How to get better at time management if you’re designing for multiple projects
The power of deep work and how to use it as a designer
The ‘good’ news came at 1 PM on a Friday: A design mockup I created, paired with a proposal, was well-loved in a pitch meeting. Starting Monday, I’d be working on two major projects simultaneously with a deadline of two months.
That meant working on two teams, with two product managers and differing priorities, and time pressure on each one. It wasn’t my first time in this situation, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be my last.
In some ways, it’s a good thing. Working on two major projects simultaneously means you’re probably not getting fired, and your skills are in high demand. Some of you working at design agencies might be used to this scenario while having lots of support and resources at your disposal.
But what if it’s just you, a lone designer, tackling two big projects simultaneously? If that’s the case, as I found out, you need to tackle a skill designers have a bad reputation around: time management.
Design’s bad reputation around time management
Designers aren’t often thought of as people having good time management skills. Some of it may be warranted (by being disorganized), but it often comes down to three crucial aspects:
We are creatives who feel like our work is never done
We need uninterrupted blocks of time for work (and don’t get it)
People often don’t fully understand the design process
The first is a feeling designers have always struggled with: we’re never quite sure when a project is done. There are always minor usability issues (or better interactions) we could do, so our design process swells to whatever time block we’re given.
This is why many designers have created ways to ensure the design is genuinely done.
However, that’s not the only reason. The other part is that designers need time to think about the larger picture and how things fit together (and they don’t get it). Because we don’t often get that, we end up being less productive and having to review our work multiple times.
Lastly is the problem of perception: once a design looks visually appealing (and coherent), many people can assume that the design is done. However, there may be tons of important things that are still yet to be done, such as:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Copywriting/UX writing
Visual Padding/Alignment
etc.
Therefore, it seems we dawdle with a ‘mostly complete’ design for too long.
However, time management is crucial when you’re working on multiple projects. Whether it’s your team’s perception (or you’re bad at time management), it’s one thing you need to tackle if you’re going to complete multiple projects simultaneously.
The best way that I’ve found to do that is to plan out your day with time blocks through the idea of Deep Work.
Designers, Deep Work, and why it’s necessary
Deep work is a concept popularized by Cal Newport, Author and Georgetown University Professor.
In his book, Deep Work, he argues that many people’s workday consists of shallow work, such as e-mails, phone calls, and meetings. However, some of the most productive people, himself included, need deep work periods to truly focus and get stuff done.
He even goes so far as to say that 4 hours of deep work a day is enough to accomplish even the most monumental tasks, such as writing a Ph.D. thesis, authoring books, and doing research.
It’s equally essential for designers, who must dive into the details of a page and consider all of the possible interactions it might have. This type of work is necessary if you work on complex topics like clinical pathways or network monitoring for thousands of devices.
However, you don’t need 4 hours of uninterrupted time to do this. Some techniques, such as the Pomodoro method, seek to introduce deep work in smaller chunks, like 25 minutes.
The simple factor of the matter is the more time you do deep design work, the more productive you’ll be. It’s almost a necessity when working on multiple projects.
Here’s how to make that happen.
Your calendar is your top priority.
While I hate to put it like that, scheduling time to work can often be the most important thing you do as a designer on multiple projects. This is because it’s often the only tool other teams have to know when you’re busy and available.
Scheduling blocks of uninterrupted time to work and focus is crucial to ensure that you aren’t bothered by random people who see that you have a spot available on your calendar. I’ve been part of organizations that seemed to have a vendetta against people with more than 2 hours available on their calendar because someone always called a meeting.
If you don’t have the time to schedule some time to work on one project or another in specific chunks, that time gets interrupted somehow. One project or another will schedule a meeting during that time, interrupting your flow and taking you out of work.
Why? Because if you think you can do meaningful, deep work while sitting in a meeting, you’re wrong.
Multi-tasking is a myth
One of the best time management lessons I’ve learned came from an intense Software Engineer.
Whenever meetings seemed to devolve into conversations between two people (as they sometimes did), he would speak up and ask if the rest of us (including him) needed to be here or if he could get back to work.
He seemed so intense because it didn’t matter if those two people were the CEO and CFO: he was always busy getting things done, so he wanted to get back to doing things. Most of the time, it worked: either the meeting moved on to the next topic, or the rest of the team was let out.
Asking to leave, rather than staying and ‘multi-tasking’ (i.e., doing work in the background), has often become more productive in the long run. The reason is that, even if you are 99% sure you won’t be called upon during the meeting, it’s hard to entirely focus on work with someone droning on in the background.
