Organisation Method

This week, my boyfriend had gone to therapy and had come back with information he felt I could find useful too. In these sessions, they discuss ways in which you could overcome stress, and in this weeks, they were talking about ways in which you could plan out your day/week/month more efficiently, in order to help become more organised, which would hopefully result in less stress. As I had struggled a lot through semester one with my timekeeping and organisation, my boyfriend felt that what he had learnt could be very helpful for me within the second semester.

He had been taught a method which I believe was mentioned in a book called Eat that Frog and is called the ABCDE model. With this, you write out a list of everything you need to do, again, this could be over the space of a day, week, month or even a year, but once you have your list, you then start to categorise each of the tasks according to which is more of a priority.

A is a task of highest priority, one that you need to do or will risk big consequences. If there are multiple tasks which fall into this category, you then label them A1, A2, A3 and so on. Within the method, these tasks are known as the frogs.

B is a task which you should complete, but the consequences are slightly milder than with A tasks. These are referred to as the tadpoles because although they are lesser than the frogs if you leave them too long, they will turn into frogs.

C tasks are ones that are nice to do but don’t necessarily have any consequences to them. I see this as being a task that I would prefer to be doing as opposed to A and B’s, but should not as they are not on the top of my list of priorities.

D tasks are ones that you can delegate to someone else. This one may work better in terms of life tasks, as opposed to work tasks as I do mainly work by myself, so don’t imagine being able to delegate my work to anyone else.

And finally, E tasks are ones which can essentially be eliminated from the list and no difference would be made. According to the method, this could relate to a task you wanted to achieve at a specific time, but you feel it is no longer an issue.

The method does go on to discuss rules, but these fall along the lines of only working on the tasks in order, for instance not working on a B task before an A, or a C task before a B. It also mentions that self-discipline is the key to following the method, making sure that you are seeing all of the tasks through to the end, in exact order from A all the way to C.

I do like the sound of this method and do plan to use it throughout the second semester, as I feel it could potentially help me a lot, keeping me organised and hopefully less stressed, as I will have a better visualisation of my priorities and things I have to achieve. I will try creating a list for the day, a list for the week, and a list for the overall project. By creating one for the whole project I feel it would be more brief, but when getting to the day to day tasks, they will be more direct and specific as to what I need/want to achieve on that said day.

Bibliography

Tracy, B. (2001). Eat that frog!. The ABCDE Model.

IT’S CRUNCH TIME!

It’s now a week before the deadline and guess who still has a lot of work to do? ME! But is that a surprise? PROBABLY NOT!

As it has been the holidays, I felt myself falling into the trap of procrastination, using the excuse of “it’s Christmas!” or “it’s New Years!” far too much. Although I did need this break for my sanity, I did feel the guilt when I would just be sitting around not doing work, when I knew full well that I could.

I had started my break for the holidays on the 22nd of December, after completing illustrations and a cover design for the House of Illustration competition and creating potential covers for the Penguin Student Awards Competition. So, getting back into the swing of things earlier this week, on January the 2nd, I realised that I had and still have a lot of writing up to do.

Today, I have only just finished writing up all of the days for Inktober. Although I have made blog posts about each of the days, I felt for academic purposes, I would have to write them up more formally and in more detail for hand-in. So with this project, all I have left to do is to write up the process of making the zines, how I formatted the pages for printing, the different printing methods which I tried, what went well, what had not, which I had decided to use for final products etc. I then need to evaluate the final product and project as a whole, then that should be one project out of the way.

I’m going to be honest now, the rest of the projects aren’t as close to being completed as I would have hoped, and I do have a lot of writing up to do in the upcoming week.

House of Illustration project, I still need to:

Ask my peers for their opinions, if there are any changes I should make.
Potentially make the changes they suggest.
Get the illustration and cover ready for submission in the format the competition wants.
Print and mount the final design for hand-in.
Write up artist/influences
Write up creation process (I did take screenshots throughout, so this should make it easier to recall the steps I took and choices I made)
Evaluate the final design and the project as a whole.

Penguin Student Design project, I still need to:

Ask my peers for their opinions, if there are any changes I should make.
Potentially make the changes they suggest.
Get the Cover/s ready for submission in the format the guidelines of the competition state.
Print and mount the final design for hand-in.
Write up artist/influences
Write up creation process (I did take screenshots throughout, so this should make it easier to recall the steps I took and choices I made)
Evaluate the final design and the project as a whole.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe project, I still need to:

Write up my experiences with the different printing methods, how they work, what I enjoyed, what I did not etc.
Compare the printing methods.
Make new designs with the best printing method (if I have the time to do so).
Evaluate the final products and the project as a whole.

