Getting your designs approved by clients in a timely manner is vital to smoothly managing any project. But it’s often more than just getting approvals.

There’s often feedback, comments, notes, and other considerations you need to deal with during the process. Managing all that becomes a lot more difficult than simply getting a client to sign off.

Approval Manager 2012 can help you manage the entire process so your projects run smoothly. It offers a number of new features compared to the previous year’s version.

You can upload multiple files into your workflow much more simply using the new File Management window and group proof option. You can choose to route files together or separately, or use the File Management window to upload, delete, or create new file versions effortlessly.

Smart versioning of files makes it easy to manage multiple versions of a file. Whenever a file is uploaded, Approval Manager will check for an older version of the same file (by either same or similar file name) and replace it with the new version. Or you can manually choose to replace a file with a new version.

Approval Manager 2012 also includes a new pen tool within their Spark! annotation toolset (in addition to the existing comment, box, arrow, and measurement tools). The pen tool lets your users quickly markup any file, however they may choose, such as adding a circle or underline to a portion you want to comment on. Users also have the option to change the color of their markups, or apply a simple color code to annotations.

Spark! also lets you reply and attach files directly to a comment. This makes it easier for clients or others in the approval process to have conversations surrounding files without having to resort to email or a separate system. And it makes it possible for everyone involved in the process to stay up-to-date and in the loop.

Spark! also lets you capture comments and reviews for files it can’t open directly. It makes it easy to download and choose the appropriate native program to open the file, and then attach files or save comments directly within Spark! to keep everything organized.

Forget about marking up PDFs and emailing them back and forth. Approval Manager 2012 can be deployed in the cloud (great for distributed teams) or as an in-house app for when you need to maintain complete control over your software. There’s support for Adobe Publishing workflow to review InDesign digital proofs and directly make corrections in InCopy in real time.

Other features of Approval Manager include a visual dashboard for viewing files; a customizable approval process with as many stages as you need; an audit trail for tracking proof uploads, reviews, and emails; automatically saved proof revisions; and real-time status updates. There are also workflow templates to make it faster to set up your own process, a centralized contacts database, and auto-routing of files.

There’s a free Express plan available that allows unlimited proofs and users, browser review and markup tools, mutli-person reviews, and more. The Standard plan, which starts at $995, includes a multi-stage workflow, a workflow and scheduling dashboard, automated proof routing, customizable branding, and more. As mentioned earlier, the Standard edition can also be hosted in the cloud starting at $199/mo.

If you need help figuring out how to manage the approval process for all of your different projects, whether in-house or for clients, then Approval Manager is a great place to start.

Reviewed exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman

[Disclaimer: This post is a sponsored post for Approval Manager 2012. The opinions expressed in the article are the author's only.]

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The less “lock-in” and learning an app requires, the more likely I am going to be to try it out.

So here is a list of tools I have started to mess around with.

They are super intuitive to use and save me a ton of time each day. Also, getting to know them better only makes them quicker and easier to use.

Ge.tt – filesharing at its simplest

In case you are familiar with Drop.io there is no introduction needed to Ge.tt. It is super simple file sharing, where you can start uploading your files without any hassles of signing up or logging in. Go there, upload files, and share them.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 10 seconds or less

Find out more: Ge.tt

Flow – managing to do lists

Flow is amongst the simplest task management tools I have used to date and as you know there are dozens of them. With Flow everything revolves around working together on to do lists, with integrated commenting and collaboration.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 1 minute or less

Find out more: Flow

EveryTimeZone – see multiple time zones at once

It would cost me a ton of time and I would always get super fidgety when I had Skype meetings or twitter chats scheduled in different timezones. With EveryTimeZone you see all the different time zones intuitively on one page and you can adjust them to your needs.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 10 seconds or less

Find out more: EveryTimeZone

Tungle – the way meetups are supposed to be scheduled

Although Tungle has been around for a while, I never get tired of telling others about it. Create your schedule and then let others find slots to meet up with you. This gives them more opportunities to find a suitable time and saves you lots of back and forth emails.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 2 minutes or less

Find out more: Tungle

BounceApp – get feedback about web sites

This is one of my new favorites. BounceApp allows you to grab a screenshot from any page by typing in the URL. With a simple comments feature you can mark parts of the page. This is super handy for getting feedback from others or even fun if you found something hilarious you want to point out.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 10 seconds or less

Find out more: BounceApp

Screenr – making screencasts faster

Screenr is my number one destination to create screencasts. It takes you one click to start recording and I find myself using it more and more often. It gives you a chance to build top notch customer service and simply acts as a pleasant surprise if you reply with a personal video instead of an email.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 1 minute or less

Find out more: Screenr

Buffer – tweeting often, without annoying followers

(Full disclosure: I work for Buffer) Buffer is a Twitter App that makes it super simple to give your tweets a personal face. You can highlight any line of text in an article, then hit the Buffer icon via the browser extensions and it will be added to your Buffer as a tweet. Those tweets are posted well spaced out throughout the day.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 1 minute or less

Find out more: Buffer

Rapportive – know more about Gmail contacts

With Rapportive you get a chance to see immediately what the email contacts you are conversing with are up to on other social media platforms. You can connect with them right there from your email or use the information you see to make emails more personal.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 10 seconds or less

Find out more: Rapportive

Skinnyo – keep track of your weight with help from others

With the summer approaching fast, Skinnyo is a polished opportunity to help you get into the right shape. The best part about Skinnyo is the playful manner you can compete with other members, whilst you get detailed graphs about your performance.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 2 minutes or less

Find out more: Skinnyo

Proxlet – unclutter your Twitter stream

Proxlet is a great opportunity to get rid of those tweets that clog up your Twitter stream. What I really appreciate about this simple app is that you don’t have to unfollow anyone to get back a timeline that adds value. Instead you just mute spammy apps, loud mouths, or overused hashtags.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 1 minute or less

Find out more: Proxlet

Mockingbird – website mockups

Mockingbird is a great tool to make quick mockups of a project or website that pops up in your head. The simple drag and drop features give you everything you need to get into a lean flow of creating sketches you can share and work with in the future.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 1 minute or less

Find out more: Mockingbird

KISSmetrics – measure site visitors

First off, KISSmetrics is not an “instead of” Google Analytics, but rather something to use along side it. It is a great way to analyze the steps visitors to your site are taking before they signup or click away. The focus on design and ease of use makes this a wonderful add-on to your tracking toolkit.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 5 minutes or less

Find out more: KISSmetrics

SlideRocket – presentations that engage

Only recently I came across SlideRocket, and immediately fell in love with this tool. It allows you to create stunning presentations with powerful tracking analytics for each individual slide. The options to engage your audience and to collaborate with your slides in a Dropbox-esque interface are very useful.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 2 minutes or less.

Find out more: SlideRocket

FontStruct – Create fonts the easy way

Creating new and exciting fonts couldn’t be easier. FontStruct’s editor is super intuitive and allows anyone, regardless of your skills, to create beautiful fonts. The best part is that you can share them across a community, get feedback, and then polish them further.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 2 minutes or less

Find out more: FontStruct

WooRank – overall website score

WooRank is an interesting concept allowing you to get a set of detailed analytics covering everything from Alexa stats to SEO to server load time and more. The best bit is that you simple put the URL in and it’s all there for you within seconds.

Time to familiarize yourself with the service: 10 seconds or less

Find out more: WooRank

I hope you will get the chance to try out one or the other tool from the ones mentioned above.

