Useful Productivity Tips for Designers

As web designers and developers, productivity and time management are really important elements of our work. Listed below are some productivity techniques that really work. Hopefully, you will find these tips to be useful and they will help you to save time and get more done.

• Planning : Given everyone's busy schedules, it is certainly the best way to save time and be more productive. You should spend some time on planning your priorities and then decide which work can wait. A lot of wasted hours designing and experimenting just on composition and visual details are saved this way.
• Use To-Do lists : To-Do lists help to stay organized and focused on important things. It is also a great tool to remember things that you usually forget to do. Best examples are post-it notes.
• Get rid of distractions : Sometimes it is really hard to start your work because of a lot of distractions that take your time and attention. If you really want to be productive and focused on work turn off applications, social networking sites, television and practically anything that may distract you.
• Work with discipline : Work in discipline with realistic goals and more importantly, don't deviate from them.
• Do not work too much : Working less time you'll be more productive and the quality of your work will be highest class.
• Work in short periods : Just create short work periods like 25 min, 30 min or 40 min and work. Just focus on work and have a break in between.
• Always focus on a single task : If you are doing something, finish it and then switch to something else.
• Think about your goals : Before starting the work, think about goals that excite you and motivate you the most. When you do this you are the most productive.
• Listen to music : If you are the person who likes to listen to music while working, this ones for you. Music should help you to be more productive or creative. But, it is important that you should choose a genre that doesn't distract you and doesn't take your attention from the work.
• Stay organized : Whether you are a designer, developer or an illustrator, you use some or the other resources. Textures, fonts, icons, vectors, photos and all that stuff are somewhere in your hard disk. Every time you're trying to find where they are you spend a lot of time. Organize all this stuff by creating a few folders.

Most of the listed tips can be applied for any creative person. The question is how effectively these tips can be implemented for high productivity.