Organizing Your Designer Life

Hello everyone. This is Ric from the web template designer crew at BasicTemplates.com. BasicBeca *g* summed up our reasoning for blogging quite well. So I will not bore you with a repetition.

What I am going to write about is how much time you will save in the long run if you organize yourself. I write this solely from my own personal experience and I can assure you it worked well for me.

One of the secrets to the success of any business is organization. Wouldn't you agree? Nothing can be further from this truth than when you are trying to juggle the development and maintenance of many websites (your own and all of your clients). I have been designing websites (and web templates) since 1996 so therefore my clientele database is huge. One day it bit me. I had to get organized or face major problems.

I am going to share with all of you the tools that I use that have been a tremendous help organizing my designer life.

First of all, you need at least one filing cabinet (more if you have a very busy business, employees, etc.). Even in this so-called paperless society you will have paper (contracts, partners agreements, orders, etc.). Filing should always be done every day. Don't use cardboard boxes. The boxes will soon overrun your office. ;)

I use two software programs that keep my digital information organized:

TreePad: Someone turned me onto this little program many years ago. It helps me organize my ideas, snippets of code I use often, articles I've read that I might want to reference in the future, important emails, etc. all in one place. I can even copy/paste directly from any document into TreePad.

ThumbsPlus: This awesome program helps me organize my graphics, photos, etc. Both on my hard drive and on CDs I've purchased regardless if they are in the CD drive or filed away in my CD cabinets. It allows me to assign keywords to the files/CDs it scans and the keywords are searchable.

Find a good bookkeeping program. I use Quickbooks Pro. Do not make the mistake of trying to do it yourself manually on paper. This is one aspect of your business that really needs to be organized in the appropriate software.

I also use a planner from Franklin-Covey. Yes, they are pricey but I have been using FC's planners from many years and I'm comfortable with them. Find one that you are comfortable with and write "everything" in it (ie, appointments, to-do's, etc). You might ask why I do not use an electronic appointment book. There are several reasons. I do not always have my computer with me or turned on at all times. Hard drives die and backups are not always reliable. It is much easier for my situation to flip open a date book and see my day at a glance before I even turn the computer on.

These are just a few of the most important organizational tools I use. I hope you find them helpful too.

// posted by BasicRic on 6/08/2004 03:27:53 PM / Permanent Link