Leo Widrich is the co-founder of above mentioned Buffer, a smarter way to publish tweets and Facebook posts. He writes more about Twitter tips and tools on the Buffer blog. Follow him on Twitter @LeoWid.

What do you think about them? Can they help you out too? Let me know below.

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You just can’t seem to create anything with enough power or spunk—heck, you may just be staring at your screen or sketchbook for hours straight.

It’s truly no fun at all to feel stuck and helpless, especially when your work seems to keep piling up. You feel like you’re stuck in a box, trying to figure a way out. You may try to do something, like step away for a few then come back, but what if that doesn’t work?

Relax and try not to stress. Take a look at these five simple ways you can help yourself remove the block and create some really amazing work before your deadline passes.

1. Listen to music

If you’re anything like me, music helps your creative process and is absolutely essential. Now, I’m part musician, so I understand and break down music a bit differently than those who are not. However, as a creative, music relays to me different emotions and also different colors and shapes and stuff. If I hear a good song, I can create a whole picture or scene based off the one song. If you have ever listened to a song and thought about an ideal music video for it, then you can relate to what I’m saying. Good music creates good images for you.

When you are at a blockage, new music can really open up the images you see and create. Sometimes we get used to stuff and we need new things to broaden our horizons. We all have our favorites and our classics, but listening to the same music can get boring and pretty much render the same images we see in our heads.

As a musician, I like to listen to things outside of my normal genres because certain ones can get a bit repetitive. If you know you dislike other genre’s, try listening to newer music inside your favorite genre or find old music by your favorite artists. Once you find something, listen to it and let your imagination run wild. Hopefully you’ll have a sketchpad so you can jot down the things you see.

This is my personal go-to when I feel a block even coming on. If you want a place to start discovering new music, I recommend Spotify and 22Tracks.

2. Inspiration is NOT a rubric

Creatives can draw artistic inspiration from almost anywhere, but we typically end up perusing the Internet for inspiration when we get stuck. We like to hop online and see what everyone else is doing. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad idea—I mean, how else are we supposed to keep up with what’s modern? The issue is just that after awhile, pretty much everything starts to look and feel the same. If you desire to be a true innovator, you’ve got to see and do things differently.

Perusing through pages of work that is already created is typically helpful, but it seems some designers look at a creative solution and try to attach it on to their own project. For example, if you see a project that uses colored squares and bold text to get the point across, that shouldn’t mean you should do exactly the same. It should, however, signal to you that there is a creative solution in using colored shapes and playing with type weights.

You want to look at inspiration not as a way to design and decorate things, but to understand it as a solution to a problem. This is why I tell folks to frequent inspiration sites that allow you to get a bit of background on the subject. The finished product is nice, but the inspiration is not the design; it’s the solution and the way in which the solution was achieved.

3. Go outside

The answers to your creative block are everywhere, but the greatest place to find solid inspiration is the great outdoors. Mother Nature has put together probably some of the best color schemes and shapes and so much more. Think about what you’re looking for and how it interacts with other elements. The freeness, and depending on your location, the serenity of being outside is just so helpful to the creative process. And Mother Nature doesn’t mind if we borrow a couple of ideas from her.

So, what if you don’t live in a place packed with insects and shrubbery? Man made things are just as interesting. As a matter of fact, I find a lot of people gain inspiration from architecture. Buildings are powerful and are often so consistently themed—they also give you great insight into interaction between different textures as well as interactions between different shapes. Incorporating some of the things you see in the city into your projects can end up being extremely beneficial.

And if you don’t get along with insects or taxi cabs, check out a museum.

4. Forget about it

If your deadline is 24 hours away, then this may not be the best idea, but pushing your project to the back of your mind can really help you come up with some of your greatest ideas. When we think about something too hard we tend to live life around it; we talk about it, we ask questions about it, etc. When you do this, you are forcing something to come out of you that may not be there–this can stress you out and ultimately be unhealthy.

When you’re in a place or situation where you have to deal with the topic, it doesn’t always help. Some of our best ideas are organic and come up through the most casual conversations and actions. I went to school to learn about advertising, and one of my professors would always tell us not to talk about our projects with our partners when conceptualizing. The idea was just to have an organic meeting, click with the individuals and the space and get something out of that.

It sounds absolutely farfetched but some of my greatest ideas came out of just casually talking with someone. Think about it; we react well to things we can relate to, especially when talking about ad campaigns or something that an audience will see. When we force ideas out, they tend to come out just that way–feeling forced and unrelatable. Find a partner, grab a cup of coffee and just talk to someone about something totally unrelated and see what you come up with.

5. The bare minimums

This is a really simple idea that I like to use whether I’m stuck or not because it really helps me create my own style. Whatever your design program of choice, just use the stock plug ins.

We love to look for Photoshop brushes and extra filters, etc., but I think being creative really comes from within and what you are able to create. When we get into the excess things, we start to really rely on them and they become center pieces for our designs. There are some essentials for sure, but using the bare minimums in your design program can really get you to thinking about different techniques and building ideas around them.

Eventually you can create your own textures and vectors and so forth, but having all the excess removed gets you into experimenting with different tools and filters. Perhaps you can find something you like and enjoy and roll with it.

Relaxation is Key

When your projects deadline is coming at you full speed and you have nothing, it’s so easy to tense up and stress out. If you’re feeling designer’s block coming or you feel the stress about to flood in, the answer is simple: just relax.

Designer’s block is totally natural and often bound to happen. Relax, get loose and pick up your sketch book. Figure out something that works for you to get your creative juices flowing and begin to execute.

Kendra Gaines is a freelance designer from Virginia, USA. Connect with her.

How do you like to get over your creative block?

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Any time you’re working in a team environment, it’s likely you’ll need a series of permissions and approvals for various stages of your project.

Managing all these approvals, making sure that they’re done on time, and making sure that the right versions of everything are getting passed along to the right people can be a headache for even the most organized of project managers.

Add into the team mix approvals from clients and it becomes an even bigger hassle.

The truth is, a dedicated proofing and review system is pretty much a necessity for any designer working in a team environment. Without it, you run the risk of missing approvals from necessary team members, screwing up your entire project timeline.

Approval Manager is a great answer to this kind of situation.

With Approval Manager you can set up your projects and enter the teammates involved. Then, at each step of the project where approval is needed, you can automatically send proofs to the appropriate people.

Set deadlines (and have automated reminders emailed for current and past-due items on each member’s to-do list), custom brand your communications (necessary for presenting a professional image to clients and sub-contractors), and even compare previous versions.

Having a way to visually manage your approval system will save you tons of time. Forget about digging through your email archives trying to figure out if someone did or didn’t sign off on something. Just look it up in Approval Manager and instantly see the status and any notes for each team member and each proof iteration. Having records and an audit trail also makes it easy to figure out exactly what happened if any part of your project goes wrong.

Workflow templates make it even easier to use Approval Manager. There’s also a centralized contacts database and auto-routing of files so that proofs are moved through the various stages based on rules (or this can be done manually).

And Approval Manager has flexible deployment options, so you can host it with the company, in the cloud, or on your own servers. There’s also support for Adobe Publishing Workflow, so InDesign digital proofs can be reviewed and corrections can be made using InCopy rather than marking up PDFs.

The Express edition, which is free, will be suitable for a lot of teams. It includes unlimited proofs and users, browser review and mark-up tools, multi-person reviews, version tracking, and automatic email notifications.

