Thursday, January 17, 2013

Time Management in Architecture

One of the biggest challenges that students of architecture face is managing their time. As a freshman, it seems awfully difficult to balance a social life, organizational activities, clubs, and all of the schoolwork to do. Pile on top of that the studio work that suddenly seems to consume your life, and you have a walloping schedule that doesn't really include much free time.

Time management is the answer to all of your problems. the trick is learning about it, and getting used to it. I once had a graduate student teacher that told us that the time when you should be pulling all-nighters and long work days is the first few weeks of your project. That way, issues would be sorted out, ideas would be finished, and concepts fleshed out. All you have left to do is build what was already designed, whether that be physically or digitally.

In theory, that's easy, right? But inevitably most of us will end up looking like this for the last couple of weeks of our project, right up until the deadline:
[via]

Needless to say, over the years I have unknowingly improved my time-management skills. It's not that I really made an effort to manage things better; it's that I have no choice. With higher caliber projects that require a more in-depth process and design, it is simply impossible to finish them without working on them without putting in the required time. A large part of becoming better with time management is simply accepting the fact that you very well might not have as much time for fun activities as the average student. Yes we all complain, and yes we all hate working all the time, but if you work hard enough, stay productive, and set yourself goals from a schedule, having a little bit of a social life is in fact doable.

Perhaps we can chalk up the changes to just being used to never seeing our roommates, never going to parties, and attempting to stretch and crack our backs after the soreness that happens due to sitting on stools endlessly. Regardless, time management is an essential skill to learn in the architectural field -- and the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you'll have more free time.

Today was just another day in...




1 comment:

  1. Time management skills are on going. As a student, I can remember doing so much last minute. Am I still like that as an adult? Kinda....again, it's on going -ha!

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