The myth of multi-tasking is quite pervasive, but it doesn’t work to the level you’d hope for. Instead of multi-tasking, you’re really switching between two tasks rapidly, which works as well as you think it would.
Asking to leave early is intimidating, but it can unexpectedly give you extra periods of deep work. After all, if you have a meeting scheduled until 2 PM on your calendar but leave at 1:30 PM, no one will bother you until 2.
That means you now have an extra half-hour to work with no interruptions.
But what can you do in such a short period? The answer is complete tasks related to a project.
Break projects down into tasks, and tackle them when available
This will be familiar to many of you, but often one of the first things you need to do is work with your Project Manager to create UX tasks/user stories.
One of the reasons you need to do this is to have manageable bite-sized chunks of work for each project to tackle during uninterrupted work periods.
Whether it’s productivity tracking software like JIRA tickets or tasks on a Trello board, breaking down projects into tasks helps you make progress towards a larger goal and understand the priority order you need to complete each task.
For example, it could be that Project A is overall more important than Project B, but one specific Project B task takes priority over the Project A tasks.
This is often the case with re-design projects: often, one particular screen won’t be replaced entirely (such as a User Configuration or a Welcome page). Hence, the Project/Engineering team wants to know what minor design updates they should make to that page.
Whether it’s wording changes, button placement, or other quick fixes, this can be turned out quickly, so it may often be the priority for the team to demo.
It may be that, during that extra 30-minute window, you have time to tackle 1 task on the board, which may be small progress, but it’s better than not knowing what to do.
Lastly, one of the most important things to do during that time is to be realistic and transparent with your estimates.
Set a realistic schedule, and collaborate/decline when possible
One of the things I’ve had to learn when finding myself in these types of situations is that I need to learn how to provide estimates of my work.
One of the reasons that designers often have trouble with multiple projects is that we don’t account for noise. Whether it’s an ‘urgent’ e-mail from your Project Manager stating, “Drop everything, this is your highest priority now,” or you are simply not feeling that well, you must learn to give yourself a buffer.
This is why you need to talk with your team members and figure out three significant things for each project effort:
What’s the timeline range of the project?
What resources do I have available to me?
What else do I have on my plate?
The first question is often the most important, as it gives you an idea of how the team operates (and expects updates or progress). After all, a 2-month project will always require much more priority (and quicker updates) than a 12-month project.
So figuring out how a project’s schedule and progress will be updated is essential, from determining which tasks to prioritize to when you need to hand prototypes over.
The other question you need to figure out is your available resources. Even if you’re the lone designer on a project, you may have other resources to contact.
I’ve often found that there are specific resources (usually on the same project) that are often essential for delegating/collaborating with:
Documentation/Writing teams for updating and including content
Customer Research teams for understanding tutorials/onboarding
Other Designers/Researchers for helping out with user research/notetaking
etc.
Understanding who you can contact when you’re stuck can save you much time. If you have daily stand-ups about a project, this is where you can explain your blocker (and hopefully, your PM can point you in the right direction), but you can also e-mail your PM about particular issues.
Lastly, consider what else you have on your plate before accepting a project wholeheartedly. It’s hard (and incredibly awkward) to be gung-ho about completing a project by a specific deadline only to change that date to much later due to unforeseen work or circumstances.
You must be transparent about your workload early to set expectations. Suppose you tell a Project Manager, “Hey, I have this other project that I’ve been told is top priority, so I might have to drop everything and work on it sometimes.”. In that case, they’ll have a clearer idea of why progress on the project is slower (or they’ll work something out with that other Project Manager).
Juggling projects requires understanding the power of deep work
You begin to understand the value of a few minutes of deep work once you start working on multiple projects.
Often, unless you schedule it in your calendar, you won’t have a solid two hours of uninterrupted time to concentrate on your work honestly. You’ll be lucky to get 30 minutes between endless meetings.
This means that with the time you have, you’ll need to be more productive and find ways to make progress with short amounts of time. This means embracing the power of deep work and using it to your advantage.
You might have heard the saying, “Constraints breed creativity.” This is often the case with design. I’ve often found the best and most creative design solutions often come when I only have an hour to create something (incidentally, this is also how article writing goes sometimes).
So if you’ve ever gotten the ‘good’ news that you’ll be working on multiple design projects, now is the time to start embracing deep work and the power of productivity in smaller chunks.
Great article Kai! This is really helpful. Thank you! - Isabella, your ex-co-worker from Peraton :)