Design Reading 4

- summarize the reading

This reading was all about organizing your life and setting goals, limits, and reasonable expectations for yourself in order to deal with stress and other aspects of working life.

- can you identify any part of this reading that you already do?

There are quite a few things in the reading that I relate to. 

The reading talks about if you want to change something about your work life you should “just ask.” I think sometimes I can be a little too intimidated by authority and it can be hard for me to ask for the things I want/deserve. It’s nice to hear this is an acceptable thing to do.

“Don’t be too available.” This is DEFINITELY me. I got a Graphic Design Internship at a professional theatre company this summer and they gave me a project. I was really inspired so I got the project done very quickly. They were impressed, but this set a precedent for me working EXTREMELY fast and that simply can’t happen during the school year. I still am a bit guilty of this, but I had to set some ground rules to try and change those expectations.

Right now I’m very much in the mindset of a job is a job...but I think this will be good to keep in mind once I’ve gotten myself really into the workplace 

- how will you incorporate one of these pieces of advice into your process?

I thought the phone, email, and passion project sections were extremely relevant to me. Right now I basically do all of the bad things they say not to do in those sections - and I think some of that will need to stay while I am in school and involved in SO MANY THINGS - but, once I get out into the workforce I think it will be a bit easier to try and implement some of those boundaries and guidelines.

- how does this advice fit in with John Cleese's advice for creativity?

This article puts a lot of humor into the creative process, which Cleese really pushed in his lecture. Additionally, many of the advice-givers talked about finding times to be open, and times to be closed. This, as John Cleese said, is essential to the creative to find time for yourself to exist in both modes. There's an entire section about carving out time to think and 2 of the 5 steps in Cleese's process were time.