More than once, in previous posts I’ve mentioned that I’d be lost without my lists. I’ve had a few people ask about how I use them to organise myself, so I thought I’d give you a quick rundown on my system.

If lists aren’t your thing, skip this one and we can chat more next month.

For me, lists serve two purposes. They alleviate mental load and they track progress.

Your brain can get overwhelmed a lot quicker than you might think. Did you know, your conscious brain can only process around 40 bits of information per second while your subconscious mind can process a whopping 11 million! When your conscious brain is trying to remember even a few extra things, it loses the ability to critically process additional information and you have less capacity for good decision making and creativity.

In a study by Stanford University professor Bav Shiv two groups of participants were asked to remember a number while deciding if they were going to have chocolate cake or fruit salad. One group was asked to remember a two-digit number and the other a seven-digit number. Two digits is easy to remember but in previous studies seven digits had been shown to be the upper limit of working memory. The participants with the two-digit number were more likely to make the healthier more rational choice of fruit salad, while the group remembering the longer number fell back on their subconscious impulse for the chocolate cake.

That’s only a small choice to make but it was a measurable difference when remembering just a few extra numbers. So why would you want to use up any of your precious conscious ‘bits’ trying to remember every last thing you’ve got to do.

Especially now that a lot of us have children at home full time, we fill so many different roles. These all have a set of jobs that need to be done, phone calls to make, deadlines to meet and things to remember. So many things.

My list is where I keep everything I need to do and remember so that I don’t have to remember. It frees up my brain and lets me concentrate on the task at hand.  It helps me to prioritise and make sure I’m making progress on the tasks that are the most urgent. On days when I feel like I’ve struggled through, it gives me a sense of achievement, because it’s a visible reminder of what I have managed to get done.

The first thing to do is to make a list of everything. I mean EVERYTHING, for every aspect of your life. Don’t worry about categorising them or thinking them through too much just get it all out of your head.  Try not to gloss over big overview tasks with one item. Break them down into steps so you can tackle one step at a time. I like to keep tasks small enough that I could get them finished in a day.

Now group tasks together. This could be into categories – projects, business, personal tasks, family tasks, things that need doing around the house. You might rather group them by the type of task they are – phone calls, deskwork, errands. Whatever suits the types of items you have and the way you like to allocate or block your time. If you notice that you have any large overview tasks, now’s the time to break them down into smaller components.

I have a few different places where I keep this information. For my general tasks I prefer to do this on paper and I have my list in my paper diary. In Asana I have my project process overview, yearly goals and ideas for personal creative projects, because they are less of a day to day focus. I also have some reusable lists for things like: everything I need to pack for the kids if we go away for the night or what I need to bring with me to a site measure.

At the start of every week I take some time to sit down with a coffee and review and update my list. I actually re-write it each week in my diary. I’m well aware this seems like overkill. But it removes all the finished tasks and helps clarify what I’d like to achieve in the coming week, I flag tasks that have a deadline or I need to prioritise. I enjoy the ritual or starting my week with a clear idea of what I want to achieve for the week.

To stay focussed I use a strategy of the Daily Three / Weekly One, which I first heard of through the BizChix podcast. Each day I select three tasks I will get done. Even if everything goes wrong in the day and I only get those three things done, that is enough and I’ve made progress. The Weekly One is a way to take on larger tasks. I’ve chosen to use this as one business development task each week. It helps me to make progress every week on business related jobs that are too easy to sideline for more urgent tasks.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, there’s never much time to celebrate small goals and achievements.

When you’ve finished something, get a big fat texta and cross it off your list. Take a moment to feel good about getting something done.

I have always felt that ‘Home’ is an important concept. So much so that I have chosen to focus Maike Design Studio on creating and investigating residential design. Now that we are spending more time than ever inside, the importance of finding or creating a place to retreat to that makes us feel at home should not be underestimated.

There is a beautiful phrase in The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard that for me perfectly sums up what a home is:

“…the house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Architecturally, a space is a house – a container. It is the act of living in the space that creates a home. A dwelling (noun) collects us together with our loved ones but is nothing without the act of dwelling (verb) within it to animate and fill its spaces.

