1. Dual Monitors

Having dual monitors will greatly increase your productivity whilst designing, It allows you to display a large number of things on the screen at once. It will greatly increase your workflow especially when designing, from Photoshop to Coda you can have it all, survey after survey reveals that having multiple monitors can increase your productivity by 30%. Dual screens can be very handy especially if your a designer that owns a notebook computer, sure there great for portabilty, visiting clients etc. However when you come down to designing owning a large secondary monitor can be a god send. An example of this can be found at Apple.com where they cater an LED display for their notebook computers.

2. Tidy Desk, Tidy Mind!

You’ve probably heard this saying a lot, however it’s stands in my opinion to be very true. A tidy workspace will relieve your mind from clutter, stress and help your designs flow on to the paper. Now I’m not saying your desk needs to be immaculate because that would be hypocritical of me, you do need some sense of organization though as soon you don’t, you wont be able to see your desk. I aim to organize and clean my desk as often as possible but some of the times I forget and it’s a tip! Having some kind of organization methods will greatly increase your efficiency around your work. For example you can have file holder for each client or project rather than just a pile of mindless paper.

I find that keeping your designs and project files off the desk, in a filing cabinet or a dedicated area makes you feel uncluttered and stress-free as you are not reminded of all the work at hand when its on your desk staring at you. Get rid of all those post-it notes! Yes they are very handy but there are far better “to-do” applications you can install on your computer that you can set to alert you. The saying Tidy Desk, Tidy Mind should also be applied to your computers desktop. Organize all your files in folders with names that you will know what’s in there also it is a good idea to add sub-folders inside the main folder to further that organization, this will result in you knowing where everything is rather than hundreds of files on the desktop that you’ve not a clue what they are!

3. Gunnar Optiks Glasses

Gunnar Glasses aren’t just your ordinary pair of glasses, they are specifically designed to cater to people who spend long periods of time in front of screens – like us designers. Their iAmp technology with amber tinted lenses help relax the eyes by slightly magnifying what you’re looking at, making the colours ‘pop’ more and reduce the frequency of headaches.

Gunnar Optiks sell their iAmp lenses in various frames and colours so you can pick the ones that best suit you. They range from $89 to $189, granted they’re very expensive however for what you get and the experience I’ve had with them it’s well worth the money. Please note that you will not get the full experience if you have to wear prescription glasses! Although if you just like the frames you can get your prescription lenses fitted in them. Please stay tuned to the site for a full review on them.

4. Pen Tablet

As a designer having a Pen Tablet in my eyes is a must! When in Photoshop pen tablets can greatly increase productivity and the quality of your designs. When designing on paper you use a pen/pencil right? So in theory on the computer having a pen trumps a mouse. The tablet that I would recommend is the Intuos4 line from Wacom – this tablet has endless forms of functionality and customization to shorten tasks and functions within any program. Size wise I would generally say the bigger the better. You can read my full review on the Large Intuos4 Tablet here.

5. Ergonomic Chair

Getting yourself a quality ergonomic chair is essential, it’s what your sat in day in day out. I decided to get myself an expensive office chair a few months back and its the best decision I made, not only is it comfortable it will also last me a long time. The chair that I have is the Leather Ergohuman Office chair. Getting yourself a descent chair will greatly benefit you in the long run, many people suffer from upper back and lumber problems due to prolonged use of non-ergonomic chairs. Being comfortable while designing will help you relax and contribute to getting better designs! There’s nothing worse than being uncomfortable whilst working.

6. Stay On Top Of Your Work!

Staying on top of your work is a given really however you wouldn’t believe the amount of people let their work get on top of them. This is not a position you want to be in, sometimes it can be a downwards spiral and very hard to get out of. Having schedules, to-do lists and set tasks can be a very easy yet effective way of keeping one step ahead. For me the most important thing is motivation and the only way you have motivation is if you love what your doing, if you love what you’re doing you will want to do it! Therefore not letting work get on top of you. Also keeping your inspiration fresh is a great way to stay interested in what you do!

7. Set Tasks & To-Do’s

There are some great programs out there to set tasks and to-do lists for the following day or days to come. Here are a couple I use daily.

“OmniFocus is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. Perfect for the Getting Things Done system, but flexible enough for any task management style, OmniFocus helps you work smarter by giving you powerful tools for staying on top of all the things you need to do.”

Check Off is a fantastic little app for Mac OS X that sits in the task bar next to spotlight, its so simple you simply click the plus button to add a to-do item or a folder to group to-do’s and check them when done! Its also great if you need to scribble something down to remember.

8. Freelancers: Get A Blog

As a freelancers getting yourself a blog is crucial in todays world of design. An example of a freelancer that markets themself very well with two successful blogs, a huge twitter followers list, a great porfolio and a popular personal blog is Chris Spooner, popularly known by his very inspirational blog at Blog.Spoongraphics.com.

If you run a quick search for Chris Spooner you will find lots of interviews with him where he says that he started Blog.Spoongraphics as an experiment with wordpress looking to learn more which he now earns a nice monthly income from ads and has stated he has got some good projects through his blog. His other blog that also recieves monthly income is Line25. So getting yourself a blog could lead to great things.. and if you love writing about what you do its easy right?

9. Close Social Networking Programs!

Everyone loves social networking, its the place to be these days! However it can be your biggest distraction whilst doing a project or trying to get work done. It can easily side track you and may find yourself slipping behind on your work. So make sure you close all the Twitter apps, Facebook windows and get focused on your work! In fact you should close anything that can be a distraction to you.

10. Are My Sites Up?

So you’ve done work for a client, once you’ve done that work after a few weeks it’s very likely that you will stop checking the site, making sure its okay unless you are asked or paid to? Well here is a nifty little web service that allows you to make sure your sites are up. If one of your sites were to go down you would recieve an email notifying you – this is much better than an angry client blaming you for something you had no control over. The service is free to signup to however you are limited to 5 sites only. You can then upgrade to a Standard, Plus or Pro account. With these you will get more sites to keep track of and a bunch of other features for very cheap yearly costs! Its well worth the money upgrading yourself from the free account. Check it out yourself here.

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