For the most part, running two businesses (Second and Park and thingsthatarebrown, a web design agency my husband started) has been a surprisingly pleasant, low-stress experience.
I have enough billable work to keep me busy—but not too busy. I enjoy working from home. I can fit my work into 8 or 9 disciplined hours a day. I am able to separate myself from my job.
Still, there is one aspect of this arrangement that has truly challenged me: switching from “manager self” to “creative self” at various points throughout the day.
Two Very Different Hats
Manager types are accustomed to a certain way of working. They respond quickly to emails, crisply prioritize (and eviscerate) their inboxes, plan meetings, and generally just get stuff done. Heap a pile of tasks in front of them, and they will energetically destroy that heap, come hell or high water. This describes me in my natural working state.
Things change, though, when it’s time to get creative. When writing, I need to sit for long, uninterrupted periods and think things through. I need freedom for my mind to wander toward new & better ways of phrasing a particular sentence. And I need to actually relish in the creative process, or my work will come out all crappy.
The problem is, switching from “manager” to “creative worker” can make a person crazy. If you don’t play your cards right, you end up in a scary ADD shitstorm, marooned between your inbox, Twitter, and a blank page. Ugh.
So what do you do?
The Quick Fix
I have not stumbled upon a perfect fix for this problematic area of my job, but there are a few things I’ve noticed that can help:
Don’t obsess over inbox zero.
I used to attack my inbox like a virus. Slowly, though, I’m learning to let emails sit there for (*gasp*) a few hours. Instead of kicking up dust in a flurry of back & forths with a potential client, I wait until I have time to compose a complete response. The other way worked fine when I was merely a task master, but this works better for me now.
Switch hats decisively.
If I’m done, I decide to actually be done. I do not go back to continually re-read a rough draft of an article I’ve just sent off to a publisher, for instance, because they’ll get back to me with changes. There’s no reason to keep gumming a thoroughly chewed thing.
Manage on case-by-case basis.
Some people are easy to engage in a fast-paced email tit-for-tat. In five minutes and four emails, you’ve worked out a strategy for your next project. Other people, not so much—we all know someone who prefers the luxurious, 40-minute phone convo.
I try to know who I’m dealing with and respond accordingly. I’ve realized that it’s usually better to wait to engage the phone lover in a phone call when I’ve got time, rather than try to gain clarity in a series of very long emails.
Manage only when you need to.
Some projects don’t require Extreme Project Management. If you find yourself blessed with one of these rarities, there is no need to act like you are an Extreme Project Manager. I try to let the thing unfold naturally, while still being professional.
The bottom line? Give yourself time to create.
When in manager mode, it’s easy to put your nose to the grindstone and crank through your day. The same is not true of creative work—it’s probably just not possible to write a really well-researched, well-written article for a magazine in four hours over a pot of coffee and elbow grease.
I try to give myself enough time, sans distraction, to do the creative thing right. Or else I feel like crap at the end of the day.
Paul Graham, by the way, wrote a great article on this same topic, here.
4 Comments
Wonderful advice, so true and it applies to most everyone in our field. I also like Paul Graham’s article on the topic. The maker/manager schedule concept is spot-on. And on the topic of “meetings”, I’ve been increasingly assertive about the need for folks to minimize meetings at my workplace. While it’s a welcome concept for several folks, others find it very difficult to understand. “Why don’t we all just meet for 30 mins and hammer it out?” Admittedly, on the surface it seems like a very logical thing: if you get a bunch of smart people in the room, surely they’ll efficiently solve the problem in a given amount of time. Ah, how does that quote go? “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. in practice, there is.”
Yo Nishant,
Yep. I once read that brainstorming sessions have a 0% success rate. Probably not true and I don’t know what that even means, but there is definitely wisdom in taking time to brainstorm and “throw people at the problem” ONLY when doing so moves a project forward.
Thanks for the thoughts, and happy Friday!
Fine thoughts on a top subject — just discovered your blog the other day (thanks to a link off typekit’s site, I think), and wanted to say that I like it very much.
One thing I’m really interested in is how billable hours and the ‘creative’ part of writing go together.
I write copy for an agency, but I’m salaried — so there’s a continual little part of my brain going “get the writing done, you’re on the clock”, while another is saying “take the time to do this right, no matter how much.”
Since the clients only see the work at the end of the day, and my higher-ups rely on me to manage my own time, it’s a tricky balance. There are some days when I can crank out what seem like thousands of words, and others where a simple 200-word page takes ages.
Curious to hear your opinions. Ciao!
Hey Jordan,
I hear you. I think it’s always wise to be conscious of the pragmatic part of this work–there’s no way to dismiss meeting our billable requirements and keep our real-world jobs. As you say, it’s a balance.
One thing that helps me is to treat each writing project on a case-by-case basis. When I find myself creeping toward my budgeted hours through no fault of my own (I didn’t procrastinate; it’s just really challenging), I try to communicate that to my clients. They usually understand and appreciate that I’m willing to put in more time to produce quality work. If pushing out the deadline causes trouble for the client, though, I usually just bust it and finish on time.
My former boss, who is really good at switching hats, read this post and smartly reminded me: Y’know, it’s just kind of how it is.
Tricky!
Thanks for the thoughts.