A home is not a transformative tool, but rather provides the space and stability to just be ourselves. It is without outside expectations and is a base that provides us with stillness and rejuvenation. It represents what is secure and familiar, in contrast to the potentially unknown world outside.

A home is mentally quieter, even when we are physically closer to the noise and demands of members of our household.  We allow people into our homes on our terms and control (or rely on social etiquette to dictate) the line between public and private. The ability to control and layer the graduated relationship between us and the rest of the world defends the intimacy of our home.

Within a home we’ve also got to think about the dynamic between all members of the household. One characteristic of 21st century housing is the importance placed on separated, private spaces. The provision of individual spaces for every family member can be seen now in Australia across all socio-economic groups.  Interestingly this contrasts with the parallel development of open plan living.

An ill-conceived large space that combines all the home’s living activities does not allow for retreat or differing activities. The only retreat option is to absolute privacy – individual bedrooms and separate studies. There is no middle ground. Not allowing for a range of functionality and spatial qualities has led to the replication of spaces. Kitchens sit alongside a fully equipped butler’s pantries, theatre rooms or retreats counter the open plan lounge.

It is not the size of the house but the spatial quality, adjacency and function of shared family spaces, considered both individually and as part of the whole that create a delightful home.  Finding the balance of zoning, screening and visual connection between spaces provides unique areas, each suited to their function but in constant dialogue with those adjacent.  This allows for differing functions to co-habit the same space.

The opportunity to create this sense of home for other people is a huge privilege and one I enjoy immensely.  During this period of social distancing, I hope that the safety and familiarity of your home is bringing some calm to your days.

Every business big and small has processes.  What differentiates a sustainable practice is the awareness and conscious implementation of this process.  Like many small business owners, I have unintentionally been developing a process through each of my projects.  It would be tweaked as I went but was a fluid development without ever giving myself the time or mental space to really consolidate the steps or consider how I wanted to operate.

The basic framework I have built my process around is pretty standard – I work mostly with a fixed fee using the design stages we are all taught in one form or another:

Sketch Design, Design Development, Construction Documentation and Site Attendance.

The issue I have with these stages is that they are BIG.  If each is undertaken as one body of work it is easy to lose sight of what it needs to achieve – timeframes are long and invoices are high.  To tackle this, I have been working with each one broken into around 3-4 sub stages.  These stages do not have allocated revisions but are specifically focussed so that comments can be rolled into the next stage.  Progress on the design and documentation is easy to track and is a clearly defined and tangible scope that each portion of the fee directly relates to.

In a previous post (this one – check it out here if you missed it) I outlined my goals for this review.  They all feed into the development of my workflow, which has to serve my clients, give me creative space as a designer and the allow for the future growth of Maike Design.

To serve my clients this process needs to effective and informative.

My Clients tend to be busy professionals with families.  They have plenty to take care of already and I believe that a big part of our job is to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.  By having a process where we take care of ‘all the things’ efficiently and effectively, the way we deliver our projects allows our clients to be involved but does not require them to be the problem solvers.

We need to communicate everything they need to know when they need to know it.  The ‘when they need to know it’ is important and by following a logical process the past understanding of the design informs the current stage.  The process outline being developed will capture all of these decisions and allocate them to the appropriate stage.

Often Clients say they don’t necessarily know what they want but they’ll know when they see it.  It is our responsibility to make sure the design intent and execution is communicated in our documentation and presented clearly.

To serve me as a designer the process needs to be efficient.

I believe two of the best things you can give to a design are a wide and varied range of inspiration and time.  Time for the ideas to percolate, for them to move through various subconscious filters and to be able to wander through the spaces in your mind, each time filling in a new detail or discovering a new opportunity.

I don’t want to spend time figuring out tasks over and over that I can do just once.  This process has to be efficient and allow me the maximum amount of time to spend on researching the background of an existing building and its context, really getting to know the needs of my clients, testing design ideas and enriching my design knowledge generally.

