Campfire 25: Practical time-management tip for product designers

As product designers, we’re all familiar with white space. The term is directly associated with design, but I was wondering why don’t we apply such design principles to our own lives?

I found something exciting about time-management and product designer’s job, which made me re-think how I manage my time for deep work, meetings policy, and overall time-management.

As product designers, we’re all familiar with white space. It’s one of the first and foremost things designers should know about to create stunning work.

The term is directly associated with design, but I was wondering why don’t we apply such design principles to our own lives? At least the ways we’re working.

I’m guilty of ignoring this a lot. My schedule has become an open space lately — anyone can come in, book some time and ask for any kind of things — from simple advice, to project feedback and client reviews. “I’m busy” started to come out of my mouth too often, and it was time to add some whitespace to my schedule.

White space is where you recharge and focus. It’s where you can be creative, explore, and think about the long-term instead of the most urgent deadline. It’s where you do your best work as a designer.

How to add whitespace to your schedule?

Adding whitespace to your schedule isn’t an easy task. I’ve already been working for a couple of weeks to make it happen, and I’m only halfway there. But here are a few things I’m doing to get back my time.

Deep work hours in a calendar

As simple as it sounds, blocking time on your calendar for deep work is the first thing you can do easily. People in your company or clients will see that you’re unavailable at the time, and 50% of the meetings will be automatically cut off from that time.

Create a no-meeting day

This task might be a bit harder to complete since there are always deadlines, follow-ups, other people’s schedules, etc. But in the end, your time is your most valuable asset, and it’s only your job to protect it.

I usually have Fridays free of meetings, but I’m also working on making a few more days in a week as no-meeting days.

No meetings without agenda and clear outcome

Quite often, I see an invitation for a meeting in my calendar that doesn’t have any details about the meeting. The title might say something like “Quick sync,” which is a sign that this meeting could potentially be a Slack message.

If someone wants a discussion with you about a specific project or task – ask them to provide context and the desired output of the meeting.

In most cases, putting together an agenda and an outcomes list will take much longer than writing a Slack message so you might avoid those types of meetings.

Conclusion

Beyond a professional skill, managing your time is also a life skill. If you block 100% of your time to work on the existing tasks and projects, you don’t keep whitespace for new opportunities.

Add some whitespace to your schedule, and you’ll be able to recognize the opportunity, work on it, and share it with others.