If you need more features, you can buy the Standard edition, which has a one-time fee starting at $995. This includes everything in the Express edition, plus multi-stage workflow, workflow scheduling and dashboard, automated proof routing, and customizable branding.

If that’s still not enough and you want a complete project management system, you can upgrade to Workgroups 2011. This includes everything in the Standard edition, plus project and workflow management, digital asset management, financial productivity tools, complete reporting, a best practices consultation, and turnkey implementation.

Again, for a lot of teams, especially when sharing with outside clients isn’t necessary, the Express edition will cover everything you need. It’s almost certainly going to be an improvement over whatever you’re using now.

Learn more about Approval Manager

Reviewed exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored review for Approval Manager. The opinions expressed in this post are solely the authors and weren’t influenced by Approval Manager.

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With so many demands on our time, and things set to only get worse, all we can do is put in more and more hours to get things done. Unfortunately, there are still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. If things continue at this pace, most of us will simply run out of time or collapse from exhaustion.

If we want to be successful in this highly competitive world, we will have to work smarter rather than longer. This is a lesson I have had to learn from experience since starting as a web designer back in 1994. As I got older, pulling the all-nighters that defined my early career became impossible. Eventually, the pressure overwhelmed me and led to sickness and depression.

This forced me to reconsider the way I work and helped me discover five secrets that enable me to get as much done as possible without burning out. My hope is that by sharing them here, I can help the next generation of web designers avoid the fate that befell me and many of my peers. Unsurprisingly, the secret to getting more done in less time begins with being organized.

Be organized

As web designers, we like to talk a lot about productivity and getting things done. We like to read websites like Lifehacker and books like The 4-Hour Work Week and Getting Things Done. But although we spend a lot of time talking about productivity and being organized, few of us put in the effort required to make it happen.

Books like David Allen’s Getting Things Done provide good advice. But while we read these books, we are always too busy to implement the suggestions. (Image: Sunfox)

The problem is that being organized requires time and effort, which we believe we do not have. When deadlines are pressing, letting your organizational habits fall by the wayside and focusing on the work itself is all too easy.

The problem with this approach is that without an organized structure to work with, things quickly get chaotic and we do not work as efficiently as we could. I use David Allen’s getting-things-done methodology myself. But my aim here is not to convince you of the benefits of a particular approach to productivity, but rather to suggest that, whatever system you use, you stick to it rigidly and don’t push it out when things get busy.

For me, this means that my day begins by working through my tasks list and identifying the work I want to do that day. As new tasks come in throughout the day, I do not allow them to distract me. Instead, I focus on my original list. New tasks are added to my inbox and then incorporated into my master list at the end of the day.

By taking 30 minutes at the beginning of each day, I ensure that I am able to work most productively, focusing on the work that really needs to get done. You might argue that this is 30 minutes during which I could be doing actual work. But getting organized at the beginning of each day ensures that I am able to get more done than if I had just jumped into the work immediately. Part of being organized is having a rock-solid system that handles incoming tasks without distracting you from the work at hand. Let’s look at these distractions next.

Remove distractions

We web designers are constantly surrounded by distractions. Twitter, Facebook, email, the telephone and indeed the web itself are constant distractions that prevent us from getting stuff done.

Probably the single biggest improvement I’ve made for my productivity is to cut out distractions. The biggest part of this has been turning off all of the automatic notifications that constantly pop up. Instead, I manually check these various applications during the breaks that I take in my working day (see “Find your focus” below).

This keeps the notifications from interrupting the flow of my work. Of course, checking these applications even periodically can be massively distracting, because they take us on tangents away from what we should be working on.

Email is the biggest culprit. Whenever we check our email, we find requests that distract us from our work. This is why I’ve taken to checking email only three times a day (once in the morning, once at lunchtime and once at the end of the day).

Turn off those email notifications that constantly interrupt your workflow.

You might fear missing some important message that needs immediate action. In reality, such emails are few and far between. Most of the email we receive either is spam or can be acted on at a later time.

If you are particularly concerned about missing an email from someone important, then set up a filter or rule that notifies you only when that person contacts you. This would be a significant improvement to the notifications that pop up every minute telling you that new spam has arrived.

Finally, keep your inbox clear of distractions. When you finally do check your email, make sure to deal with everything in your inbox. If replying to an email would take less than a couple of minutes, do so immediately. If an email is simply for reference, file it right away so that it doesn’t clutter your inbox.

Move emails that represent larger tasks to your to-do list and out of your inbox. This will make processing incoming email much easier because you won’t be distracted by any old email that you’ve forgotten about. Of course, there are good reasons why we are so easily distracted. One is that our bodies cannot maintain a high level of concentration for prolonged periods. If we are going to be as productive as possible, then we need to recognize these limitations and work with them.

Find your focus

As web designers, we often treat our bodies much the way we treat our computers. We believe that if we input enough energy (often in the form of Red Bull and pizza), we will operate at a consistent level. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike a computer, your body fluctuates according to the amount of energy you have.

Working with your natural rhythm is a key component of being productive. Some of us are more productive in the morning, while others have more energy at night. All of us will find that our energy and ability to concentrate increases and decreases throughout the day. Fortunately, a lot can be done to work with these natural rhythms and ensure that we are as productive as possible.

For a start, I work in a series of short bursts, rather than trying to maintain my concentration for a long period of time. To do this, I use the Pomodoro technique. Essentially, this involves running a timer for 25 minutes, during which I do nothing but work on the current task (in this case, writing this article). Once I have finished my 25 minutes, I take a break for 5 minutes before doing another sprint.

The Pomodoro technique is a fancy name for a simple idea: work in short 25-minute sprints.

Another approach I take is to schedule tasks that require a lot of concentration for the morning, when I have the most energy. I also organize tasks according to the particular mood required to complete them.

For example, if I lack energy and feel like I can only sit down and read, I can pull up all of the tasks that involve reading. I find this to be massively helpful, and it prevents me from giving up on work and going to bed.

I use Omnifocus to organize tasks not just by project but by the kind of mood I need to be in to complete them.

Speaking of bed, I have also become known to take a short nap after lunch. This is when your energy reserves are at there lowest, and many research studies prove that naps increase productivity.

Finally, instead of turning to Red Bull for additional energy when you are up against a deadline and need to push through, I suggest taking a few minutes to exercise. In fact, I highly recommend an iPhone app called Fitfu, which encourages constant short bursts of exercise throughout the day.

Unfortunately, no matter how organized and focused we are, some tasks we simply hate doing and never feel like facing. This is usually because we do not perform them well. Why then do we insist on persevering? Simply outsource them to somebody who can do them better.

Consider outsourcing

I remember my dad once putting forth a convincing argument for never brushing his teeth. His logic went that, because he worked for himself, his time was extremely valuable and could be charged to prospective clients. He calculated the number of hours that he spent cleaning his teeth each year, and he worked out that getting the damage sorted out by the dentist was cheaper than taking the time to clean them himself. Although he was joking (at least I hope), there is some logic to his madness.

As freelance web designers, we spend a lot of time chasing clients, invoicing and various other administrative tasks that we are simply not good at and, more importantly, hate doing. We continue to do them because we are reluctant to pay someone else to do them for us. This is a false economy, because we could actually charge ourselves to clients at a higher rate and avoid having our energy levels sapped by these tasks that we hate doing.

What’s more, a lot of these jobs are not expensive to outsource. Literally thousands of virtual assistants are ready to help with this kind of office administration. Just look at Elance and you’ll see what I mean.

