Organise or Die: 88 Illustrations from Rework by 37Signals

Ah, I love my RSS feed. So much useful stuff, in equal amounts to so much crap. I subscribe to about 3 cupcakes blogs (...why?) and all kinds of weird stuff, but I also subscribe to many useful design blogs, which churn up some great stuff.


At the moment I have nearly 2000 unread items on my feed.... you can see why. I may just cleanse the whole list. I'm not ever going to read all that!


Anyway, after my Organise or Die post, Sian Louise from One Last Thing got inspired and made her own To-Do list. This is highly organised of her and I approve. It's even in a pleasing shade of magenta. This is a good thing because it sounds like she's in that Easter phase of her third year... i.e, freak the fuck out, the end is nigh, omg I've got so much to do time of year. I remember it with great fondness. At the time I was in a constant state of mentalness/drunken denial. I have no idea how I got it all done. LISTS, that's how. Lists and Relentless. So so much Relentless. My degree should have been sponsored by it.


To continue with the theme, and other productivity ideas that have been put to us on my Immersion course, I found these great illustrations on my RSS feed, via Swissmiss.

There are from a new book called ReWork, by 37 Signals, which is all about streamlining the Creative business, productivity, what to do, what not to do, etc etc. You know the drill, one of those business self-help books that everyone raves about and I should probably buy. But the illustrations alone are great:

Illustration for the essay "Learning from mistakes is overrated" - This is interesting. I'm constantly being told, and have been all through art education, that making mistakes is how you learn, your best work can come from mistakes, and that sort of thing. But they're saying the opposite here. I think I should read the book to understand it completely, but I know what they're saying - sometimes mistakes aren't acceptable. We shouldn't be so brainwashed to think that they are - mistakes can cost time, and even money, and that's not good. It's ok if you learn from them, but don't expect to make mistakes, and don't think it's your right to.

 Illustration for the essay "Start making something" - This is good, and something that is being drummed into us at Immersion. Instead of procrastinating and worrying what/who you are, what you do, what you make, etc etc, just go and make something. Just go. Stop being afraid of failing and actually start something. 

"No time is no excuse" - Aha, another good one. I'm sooo guilty of this. We all are right? "I haven't got time to exercise, I haven't got time to blog every day, I haven't time to draw every day..." Well I've got time to watch Glee, and 24 and Lost, and all kinds of other things, so I pretty much do. It's more laziness. Damn.

 

"Building to flip is building to flop" - I don't understand this one so much, again I should prb read the book. I just like the hand drawn type, and that it sounds good.

 And so on. I could post them all really, they're great. And some are worth printing out and sticking next to your mac I think. One of those daily reminders.

Remember I was saying in my last post about the talk from Max Fraser, where he had loads of good tips? They were all things like this. We got sent round a hand out which rounded-up (I'm sure that's terrible grammar... round-up in past tense?.... summed up! That's better) which summed up the session, here are a few golden nuggets:

• Get on and do something - do projects for real -  have tangible experience
• Notice what you “have” rather than “don’t have”
• Look at things from different perspectives  -  things haven’t failed just because they didn’t turn out as planned -  they are just not what you expected
• Build “can do” networks including people who believe in you and your idea.
• Find your niche -  whats unique in your process? How can you collaborate, or link different interests, worlds and ideas?
• Success comes through the hard graft, bringing together the nitty gritty with the ambition. So where do you go for your inspiration fixes? What rocks your boat and will keep you going through the tough times?
• Spend time doing what you are selling, creating, writing, producing - nurture and give time to your creative practice, keep it finely tuned, and nourished
• Give “time” to “time” - it is important to slow down sometimes
• Identify, create, go for and seize opportunities…
• Nurture “Luck”
• Always follow up leads
• Make some tasks a regular part of your diary – e.g. each week email 4 new contacts while you are raising your profile, the following week phone them and try and make an appointment.

There were a lot but those are some of the good bits.


P.S, Happy Easter! I'm up here blogging because dad and brothers have put some god-awful football match on (Everton v W.Ham... why... why... they don't support either...) but it's prob only fair because I did watch the Grand Prix for hours earlier. Good one, it was as well.


Did you get lots of nice Eggs? I hit the jackpot... Green & Black's and Lindt. Get in.