November 2016 Tasks
Message From Elaine People can be awful, can’t they? Never has that been more evident than in this political season. Stories about troubled relationships, tense family exchanges, and neighborly grudges fill our news feeds. It would be easy to […]
Docs to Keep Handy
It is really hard to manage time when things keep changing. And in a creative career, everything is always changing. Rarely do two projects look exactly the same. (Thank goodness.) Rarely do two clients want exactly the same thing. Rarely […]
The Secret to Time Management
Spoiler alert: There is no secret to time management. Oh sure, there are plenty of “secrets” each more life-hacky than the one before. But if you’re looking for a secret that comes with an embedded definite article (THE secret, THE […]
Room to Breathe
I often ask my students to read “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” a delightful personal essay by Tim Kreider about the temptation to rely on our own busyness, whether actual or self-imposed, as a “hedge against emptiness” or a confirmation of our […]
The Non-Sexy Part
When we see “work in progress” pictures, they almost never show a budget in process, or the draft of a difficult email, or even a stack of legal research as we struggle to write our own contracts. Nope. They […]
The Myth of Doing What You Want
“I just want to do what I want.” Of course you do. “I don’t want to spend all day in a cubicle answering to someone else.” Who does? “I know best.” Yup, we’ve heard that one too. […]
October 2016 Tasks
Message from Elaine 168. That’s the number of hours we all get in any given week. But what we do with our time during any given week differs dramatically from person to person. And the way we spend our […]
Getting to the Core of UVP
You know what makes Levain Bakery so special? Its cookies. There are only four kinds. And each is six magical ounces of goodness. Levain’s unique value proposition, for me anyway, is an obscenely large indulgence of chocolate chips and walnuts. […]
SWOT Analysis – What It Is & Why It Works
Sometimes knowing what you don’t do is even more important than knowing what you do. Articulating what we don’t do can save endless hours of metaphorical torture. Engaging in a bit of reflective SWOT analysis can help a creative individual […]
The Lazy Way of Setting Goals
Goal Setting is always one of the first activities I introduce, whether I’m working with undergraduate students or seasoned creative professionals. Rarely do those I work with think about goals for the first time with me. We’re taught to think […]
