How To Find Time For Graphic Design When You Work Full Time Or Are A Full Time Student Part 3
Congratulations on making it to the final part of our series on becoming a graphic designer when you’re super busy. If you have read the past two articles, be sure to check them out here on the Freepik Blog. Today, we’ll be discussing how to put your plan into action. You’ve gone through the gruelling process of analyzing your schedule and coming up with actionable steps that you can take. That’s awesome! Now, let’s learn how you’ll all put everything together to get yourself on the path of becoming a graphic designer.
Time To Put Your Plan Into Action!
Putting your plan into action can be the most challenging part of your journey. Many people find it really easy to identify their goals, but it’s not always easy to act on what you’ve identified. Just like with the other articles, we’ll break this down into smaller steps.
1. Pick one small goal to start with and dedicate at least 10 minutes a day to working towards that goal. Even the busiest person as 10 minutes to spare. If you don’t have an extra 10 minutes, this might be a good time to evaluate your priorities and return to the first article where we looked at how we’re spending our time.
2. Use the time that you’ve set aside each day to work on the areas that are most important to your overall goal. Since your time is limited, it’s important to make sure that you’re spending any available time wisely. Look at the areas that you need practice with or the areas the impact your goals the most. Work on these things first, and if you have time or energy left over then move on to less important things.
3. Commit to doing a weekly evaluation of your progress. Accountability is key here. Check in with yourself and take a hard look at the choices you’ve made over the past week. Did you meet the expectations that you set for the previous week? What worked? What didn’t work? What would you like to improve for next time? These are all questions that you should be asking yourself weekly to make sure that you are staying on task and you’re focused on your goals.
4. After the first month, spend some time evaluating your progress to make sure that you’re following a path that is efficient and sustainable. How did your month go overall? Did you meet or exceed your expectations for time management? Will you be able to commit to this plan long term? The monthly evaluation is the time to drill down and perfect your action plan. If you’ve set unrealistic expectations, change them to something that’s more manageable. Did you exceed your expectations? Challenge yourself to increase and improve the next month.
5. Track your progress. You can’t measure what you don’t know. Tracking your progress serves multiple purposes. The first reason to track your progress is having an understanding of your patterns over time. This will help you understand your patterns and habits. You can use this information during your weekly and monthly evaluations. The next reason to track your progress is to help you during those times when you feel discouraged. There might be moments during your journey when you feel stuck in a rut or you might feel like you’re not making progress. If you’re tracking what you’ve done so far, you’ll have a visual representation of what you’ve done so far and what you can look forward to in the future.
Following these steps will get you on the right path for managing your time and becoming a graphic designer. Time management can be difficult at first, but after some time you’ll get the hang of it. Successful time management starts with making a personal commitment to yourself and staying focused on your goals. You may find it challenging to keep commitments with yourself, but easy to keep commitments with others. This is fairly common. Just keep in mind that your future and your personal growth is equally, if not more important than the projects you work on for clients.
We’ve learned the three steps you need to take to manage your busy schedule and find time for graphic design. We’ve analyzed our schedule, created an action plan and put that plan into achievable steps to make your dream a reality. Stay focused, stay positive and most importantly, and open and willing to be a lifelong learner.