Constantly getting interrupted by clients? Use a company like Moneypenny to field calls and weed out non-urgent issues.

The same principle holds true when recruiting new staff. I often see web designers hire other web designers to work alongside them. Unfortunately, this usually means that the employer ends up doing the tasks that they hate, while the employee fills the employer’s original role.

Rather, hiring someone who can do the jobs we hate makes a lot more sense than hiring someone to replace us. Of course, hiring can be expensive and complicated. And we are often forced to hire simply because we are not working as efficiently as we should be. Sometimes we are better off looking for ways to reuse our previous work.

Recycle

When rushing from one task to the next, reinventing the wheel becomes all too easy. For example, how many times have you coded a list of news stories for a website?

Too often we start each project from scratch, instead of building on work we have done before. Look for ways to recycle your old work. Also, take advantage of the work that others have done and have made freely available online.

For example, I keep coming across web designers who build their own content management systems. This takes a huge amount of effort and is pointless now that so many free open-source content management systems are available. There are even opportunities to reuse design elements from other websites. While I discourage copying, this does not mean we cannot be inspired by individual design elements that we find.

One overlooked gem in 37Signals’ book Rework is the suggestion that we look for ways to recycle our own work.

Finally, recycling one’s work in completely different ways is also possible. People often ask me how I am able to publish so much material online. In reality, a lot of the material is recycled.

Let’s say that I have been working on a project. And perhaps I’ve come up with a clever little solution to a problem. I’m so pleased with this solution that I decide to tweet about it. People show interest, and so I explain what I did in a short audio post. From there, I expand the idea still further in a blog post, which eventually turns into a presentation for a conference. Before long, that one piece of work on a client’s website has been reused to significantly improve my reputation.

A dangerous road

Before you dismiss this post as just another list of tips and tricks, take a moment to think about the road ahead. Do you honestly believe you can continue to work at the intensity you are currently at without it seriously affecting your health and well-being?

Most of us need to carefully consider how we work and look for ways to work smarter rather than just putting in more hours. I strongly believe it is time for us to change the culture of the web design community, which currently treats working ridiculously long hours as a badge of honor rather than something to be ashamed of.

Written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Paul Boag. He is the founder of the UK Web design agency Headscape, author of the Website Owners Manual and host of award-winning Web design podcast Boagworld.com. He is also addicted to Twitter.

If you have a few minutes, I would love to hear your stories of being overworked and ways you have come up with to do more in less time. Please post in the comments below.

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Even worse is that it might be destroying your potential to do and create great things.

Go to any bookstore and you’ll see a “business” section. It’s a popular place these days, particular for today’s professionals, who go in seeking validation. The promises of hopes and dreams are high. But it’s a trap.

Instead of providing you with motivation to start working, this inspirational material acts as a substitute to performing work. It becomes a distraction that prolongs the efforts that you should already be putting into new and existing projects.

The authors get richer while your hopes and dreams grow, but are you working on things that really matter? Maybe… maybe not.

Our Obsession With Inspiration

I’ll be the first to admit that I visit those business sections in book stores. I love reading memoirs about people who have done great things — the opportunity to learn from leaders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is always treasured. The same can be said for companies like 37 Signals with Rework and Facebook with The Facebook Effect.

But when I see that people like Maria Bartiromo, a financial news anchor at CNBC, with a head shot and a title called The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, I can’t help but be brought back to reality; all these people want is to make a profit from selling you inspiration. (I’m still waiting for Charlie Sheen’s book.)

The Internet is not so different. There are websites dedicated to doing nothing more than providing people with inspiration. This is exemplary in the creative industry, where entire blogs are dedicated to little more than this task alone. But they are some of the most popular blogs within the industry.

You’ll find that people are enamored with posts like “10 Ways To Be More Productive” or “100 Ways To Become Inspired.” It is this content that immediately gets the creative juices flowing. It provides a shot of adrenaline, one which many people seek to take advantage of.

The content itself isn’t bad, but the way people utilize it is.

Inspiration Doesn’t Work

If you use inspiration as a way to invent new and creative things, then you are using inspiration wisely. To take from others who have created great things and make your own wonderful creations is how inspiration is meant to be used. And, in that way, inspiration is a great thing. Unfortunately, inspiration only serves this purpose for a minority.

Most people use inspiration for another purpose — they use it to get those creative juices flowing, but they almost always fail to produce anything. You can call them the “wannabes,” “dreamers,” or “lazies” of the creative industry. They have big ideas, but they have little in the way of execution.

These people have the best intentions. They have that idea stuck in their head that they know is great. But when it comes time to produce results, there is nothing but inaction. It might be fear. It might be laziness. It might be any number of forms of resistance that inhibit us from doing great things.

That is when many turn to inspiration.

Inspiration Does Not Equal Work

It used to be that people would step outside of their house, visit a new place or thing, become inspired from these places or things, and work off of this inspiration. People still do this. People still make an effort to become inspired to create great things.

One of the more memorable examples that I can recall is the new Cadillac CTS-V. The designer, Bob Munson, gathered inspiration for the car’s redesign from an archer’s bow being pulled taut.

Mr. Munson’s inspiration, alone, did not equal work. He might have had the idea, scribbled a few notes, and had a winner. But where is is different from most is that he followed through with the inspiration. He put it to work. It required plenty of dedication to actually iterate through concept, design, and production, but he did it. The inspiration, in a way, served as a means to an end.

Most others would have looked at the archer’s bow and arrow and only saw what it could have been. So few would have been able to execute an idea such as the new CTS-V, which is now considered one of the best in its class. But how often is that going to happen?

Inspiration Could Be A Distraction

Instead of focusing on one piece of inspiration, people tend to focus on hundreds. They take advantage of all the information that the Internet provides, and, instead of producing work, they get caught up in the moment of seeing stuff that other people have created. Don’t get me wrong: I do this as much as the next person. But where most people go wrong is they fail to do anything with it. I used to be in this group.

If you are one of those people who have many bookmarks of inspirational galleries and ideas, but you have many few products as a result of that inspiration, you might be suffering from these same issues.

It wasn’t but three years ago when I had not hundreds but thousands of bookmarks to things I deemed inspirational. It became an obsession of sorts, where I would scour the Internet, websites, blogs, forums, and more for inspirational material. I had hundreds of bookmarks pointing to sites like Flickr and DeviantArt. It became a rush for me. I loved every moment of it, and I was determined not to miss the latest and greatest stuff that other people were producing.

Instead of actually doing meaningful work, I started dreaming of all the things I could create with all of my newfound inspiration. I spent more time in programs like OmniGraffle than I did in TextMate or Photoshop. I eventually had hundreds of ideas for websites that, in truth, I had no motivation to follow through with. But that inspirational high that I took from all of this content sucked me in.

Just as my collection of bookmarks grew, my obsession with reading books did too. Any well-known inspirational book you could name within the past five years is one that I have probably read. I’ve read memoirs and autobiographies of several hundreds. It fueled my creativity, but it also caused inactivity.

It got to a point where things got really bad, so I decided to eliminate the need for books, inspirational galleries, and more. I also deleted all of the bookmarks I amassed over the years. I was cleaning house.

It was time to get to work.

Why Working Hard Is The Only Way

I, alone, could not force myself to break free of this aura of inspiration I had created around me. I needed a good kick in the ass to make me realize my mistakes. Thankfully, I stumbled upon someone who really helped change my life.

