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Clay

Editor’s Rating: 7.1

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Thursday Bram of ThursdayBram.com.

Mark McGuiness begins his free e-book, Time Management for Creative People with a stereotypical "day-in-the-life" depiction of a designer trying to work on a creative project but facing disorganization in all of its facets: distracting emails, interrupting phone calls and important files lost on a messy desk. One might argue that this is a stereotype — that most creatives can handle a bit of basic organization, but there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. There are plenty of creative professionals who could do with some organization.

The real value in McGuiness’ e-book is what he doesn’t suggest. He makes no effort to impose some sort of order on the actual creative process; there is no effort to turn every creative into Thomas Kinkade. Instead, McGuiness focuses on managing the little details that often intrude on a professional’s time, but that cannot be ignored.

He picks and chooses techniques from a bevy of productivity experts, from Steve Pavlina to Timothy Ferriss. McGuiness essentially looks for ways to cordon off creative time. He turns off the phone, doesn’t check his email and generally makes it possible to focus. Everything else in Time Management is about developing a method to handle the stacks of email and other tasks that build up while he’s working. For McGuiness, that method is mostly straight out of David Allens’ "Getting Things Done," with add-ons, like batch processing straight out of Mark Forster’s "Do It Tomorrow."

McGuiness isn’t simply parroting productivity tips, however. He adds his own view and points out why a creative professional must minimize the tasks that could prevent her from getting to her writing, designs or other work. Furthermore, McGuiness makes it clear how a person can pick and choose the techniques that work best for him, rather than attempting to stick to an unadulterated plan developed by someone else. He doesn’t claim to be God’s gift to creatives in need of organization — he provides directions to start improving personal productivity.

According to McGuiness, the genesis of Time Management was not entirely his own idea — instead, the bloggers behind BoDo prompted him to write it, and hosted the first incarnation of the text as a series of posts on BoDo. No matter its origins, though, Time Management is a great first step for any creative professional looking to get organized.

McGuiness is not only a published poet but he works as a coach or consultant for creative professionals — and the organizations employing them. He’s had solid experience learning how creatives actually manage to get their work done, providing a good basis for Time Management. He’s expanded on many of the themes within the e-book on his personal blog, Wishful Thinking.

[click here to download McGuiness' Time Management for Creative People]

[tags]creative projects, time management, disorganization, creative time, productivity, productivity tips, e-book reviews, book reviews, Mark McGuiness, distracting emails, creatives, organization, interrupting phone calls, Steve Pavlina, Timothy Ferriss[/tags]