shhLIFE!

So this week I tried to keep a solid log of all of my time spent throughout the day using the incredibly useful Toggl.com website.

As you can see, there were times when I wasn’t able to record what I was doing, especially wednesday.. a tough day.  But in general I got about 8 or 9 hours recorded.

You can also see that this was a very productive week for me.. over 15 hours of directly productive work.  That includes animating, giving reviews, etc.

Strategic mettings went well too, 11 hours of strategy.. planning for the future and making sure that I have stuff ready for.. you guessed it.. production!

Admin time is nice and small.. about 3 hours over the course of the week.  That includes email, time sheets, working on spreadsheets, etc.  You want to keep that admin stuff as small as possible, otherwise you’re wasting time!

And the thing I’m happiest about is the ME time.. 7 hours i was able to devote to bettering myself.. 5+ of that being gym specific time.  Some of it having lunch, or going for a walk.. VERY important to have that time when you can get it!

I’m going to continue the experiment next week and see how it goes!

One of the other things I’m working on at the moment is time management.  It’s another common problem that supervisors tend to have when they first move up to a new role.   After all, if it previously took you 10 hours per day to animate just your own shot, how are you supposed to handle that and supervising a team of 5 to 7 people?

When I first made the move I tried to do everything.. animate, supervise, fix problems, etc.  It was driving me crazy, and the quality of my work and of my supervision suffered.

I had to learn to delegate.  As difficult as it is to let things go, in order to survive you really need to learn to delegate anything that you don’t need to handle.  There are a couple of reasons (as always).

1)  you don’t have time

stop deluding yourself.  Yes, you want to do everything, but there aren’t enough hours in the day and you can’t change that.

2) the more you take on, the more you have to take on.

You know the old adage, give a man a fish and he can eat today, teach a man to fish and he can eat forever?  It’s totally true.  I know that it feels like as a supervisor your job is to solve every problem that your animators have.  That’s not exactly true.  Your job is to remove roadblocks and things that inhibit them from getting things done.  If you can help them solve their own problems by providing the correct resources, then in the future they’ll be able to help themselves and others.  If you always solve it, you’ll always have to solve it.  Does that mean that you should always pass the buck?  No, sometimes you do need to step in and fix it yourself.  But you should use that as an opportunity to teach.

Anyway, back to time management.

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