That one person is Merlin Mann. He previously talked about the topic of work ethic. He knows that no amount of talk or inspiration is going to convince people to produce something amazing. He knows that only one thing will amount to such an achievement — that one thing is working hard.

Photo by cliff1066. | CC

I decided to block out everything around me and focus on the important things. I was going to work hard to get things done. It turned out to be one of the greatest decisions in my life, and one that I will never regret.

Eliminating Distractions

We have problems with working hard. We want to maximize profits with the least potential amount of work. This is why books like 4-Hour Workweek exist and are best sellers. But even though it is possible to maximize return on the least amount of effort, it rarely results in the type of work that would be classified as quality or worthwhile. Timothy Ferris is happy to tell you that you can make a living from four hours of work, but he didn’t tell you that his book probably required hundreds (if not thousands) of hours to write. Think about it.

Working hard is difficult when you consider all of the distractions — Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. — that prevent us from achieving great results. It is difficult to remain focused at the tasks at hand when you have chirps and dings making you aware that there is a world of information and inspiration awaiting you on the Internet.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I was addicted to Facebook and Twitter. At one point I even counted using these services as work. But to justify my Tweeting and Facebooking as work was silly. If we worked hard to produce something amazing in the first place, those connections would probably come as a result. (Of course, networking should be a part of everyone’s business, but if you don’t put in the hours to create an amazing product, no amount of followers will do you much good.)

Infographic by Cambodia4Kids.org. | CC

So I make it a habit of mine to turn off access to the Internet when I go to work. I only turn it on when absolutely necessary and I only open tabs to websites that I need to do research. Everything else is eliminated from view.

Once I have eliminated distractions and start working, things seemingly go on autopilot and I start to produce results. I’m sure this is true for many others who are in the creative industry. To allow someone or something to distract you at this point of focus is, for a lack of a better word, crazy.

When All Else Fails, Working Hard Prevails

If you want to save yourself time, money, and much grief, come to realize the following things:

• Inspiration is only useful if you are willing to work hard.
• Inspirational material is not a substitute for work, and it could be a distraction.
• Doing hard work doesn’t mean you are working hard.
• Working hard is difficult, but it’s possible and necessary to accomplish great things.
• Eliminating distractions is key to working hard and maintaining focus.
• Working harder will, in most cases, produce better long-term results.

In the future, if you need a book, blog post, image gallery, podcast, television show, or movie to get you to sit down and do something, you have a serious problem.

Realize that you already know the solution — you always have. The question is, however, are you willing to put in the long hours to make it work?

Written exclusively for WDD by James Mowery. He is a passionate technology journalist and entrepreneur who has written for various top-tier publications like Mashable and CMSWire. Follow him on Twitter: @JMowery.

What do you think of these ideas and how do you handle inspiration? Please post your thoughts below…

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Coming up with ideas and creative solutions to problems is what we do on a daily basis. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do so.

Sometimes we get blocked creatively, and it seems like no matter how hard we try, we just can’t come up with a creative solution to anything.

The good news is that there are plenty of things you can do that can help you overcome a block in your creativity. First you’ll need to understand why you’re blocked, and then try some simple techniques to get over that blockage.

In this article, we’ll also cover a few ideas for finding motivation when your lack of desire to work is the root of your creativity problems.

Reasons for Creative Blockages

Before we can overcome a creative block, it’s important to figure out what is causing it. Without knowing the root cause, we don’t really know the best methods for getting over a blockage. In most cases, blocks are caused by one of four things:

1. Working Too Hard
If you find yourself with a creative block, think about how much you’ve been working lately. If you work ten hour days or never take days off, you may be blocked because you’re just working too hard and too much. Most people don’t have an unlimited supply of creativity. After a few hours or a few days, we need time to replenish those creative reserves.

2. Lack of Sleep
Being tired tends to zap creativity faster than anything else. If you’re not getting enough sleep every night, you can’t expect to be as creative as you would be if you’re well-rested. Not everyone necessarily needs eight hours of sleep a night, so it’s important to figure out how much sleep you need to be at your optimal creative levels. Note: Sometimes too much sleep can be just as bad for your creativity as too little.

3. Stress
Whether it’s things in your personal life causing you stress or something at work, stress is a major killer of creativity. Finding ways to minimize the stress in your life is a great way to boost your creativity. Whether you do that by eliminating the things causing you stress or simply by finding ways to deal with it (like meditation or exercise) is up to you.

4. Fear
Fear can freeze your creativity more solidly than virtually anything else. Sometimes you might be afraid to finish the current project because you have nothing else lined up after it. Other times you might be afraid the client isn’t going to like what you’ve done, or that your peers won’t appreciate the design. In either case, overcoming your fear is going to be paramount to getting your creativity back and finishing the project.

Ways to Overcome Creative Blocks

Hopefully you’ve been able to nail down exactly why you’re suffering from a creative block. Now it’s time to get down to overcoming it. There are a lot of techniques you can utilize to get over almost any kind of creative blockage. Here are some of the best:

Take a Break
If you’re creatively blocked, taking a break from whatever you’re working on can do wonders. Work on something else for a bit, or take a day off. When you’ve got some distance from your project and aren’t thinking about it anymore, you might be surprised at the ideas that will start flowing.

Take a Nap
This is particularly important if you think your creative blockage might be due to a lack of sleep. Taking a nap, even if it’s just for twenty or thirty minutes, can let your creative batteries recharge and give you new ideas. Even if your creativity blockage isn’t because of a lack of sleep, a nap can still give you a fresh perspective on your work. If you’re a morning person, an afternoon nap can even help reset your creativity levels to what they are when you get up in the morning.

Take a Walk
A change of setting can often open up your creative flood gates better than anything else. Walking can also let your mind wander, which can result in finding new, creative solutions. Some people like to take long walks, maybe for an hour or two to free up their creativity, while others find just a quick, ten-minute walk around their block does the trick. You’ll have to experiment to see what works for you.

Do Something Mundane
This is one of the best tricks out there for unblocking your creativity. Doing some mundane task allows your brain to relax and wander, much as it does when you take a walk. Cleaning is often one of the best mundane tasks for overcoming a creative block, whether it’s vacuuming or washing dishes or dusting. The bonus here is that in many cases you’re completing other work that needs to get done. Make sure whatever mundane task you choose requires some physical activity but little or no concentration.

Switch Your Tools
As designers, we generally use the same tools over and over again for each project. The same software, same hardware, same notebooks, pens, etc. If you change the tools you’re using, you may find ideas flow a little better. Try hand-coding for awhile in just a text editor, or use a different graphics program for a little while. If you normally use a computer-based wire-framing program, considering switching to paper for a bit (or vice versa). Making a small change in how you work can have a remarkable effect on how creative you’re feeling.

Look for Inspiration
Finding new inspiration can do wonders for your creativity. If you’re blocked on a certain project, try looking at similar projects others have created. You can also try to find inspiration in other design work or outside the design world. If you want to create a new website layout, for example, maybe spend some time looking at magazine layouts for inspiration.

Force Yourself
Sometimes the only way to get over a creative blockage is to push through it. You might have tried all the techniques above and still not be able to find your creativity again. If that’s the case, then just keep moving forward with the project. Sometimes, once you get past a certain part of the project, you may get over your creative block. You might also be able to then look at the part of the project that was giving you problems once it’s finished and figure out a better way to redo it. Or you might find that pushing through results in a perfectly acceptable solution that you and your client are both happy with.

