The Starting – Point

The Starting – Point

Being a web designer, I had been in the situation where every designer hates to be in.

A blank mind.

A new project is coming up and I am assigned to come up with a mockup design for a project with minimal information provided by Client and an output is needed ASAP because Client is running against a strict deadline to catch up with a campaign. This happens after debugging multiple sites, quickly sliced another critical project, answered multiple email from Client inquiries and gulped two cups of coffee. Oh yea, this happened about two hours before the end of my shift. It would have been easy if my brain was still raring to go but it had reached its day limit and was nearing hitting its bedroom shack and catch some zees.

still, I had to come up with a mockup or two but all I could so was stare at a blank Photoshop canvas. I needed something to start up my brain and a cup of coffee was out of the question because I didn’t want to end up having a hard time falling asleep that night.

Regardless of how many times you drank coffee, or even if you had complete hours of sleep, if your mind grows tired, it needs a breather to start up again. So what can you do to give your brain a fresh start?

I could suggest a few things as these are based from my experience.

1) First and foremost, you have to accept that you may not be able to go home at your usual time and overtime may be necessary. Getting all hyped up about getting home and deciding to hurriedly finish tasks will cause your brain to become more active, gain more stress which may lead to mistakes and end up in frustration.

2) Drink water. Never underestimate the importance of H20. Even if a web designer just sits all day in front of a computer, his brain works overtime and any body or organ functinality needs H20 to sustain its progress throughout the day.

3) Take a few minutes breather. Get up, walk around the office and stretch. Make those leg muscles ease off tension from sitting too long. Swing your arms to loose tension from your shoulders. Stretch. Relax.

4) You could do what I do most of the time. I turn off the monitor, sit back and close my eyes for a few minutes. Sometimes I put on my headphones and play some classical piano piece (e.g. Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaminov, etc.). If you don’t dig classical music, just go and play your favorite music that helps you loosen up. Of course, do this only in a few minutes. You might end up going on a sound trip and not get anything done.

5) One of my breather moments is when I visit sites like Cuteoverload.com. Hey, everything there is cute and relaxes me. Tell me who doesn’t get relaxed by these cute pictures. (hehe!) Sometimes I visit my Facebook or Friendster profiles to check out updates. Sometimes, checking on some non-work related websites help in taking a breather before undertaking a new project. But this should be taken with precaution because you might end up taking too much time updating your profile or visiting a site and not getting anything done for the project. Also, you have to be sure that your management allows for viewing such sites or you might end up in trouble. I’m just lucky our office allows these but at a limit.

Do you know any other breather methods to help your brain function for a project? Please don’t hesitate to comment and share! ^______^

Popularity: 2% [?]