aka Some Random Unordered Lists of My Common Habbits and Work Setup
After watching the ‘Design Workflows at Work’ panel, I thought I would give an explanation of how I work. I previously showed the way I design, although that has evolved a lot since then. The following article covers all aspects of the way I work.
My desk sadly is situated in the corner of my living room which can cause some problems when I want to lock myself away and work — though that doesn’t matter as I usually work while everyone is sleeping anyway. I’d rather spend 10 hours a day doing it this way than 6 hours of hard silent monotonous work.
I am a persistent note-taker, some of my best ideas are forgotten unless I scribble it down in one of my countless notepads or save it as a Cell Message Draft. Consequently, I always have my notepad behind my keyboard with a pen when I’m working to insure I won’t lose any ideas.
Unlike most people I advocate being interrupted occasionally. I keep my IM and Mail open for a reason. Frequently I have my best ideas and inspiration when I am not trying to thinking about it. Talking to people helps get my ideas out and gives me bursts of rest, keeping me refreshed for longer.
I also have my “sticky task wall”. Rather than putting Post-Its around my screen, I stick it up on the wall and when I need to take a break from what I am doing, I’ll complete a few. Whether it’s buying something or a small task such as create a favicon for my site.
Mac OS X Programs I Use
- Quicksilver - I won’t spare any words with this, chances are you know what it is.
- Sidenote - Hotkey a notepad onto your screen and write ideas.
If I Need Help When Designing
- I have kept a de.licio.us since 2003 with links to my best-loved designs.
- I look at someone’s website and remake it in Photoshop to learn how they did it, often this inspires me in completely unrelated ways
- I take a break and code
… When Developing
- IRC. With cheers to the #rubyonrails (freenode) channel
- Cheat Sheets: Posted on my wall
- I look at other applications
- I take a break and design
I could probably learn a lesson from you regarding note taking. As you probably saw, while I was in Austin, I was taking notes in my Moleskine at every opportunity. I really need to do that more often, even while sitting at me desk. I find that writing something long-hand often helps my ideas be fleshed out a little more than if I were to type them quickly.
Nice post.
At SXSW, I didn’t take notes. I was quite impressed with the way you were taking notes.
If I’m trying to sleep and I have a great idea, i’ll ALWAYS write it down too.
Good notes Zach. I plan on writing a lengthy post about my personal workflow soon. We didn’t have a lot of time to cover our workflows in detail which is why we opted for the conversational structure.