Self-Motivating Tricks

Sometimes it’s not so much that we don’t know how to overcome a creative block as it’s just that we have no motivation to do so. For freelancers, especially, finding motivation can be difficult at times.

Even if you normally have no problem motivating yourself, almost everyone gets hit by a lack of motivation at one point or another, and this can often lead to a creative block. Finding motivation again can be tricky, but there are a few things you can do to get yourself working again.

Small Rewards
Using small rewards as you reach certain milestones in your project can be a great way to get your creativity flowing again. If you know that after you complete a certain bit of your work that you can go out to eat, or go hang out with your friends or family, you’re more likely to just push through the creative block (which can end up freeing things up). These small rewards should be something you enjoy that you maybe don’t get to do every day or every week. The key here is to stick to it and not take your reward until you’ve met your goal.

Big Rewards
Big rewards can be a great motivator for getting over a more severe creative block and finishing a big project. What this big reward is will depend on you. For some people, it might be taking a day or two off. For others it might be buying something you’ve been eying for awhile. Regardless of what the reward is, it can serve as a great motivator for loosening up a creative block. And if nothing else, it can motivate you to push through the block and get the work done.

Music
Don’t overlook music as both a motivator and a way to free up your creativity. Put on something with a good beat, especially something fast, and you might be surprised at how much it can motivate you. Try to tailor the music to the project you’re working on. If you’re designing something young and hip, put on some club music or pop. If you’re designing something elegant and sophisticated, put on classical music or something like Frank Sinatra. Music that fits the project can get your creativity moving in the right direction.

Don’t Let Yourself Work
This one seems counter-intuitive, but sometimes forcing yourself to take a break and not work can free up your creative flow. A forced hiatus can leave you eager to get back to work and filled with new ideas. If you can, take a break of a couple days. Do anything but work, and try not to even think about your work. You’ll probably find after a day or so, you can’t not think about your current project and your head is full of new ideas. Don’t got back to work as soon as that happens. Force yourself to take another day or two before you start working again so you’ve got so many ideas they’ll keep you going for awhile.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Do you have your own techniques for overcoming blocks in your creativity? Or other ideas on where those blocks come from in the first place? Please share them in the comments!

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Unfortunately, sometimes you’re completely devoid of ideas, which can be demoralizing, especially when it affects your profit and stress levels.

Many designers I’ve met suffer from this problem occasionally. In such circumstances, some creatives choose to push on and just create something.

This is a poor use of your time, though, because it won’t lead to your best work. Others decide to take the day off, but this isn’t always viable. I, on the other hand, use a clever technique, one that I find so effective that I use it all the time now: working in a one-hour time frame.

Benefits

1. Saves time
Setting a scheduling goal forces you to be time-conscious while you work. If you’re keeping tabs on your time, then you’re less likely to redo designs from scratch simply because what you’ve been working on doesn’t feel right or because you’ve strayed from your client’s specifications.

At the end of each hourly period, review your work. If you decide that you’ve strayed from the original plan or gone on a tangent, then you’ve still got time to adjust or refocus. This leads us to the next benefit.

2. Forces you to make decisions
Working on an hour-by-hour schedule, you may feel a bit of pressure, which might give you a “make-do” mentality, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. One positive effect is that you will be forced to make decisions about your design while avoiding time-wasting pursuits and aimless experiments. This is what we call “getting things done.”

During the process, you may find yourself wondering “Does this work? Does it achieve my client’s goals and deliver the desired results?” Ask yourself this when making both major and minor decisions (which could be anything from choosing the radius for a rounded box to selecting the width and styling of your content).

And this leads us to the final benefit…

3. Achieves good results every time
Because you spent quality time and energy setting a series of goals and specifications, as well as delineating and following a tight schedule, your efforts will have been measured and focused. Your design will look good and will satisfy your client. It will have a clearly composed message, and the calls to action will be evident.

The designs you create in this manner will gel naturally. The forced time frame reduces tendencies toward blasé, almost random design and instead produces logical, effective designs that not only look good but, more importantly, meet your client’s needs to the tee.

Here are the steps you will need to take.

1. Get a good timer.

A timer application or a plain old stopwatch will keep you on track. The iPhone, for example, has a good timer that can be found under the clock application and that is easy to operate. Alternatively, you could try a dashboard widget such as Countdown X.

It’s best if an alarm sounds at the end of the hour to alert you that the allotted time has run out and that it’s time to stop working. Make sure your timer can easily be reset and has some sort of audio alert.

2. Plan effectively.

As you would with any project, plan the elements to include in your design. Jot down, perhaps on a notepad, the specifications for the design. These may have been provided by the client, but if not, take the time to craft your own.

You could stick to keywords such as “Add log-in field” or “Create ‘Register’ button,” or write two to three sentences on each point with additional details. The idea here is to give yourself a clearer understanding of the elements to include on the page; these become your definite goals.

It also helps to start thinking about the actual design early on. Jot down your ideas for styling and typefaces. Don’t restrict yourself; the more notes, the clearer the vision.

Perhaps your client has given you wireframes or sketches? Include these in your notes. You’ve now formed your pre-design plan and will want to refer to it regularly.

3. Inspire yourself.

This is where the one-hour technique really starts to take off. It’s always a good idea to fill your head with inspiring designs, interesting concepts and unique executions—but even more so if you’re feeling uninspired. Your might consider selecting websites (sometimes whole, sometimes small segments) that accord with your pre-design plan. By this I mean websites that achieve the same goals you have (e.g. increasing customer contact, driving new sales, etc.).

You are not, of course, trying to steal ideas or copy another designer’s work. The goal is to stimulate your creative impulses and hone your skills enough to execute a polished concept. Ask yourself whether other designers have solved the problem facing you.

Why did their solution work, and could you improve it? Likewise, look at your client’s competitors. Do their websites include that extra something that puts them ahead of your client? If so, consider how you could offer that extra polish. If not, what is their good website lacking that would make it excellent?

This is where innovation happens. Asking yourself these questions will help you identify the conventions that work and disregard the ones that don’t.

You could leave these websites open in your browser or simply note the URLs for later perusal. You may find a visual reminder helpful; or you could use a mood board or print-outs.

4. Design!

Now for the important part, the nuts and bolts of any project: the design process itself.

When you have a well-structured and concise plan, you can use the one-hour technique to its fullest. You may now start your timer and begin designing.

What sets this technique apart is the goal of completing as much of the design as you can within a single hour. Of course, not every design will be complete at the end of the hour. Taking two or three hours to produce a finished concept is reasonable. Still, breaking down the design process into one-hour blocks has numerous benefits.

Always be aware of the time. Focus on the fact that you have only one hour. Work as hard as you can, but don’t rush. Rushing defeats the purpose, which is to make decisions and execute them; and you might revert to the old way of starting all over again when something doesn’t work, which leads to time-wasting and haphazard results.

Conclusion

The one-hour block design method takes a little getting used to—perhaps two or three design projects—but once you’ve adapted, you’ll feel more in control of your design work and abilities.

You’ll be able to deliver consistent, reliable designs for each and every project you undertake. And you may well enjoy your work more, safe in the knowledge that your productivity is no longer constrained by your emotional attachment to the feeling of being creative.

Written exclusively for WDD by Ben Gribbin.

Do you use this technique or a similar one to streamline your work and increase productivity? Please share your views with us.

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If you added up all those wasted seconds and minutes, you might be surprised at the percentage of your day that it takes up.

Taking the time to set up an optimal workspace can save you hours or even days over the course of a year.