So from this to do list, my plan for the week is to write up my projects whilst I’m at home, then whilst I am at college I will focus on practical work. The reason I don’t want to write up my work at college is because I feel I am easily distracted, zoning in and out of work a lot, often losing my place or sentence etc, but when I’m at home, it is quieter and although there is a potential threat of tv, during deadline week this is not an issue, as stress me is on the ball! Or at least tries to be!

So whilst I am at college, I think I will try to get the final illustrations for the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe project, as the facilities I need are within the college, so I feel it will be the best use for my time.

Final Notes

I probably will get all of my work complete in time, but the more that I think I won’t, the more stress I will put on myself, meaning more pressure, meaning more focus on the work, meaning ALL WORK COMPLETED ON TIME. Let’s hope!

I am always surprised at how much work I get done the day before a deadline as the pressure pushes me through, and I always end up handing in on time. Myself and stress just work together well, it’s probably not the healthiest of relationships, but if it works it works! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! But ideally, I’m gonna try better to not leave all of my work till the last minute in the next semester/deadline, 2019 should be the stress-free year!.. Starting January 15th!

Bibliography

Giphy. (2015). Awkward Michael Scott Gif [online] Available at: https://giphy.com/gifs/jOpLbiGmHR9S0 [Accessed 06 Jan. 2018].

The week from Hell.

Due to my incapability to follow my own timetable, which I had even reorganised after not managing to follow it the first time, this week was supposed to be the last week I had given myself to work on the House of Illustration, Book Illustration Competition, in which I had to create 3 illustrations and a book cover for the story ‘Howls Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones.

Instead, for the majority of this 3-week project, I spent a lot of time trying to catch up or finish off previous projects that I had fallen behind on. I also decided to work on an illustration which would be a gift for my boyfriends mum. This was supposed to be completed and printed for her birthday in September, but as we all know by now, I can’t follow my own time plans! So I said I would give it to her for Christmas instead, not that she knows (a blog post for this piece will be coming soon). So, the time I should have been spending on this project had been spent on others, but I refused to fall behind on the project starting next week, so I decided I had to finish this one by today!

In what should have been one week of researching, one week of creating concepts and experimenting and the final week creating the final design, I have basically had to do all of this in the space of a week.

When creating my pieces, I didn’t really have an idea of styles or techniques I was going to use, I had thought about artists, but I hadn’t thought about potential ways in which I could apply the styles or techniques to my own work, so basically in the process of creating my pieces, I have just been winging it, seeing “does this thing work? No, not really, scrap it! Does this? Okay, we’ll just roll with it”. I had kept doing right up until now.

I am currently happy with these designs, but I would say I do still need critique and outsiders perspectives so that I can potentially make further improvements. At this moment in time, however, I still have a lot of work to complete within other projects so this one may have to fall to the back of the pack. Because of this, I may not end up submitting my designs to the competition, as I’m not sure if it fits the standards of previous entries in the years before, especially not without further refinement. And since the competition does have a fee to enter, I feel it could be a waste of my money.

Even if I don’t submit these design to the competition, I will still include them in my portfolio, as through this project, I have been able to show more skills with narrative, and I have created more landscape designs, two areas of which I felt were lacking in my portfolio.

SO, what have we learnt from this post? I am my own worst enemy and I only have myself to blame! From this experience, I will strive to keep myself more organised and actually follow my own set time plans. I believe this information will be very important for when starting next semester, as I will try to plan out my time better, using my experience from this first semester, as I feel I will have more knowledge of my pace of working and what I am capable of doing in specific timeframes.

WE’RE BACK! Getting Back into Comics

Melon and Lime comics has been on a bit of a break whilst both me and my partner have gotten back into the swing of college but now, WE HAVE RETURNED! With a comic that gives a bit of an update as to what we’ve been up to whilst we’ve been away.

I’m so excited to get back into the flow of working on new comics again. We aren’t necessarily going to have a set day in which we will post as of yet, as we don’t want to make any promises we can’t keep, however, we will be attempting to create at least one comic per week.

If anyone reading enjoys this piece, we have more content on our Instagram @MelonandLimeComics, so please have a look, we promise there will be more content coming soon, now that we’re back into the rhythm of college, maybe? NO PROMISES! But we’re gonna try! We also plan to create a zine or book over the year, which we plan to release sometime in June next year, so keep an eye out for that too.