating these actions and adjustments into an effectiv