Here we are, its Monday and once again the to do list I had for the weekend didn’t get completed. 

It wasn’t as if I didn’t work over the weekend, of course I did. But that to do list is still there and is still almost full. Why? Well because every weekend I go into it thinking how much I’m going to get done. For whatever reason in my mind I think the weekend will have endless time that I’ll never be able to fill. Sadly it’s only 48 hours and during some of that I do have to sleep… no matter how much I try not to.

Still, the idea of being able to accomplish a lot over the weekend seems like it could happen. You don’t have all these emails coming in or clients calling you. Even if clients do call and email you can wait and answer them back on Monday. After all, it’s the weekend and people don’t really expect you to get back to them as quickly as you would during the week. 

Typically I start the weekend with big goals of getting so much done, anything that I wasn’t able to wrap up during the week and then maybe some other fun project I’d like to work on. Maybe some drawing, reading, or blogging because I also have to find some time to relax. It is the weekend and you need a break no matter how small of a break; you have to recharge somewhat. 

What always happens is Sunday rolls around and I feel way behind, I end up stressing out over what I didn’t get done. Some of it I needed to get done and some of it didn’t matter. 

What it really comes down to is time management, or my lack of it on the weekend. Or maybe I should just be enjoying the weekend and not trying to cram it full of work because that’s what I do during the week. Ha, right! Of course, I’ve already started adding things to my to do list for this weekend. Cause ya know, I’ve got 48 hours to fill. 

Weekends for me are typically busy, I’m not known to kick back on the couch and just veg out. This weekend seemed a bit more hectic than usual and it’s weekends like this that make me enjoy those slower weekends, even if I am working. 

This weekend I had a shoot scheduled for a product demo video that LooseKeys is working on. We’ve only done a few live action productions at LooseKeys and on every one we seem to learn a little more about what not to do.

With this video we needed to hire “actors.” I say actors loosely here because this was a non-speaking role and we pulled the actors from craigslist  Which I’m not sure I’ll do again. In the past we’ve been able to work with friends or friends of friends and it’s been pretty smooth and low stress. 

I know there are a few other options to find actors but we didn’t have a huge budget to work with. I was also on a bit of a tight turnaround so a casting call wasn’t really an option. Once again from this experience I see how valuable having a producer is on your team. 

So I ended up getting actors from craigslist; I wouldn’t typically hire a designer or get work for myself on craigslist so I’m not really sure what I was expecting. Many of the actors were fantastic and I hope I have another project where I can use them again. They should also be charging more because they were killer and out shined the poor ones. There were a couple actors who really added a lot of stress to the whole project. 

One actor tried to cancel the morning of the shoot but ended up showing up. Another canceled at midnight the day before the shoot. I was asleep so I didn’t see the message till the morning of the shoot. This resulted in a mad dash to find a new talent Sunday morning for the shoot that afternoon. Of course getting a hold of someone on Sunday at 9 AM was not easy. Thankfully we were able to get in contact with a couple of replacements and had a successful shoot. 

Next time I hope to either work with good actors like some of the ones who came through for us on this shoot or at least add some more to the budget so we can get a producer to handle the actors for us. If the budget was a little bigger we may work with a talent agency and do a casting call. Once again, this was another learning experience that will only help us for the next live action project we work on.

Do you have a side project or pet project you’re working on? It seems to be a pretty common thing for someone in a creative industry to have something on the side they are working on. Weekends are the perfect time to work on the side project because most of the time you’re able to work uninterrupted by clients. Often clients expect you to be working on their work during the normal work hours, so you don’t want to try and sneak in a few hours when you should be doing their work. Client work is certainly important, it is how you pay your bills. Taking time away from that might not be the best option.

When working for someone else, we generally don’t have complete and total control over what we are doing, we are usually making some compromise to make the client happy. That’s where the side project comes into play. You can do anything you like, experiment, learn and make mistakes. Not only is the side project a great outlet for your mind to wander but you also might learn something new that could be valuable for future projects. Whether it’s about new technology, the industry, or marketing. That was one of the reasons I decided to put together the iPhone application, Invasion Of The B-Movie Posters. It was something that allowed me to explore a space I didn’t know much about and allowed me to learn a thing or two about having to deal with customer service.

A side project also helps raise your visibility online which can make it a powerful marketing tool. The community loves to hear and see what you’re working on and how those projects take shape. Friends and colleagues are more likely to talk about your side project then anything you’ve created for a client. I’ve seen this a lot with the “Jake & Brad Show You” videos that Jake Williams and I have been putting out. People seems to really dig them and I get a lot of people telling me how much they love those.

So this weekend set aside some time and allow yourself to have a creative outlet that isn’t your “Job”, you might find it beneficial. 

If you’re a freelancer you should have a portfolio website and if you don’t for whatever reason you should be making that one of your most important projects to get done. You should have a place to show off how great you are. Over the weekend I came across a couple blogs that talked about some great steps for creating a better portfolio. I figured I would link them on here and just spread the word about making a better portfolio.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/26/10-steps-to-the-perfect-portfolio-website/

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2009/02/13/7-tips-for-improving-graphic-design-portfolios/

A couple of my favorite tips from these two posts are, keep the portfolio up to date and to use social networking websites. I try and make sure this website is updated at least once a month with new work and I always post a news update when this happens. I hope to update that more often soon, ideas are in the works. As for social networks they only help promote yourself more and allow you to meet interesting folks who do what you do. So those are just a couple of my favorite tips but they are all excellent steps that should be taken when building your portfolio. I for one know I need to think about these as well. One of the tips that I feel like I need take to heart is making the contact information easy to find. I have links at the bottom of my page to see all the social networks I am apart of, but a button to get to my contact information is below that. Personally I think I may have to re-work my navigation area and include a button. As both of these sites say your contact information should be “obvious and easy to access.”