It’s worth taking a day or two to set up your desk and work area to better suit the way you work to save time later on. And the process isn’t difficult.

It just takes a lot of planning and delving into how you work best, and then setting up both your physical and virtual workspaces to better cater to your work methods.

As mentioned, it’s a good idea to set aside a day or so to optimize your workspace. You’ll likely see the positive effects on your time almost immediately, and may notice a lot less frustration right away, too.

Not exactly an optimal work environment. Image by cybrgrl.

How Do You Work?

Let’s assume that the majority of people reading this post are web designers and/or developers. That cuts out a lot of possibilities in the “how do you work” arena. But there are still plenty of differences in how individual web designers and developers work. If you want to set up your optimal workspace, you’ll need to figure out exactly how you work best.

Think about how you work now and how you might improve your productivity if you had other tools and systems in place.

Don’t try to completely overhaul your work methods, though, as you’re unlikely to stick to new systems if they don’t integrate with the way you’re used to working. Baby steps will often get you better results than changing everything at once.

Make a list of the things you normally do in a workday and how you complete those tasks. Your routine might be fairly similar from day to day, or you might do completely different things on certain days of the week. Include all the tasks you regularly complete, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

What Kind of Organizer Are You?

The next thing to consider is how you stay organized. Do you use a paper organizer or filing system? Post-it notes? A computer-based to-do list or project manager?

Image by Adam UXB Smith

If you use a paper-based system, think about how that needs to be accommodated within your workspace. Do you have a big organizer that needs space within easy reach on your desk? Or do you use post-it notes that you need to be able to stick to your desktop or the walls surrounding your desk? Would you be better served by something like a whiteboard?

Think through how you stay organized and make a list of the things that are necessary for it. You’ll need to incorporate these things into your workspace, but that comes a bit later.

What Materials Are Important to Your Work?

Obviously a computer and likely a printer are going to be on this list. But what other tools do you need? You might have external speakers, a flatbed scanner, a desk lamp, paper, pens, an iPod dock, or countless other tools that you need and/or want to work.

Image by William Hook

Again, make a list of what’s important to you. Then you’ll need to weed out all the other stuff that’s on your desk that isn’t necessary.

Removing the clutter is important, as it will make it much easier for you to keep everything organized. Remember: clutter is the enemy of an optimal workspace. Every time you have to stop what you’re doing to look for something, you’re being less efficient and less productive.

Spheres of Importance

Now that you’ve figured out how you work and what’s important to your workflow, it’s time to get down to actually rearranging your workspace. Since most of you reading this are web designers or developers, let’s make your computer the centerpiece of your layout. For most of you, it’s where you do the vast majority of your work.

From there, figure out what else you use most often. This could be your organizer, graph paper, scratch paper, or anything else. Put this within arm’s reach of your computer. Another thing that should always be within arm’s reach is your trash and recycling bins. It’s important to keep your desk clean, which means throwing things away before they have a chance to accumulate.

Think about other things you like to keep within easy reach of your workspace. This could be client files, reference books you use often, your printer or scanner, or anything else that you use on a daily basis. These things should be located within arm’s reach or just beyond.

Then think of the other things you need to keep in your office, but maybe only use once or twice a week or less. It’s not as important where you put these, though you’ll still want them easily accessible. They can go on a bookshelf, or in a drawer, or wherever else you have space for them where you can keep everything organized.

The goal here is to make sure the things you use most often are closest to you, while things you use less often are further away. It’s going to vary a bit for everyone.

For me, the things that need to be front-and-center on my desk are my computer, a notebook or two (or six), pens, and my cell phone and dock. For someone else, a graphics tablet or organizer might be more important and need to be in that immediate sphere. Others might want their printer within arm’s reach if they’re constantly printing things out.

Everything in Its Place

Within each sphere of importance, it’s necessary to make sure everything has a place where it belongs. That means having some kind of holder for your pens, a specific place to keep your planner or organizer, and a designated spot for those reference books you want to keep within easy reach.

Image by AdamSelwood

Think about the way you organize. For some people, you might want to keep things like pens in your top desk drawer. For others, you might want a cup or a box right on your desk for them. The same goes for books or notebooks. Some people might want a shelf to keep them on, while others will be happy with a stack on their desk. There’s no right or wrong here.

Once everything has its own place, make sure everything gets returned to that place at the end of each day, or even better: as soon as you’re done with it. This will keep your desk clutter-free and make it easy to find things when you need them, making you more productive.

You may decide you need things to help keep your desk organized. This is fine, but don’t go overboard. The simplest solutions are often the best. But consider purchasing things like desk drawer organizers, some kind of container for holding pens and pencils, and possibly an inbox or desktop file holders.

Again, make sure you only buy things that are going to fit into the way you work, and aren’t going to cause you more problems or contribute to clutter.

Get Rid of Distractions

Distractions on your desktop will interfere with how productively you can work. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to keep your desk entirely Spartan, but it does mean anything that potentially distracts you should be removed.

Image by mkosut

Differentiate between distractions and creative aids. If something actually helps you in the creative process, then keep it. But if you use it as an excuse not to work, then put it elsewhere.

Maintaining Your Optimal Workspace

Once you have your workspace set up, you need to maintain it in order for it to continue to be an optimal workspace.

Most of these things should be done daily, either at the beginning or end of your workday (which one is completely up to you and depends on whether you prefer to organize at the end of the day or the beginning).

Personally, I recommend doing your maintenance stuff at the end of the day for a few reasons: First, because you’ll be more likely to do it quickly and without distractions when you’re done with your work (in the morning you might be more tempted to linger and procrastinate). Second, because it’s nice to come into work in the morning to a clean and organized desk.

First of all, make sure trash gets thrown away or recycled. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bunch of discared hand-drawn sketches of a website or empty soda cans or anything else, if it’s trash, put it where it belongs. Places it doesn’t belong include the top of your desk, under your desk, or anywhere around your desk that isn’t a trash can. Honestly, this is one of those things that should be done as soon as you generate said trash, but at least once a day is vital. There’s little worse than starting your workday surrounded by garbage.

Make sure you put everything back in its place when you’re finished with it, or at least once a day. This way, when you need whatever it is, it’s where you can find it. If everything has its own designated place, this should only take a couple of minutes.

Once a week or so, review your system. Make sure everything is in the proper sphere or importance and move things around if you need to. As you get your system more refined, you might only need to review it monthly or even less. Don’t be afraid to change things around as your work methods change. And don’t be afraid to change things back if a new arrangement just isn’t working out for you.

Virtual Workspace

We’ve talked a lot about your physical workspace, but as designers and developers, it’s likely more of your work takes place in a virtual space. It’s important to arrange your virtual workspace for optimal productivity, too.

Image by Todd W Carpenter

So often, people try to create their virtual workspace based on what they think that workspace should be. They strive for a minimalist desktop, or they arrange their folders and files in a certain way because they heard that’s how some other designer or developer does it.

Forget about how you think your virtual workspace should look or work or be arranged. Set it up however it’s most efficient and effective for you. For me, I have a handful of folders on my desktop based on the different types of work I do. I have a folder for “work” that contains subfolders for every client I have, a folder for “websites” that has subfolders with all the files for my personal projects, and folders for “photos”, “new fonts” (where fonts go until I get a chance to install them), and even a “miscellaneous” folder where I put all those things I don’t have other homes for.

I tried to have a minimalist desktop, but it just doesn’t work for me. I save things to my desktop all the time, too, but try to clean everything up and put it where it belongs every couple of weeks. Don’t force yourself into some unnatural method of organizing your files and folders. Find the system that most seamlessly fits into your workflow.

The same thing goes for using tools like Spaces for keeping things organized. I keep saying that one of these days I’m going to start taking advantage of Spaces to keep all my various projects organized and separate, but so far I just haven’t found a real need to. Just because it’s available to you doesn’t mean you have to use it. Use it if it helps you, but otherwise disregard it.

One thing you might want to take the time to do, if you haven’t already, is to set up different workspaces in the programs you regularly use. You can set up different profiles in many of your programs (Adobe programs, specifically) for different kinds of projects. You may use a different set of tools depending on whether you’re doing photo retouching or original artwork, designing a website or working on a print advertisement.

Taking the time to set up workspaces for each of these (or other projects you regularly tackle) means you’ll have an optimal workspace no matter what you’re working on.

More Resources

There are tons of great articles out there for better refining both your workspace and your work methods to improve your efficiency and productivity. Here are a few excellent choices to get you started:

• What is the Optimal Work Environment? – from eComm Tips
• Set Up Your Desk to Maximize Productive Web Development – from Freelance Folder
• Declutter Your Desk with a General Reference Filing System – from Work Awesome
• Organize Your Workspace for Maximum Productivity – by Gina Trapani, from the Harvard Business Review
• How to Defeat Workspace Clutter – from Work Awesome
• Your Work Space is Killing Your Productivity – from FreelanceSwitch
• 10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace – from StevePavlina.com

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman, a freelance writer and designer.

How do you organize your workspace? What things have worked best for you?

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In fact, too many ideas is more often the problem rather than too few. Where we usually run into issues, though, is in the follow-through.

How do we take the brilliant ideas that we come up with on a daily basis and see them through to completed projects?

That’s exactly what the book Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky (the founder of Behance) aims to teach us.

He’s spent years studying the habits and methods of successful creatives who have a knack for following through on their great ideas and bringing them to fruition. He presents this information in a way that is both easy to understand and easy to implement.

The book starts out with an overview of how organization is often viewed by creative types as counter-productive to the creative process. Making Ideas Happen aims to disprove this theory, and to show why incorporating a bit of organization can go a long way toward following through with your ideas.

From there, it digs into the practicalities of setting up an organizational system that works within your existing creative workflow. There’s a definite slant toward using the Action Method (developed by Behance), but most of the principles discussed could be adapted to a custom productivity system.

Taking action is stressed throughout the first part of the book. Action steps are touted as the key to managing and completing any creative project. And the author has plenty of research and anecdotal evidence to back up what he’s saying. He’s also big on developing and customizing your own system.

…A methodology is only effective when it is practiced consistently. While every person’s system is different, the most productive people pay attention to the finer details of their rituals to keep themselves engaged.

The big idea touted throughout this section is to organize everything in your life and work into projects. These projects should each have action steps, backburner ideas, and reference items. By keeping everything in projects and assigning every action step you need to take to an individual project, it makes keeping everything organized and moving forward much easier.

In the chapter on prioritization,  Belsky offers some excellent tips on managing your action steps so the most urgent work always gets done, but not at the expense of other important actions. Suggestions include learning to delegate, using a responsibility grid, and making a daily “focus area”.

One tip that might surprise many (included in the chapter titled Execution) is the advice to “Act Without Conviction”. This runs contrary to what is often preached in all sorts of leadership and management classes and workshops.

…For the creative mind, the cost of waiting for conviction can be too great to bear. Waiting builds apathy and increases the likelihood that another idea will capture our fancy and energy.

Considering the speed with which most creatives come up with ideas, the above advice and the section in which it appears should be carefully considered.

Other tips in the Execution chapter include being willing to kill ideas whenever necessary (“liberally” is the word used in the book) and to avoid meetings unless they result in measurable action.

From there, Making Ideas Happen goes on to talk about leveraging community to help follow through on your ideas. Enlisting help from those around you can greatly increase your chances of finishing the projects you start. Belsky talks about the three types of people most of us are surrounded by: the Dreamers (those who focus more on the ideas), the Doers (those who are obsessed with executing ideas and following through on projects), and the Incrementalists (those who can do both). Many people strive to become Incrementalists, thinking this will be the key to finally finishing all those projects they start. But even being an Incrementalist has its drawbacks.

With the ability to rapidly develop and then execute ideas, the Incrementalist finds him- or herself leading multiple projects (and, in many cases, multiple businesses) simultaneously.

Being an incrementalist can lead to splitting your attention and focus between many, many different projects. While sometimes this can lead to success, it can just as often lead to feeling overwhelmed and burnt out.

Making Ideas Happen also suggests that you share ideas with others.

The notion of “sharing ideas liberally” defies the natural instinct to keep your ideas a secret. Yet, among the hundreds of successful creatives I’ve interviewed, a fearless approach to sharing ideas is one of the most common attributes.

Sharing ideas helps to foster community that will help make your ideas happen. If you can gather community support for your project, it’s more likely you’ll find the motivation to follow through. Other benefits of taking a community-based approach means you’ll have others to turn to if you need feedback and to keep you accountable.

Competition is also touted as a helpful means to keeping motivated and on-track with your projects. Competitors can keep us on our toes and make us less likely to give up. But seeking out competition can often be a scary thing for creatives (or anyone else, for that matter).

The prospect of someone else competing and receiving fanfare for an idea that you had first is outright painful…One might argue that our ideas are an extension of who we are and who we hope to become. This is why competition taps into something almost primal, the Darwinian struggle for survival.

In other words, competition can be incredibly motivational. Even if the competition is friendly, it can still serve as a catalyst for pushing you forward.

The final section in the book deals with leadership capabilities. One key to being a successful creative professional is being able to lead teams of others. Learning to become a good leader isn’t something that’s often covered in design school.

But becoming a good leader isn’t rocket science. Fostering a good team can lead to a high level of support for developing new ideas and seeing them through. Good team chemistry can also lead to recognizing bad ideas more quickly and ceasing to work on them. Ideally, you want some team members who are good at poking holes in your ideas and showing you where the weaknesses are.

An entire chapter is devoted to managing creative teams. Methods for managing these teams include things like sharing ownership on your ideas. It can be difficult, though, for many leaders to give up enough control in their ideas that their team members actually feel a sense of ownership on these ideas.

Ownership is important, though, because team members who feel they have a stake in these ideas will put more effort into their development. One way to give a sense of ownership to your team is to get them excited about your idea.

Getting people excited about your idea, however, is just the first phase of sharing ownership. The second and much more challenging part is empowering team members to push the idea forward rather than micromanaging them every step of the way.

The final chapter might be one of the most useful to many creatives. It deals with managing yourself, arguably the hardest person of all to effectively manage.

Most creative leaders can trace their greatest obstacles to something personal—fear, insecurity, or self-imposed limitation.

Having an entire chapter devoted to managing and overcoming these obstacles is going to be incredibly valuable to a large number of creatives. I’m sure that most creative pros out there find that internal struggles are the hardest things to overcome in the creative process if they really think about it.

Making Ideas Happen is an excellent resource for those of us who have no shortage of ideas but often have a hard time seeing those ideas through to completion. It offers specific, actionable information on how to manage yourself and your team to achieve measurable results and create successful projects.

Making Ideas Happen is scheduled for release April 15, 2010, and can be preordered through major booksellers.

Exclusively reviewed for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

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