To be able to serve future aspirations for Maike Design, the process needs to be repeatable.

When I have someone working with me, I want the process to be documented and thorough enough that anyone on my team could technically jump onto any project and continue working on it at the standard my Clients and I expect.  I want my process to provide prompts through the process to make sure nothing is forgotten and information is gathered and incorporated into the project at the appropriate time.  This means that every detail of each step needs to be captured – what information needs to be gathered, where everything is filed, what templates apply, contact details of everyone involved and all the other nuts and bolts aspects need to be consistent between projects.

Now as I document my workflow and put together all the various templates and reference documents, the points listed above will act as my criterion for success.  In my next post I will run through how I am capturing this process and keeping track of everything.

We have started 2020 with a heavy heart.

Australia has lost human life, millions of hectares of native bushland, thousands of homes and an estimated one billion animals and birds.  Our communities and delicate ecosystems have gone up in smoke and each day extraordinary fire fighters and volunteers are working to bring things under control.

I was going to keep writing about my process review but this is not business as usual.  In the face of a tragedy of this scale it didn’t really seem important.  There is another thought that has been growing during my review and setup that I wanted to share: how do we make a lasting difference to the world?

When I was little, I had a book called Miss Rumphius.  It is a story about a girl who was captivated by her grandfather’s stories.  He told her that as well as having adventures she had to do something to make the world more beautiful.  She grew up, went on adventures all over the world and when she grew old she lived by the sea.  Remembering that she hadn’t done what she promised her grandfather, she tried to figure out what to do, but she thought that the world was already quite beautiful.  Eventually after a patch of lupins brought her joy, she decided she would plant lupin seeds across the country.  Every year the flowers bloomed and turned countryside into a colourful sea of flowers for everyone to enjoy.

I think lupins might be a weed so the story kind of comes apart but the sentiment of having a responsibility to leave things better than you found them, however you are able, has stuck with me.  It is one of the reasons I am drawn to design and the built environment.  As a bunch of people, I love how thoughtful designers and Architects are.  I believe that well considered design has the capability to create change.  It can improve quality of life on an individual level and create social shifts and greater efficiency on a larger scale.

I have been feeling it particularly since having children – I think it made me look more closely at the world beyond my own lifespan and like many people, I have felt the larger, growing shift towards the realisation that things aren’t just going to work themselves out and the people that we have in the past entrusted to make high level change, are not.  The tragic events of this summer have shown the magnitude of what we are facing.

After having Flynn, our oldest, we realised that the plastic we put in the recycle bin wasn’t being recycled so did everything we could to eradicate disposable plastic from our lifestyle.  We then looked closely at where all our money was going.  We changed our bank accounts and homeloan to a more ethical bank, shifted superannuation accounts and changed (and drastically reduced) how we shopped.

When Kira was born I felt acutely how small our changes were in the scheme of things.  I couldn’t read the news, talk about social issues, politics or the environment without feeling helpless, upset and angry.  Eventually I made a decision – one thing I absolutely wanted for my children was for them to feel hopeful and know that they could always make a difference.

How was I going to teach them this if I was completely overwhelmed?

‘I cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do.’

Jana Stanfield

The response to the bushfires has highlighted how beautiful, supportive and generous people can be.  I hope that this momentum can be maintained to be the catalyst for real awareness and lasting change in environmental policy and planning.

As well as the immediate bushfire response, there are other wonderful examples of people working to create large positive scale change across a range of fields.  A few that I’ve found particularly inventive and inspiring are:

The Nightingale group have shifted the landscape of residential developments and proved that there is a better approach to inner city housing provisions than what has been provided by the previous developer-driven model.

A non-profit called Career-Tracker provide a professional network and support system for indigenous young adults through education and career opportunities that would likely not be available to them otherwise.

Photographer Jeremy Cowart and Michael Moore are putting together the Purpose Hotel where every aspect of your stay is linked to a cause or a need.  All the items within the hotel are sourced from humanitarian foundations or to support local creative industries.

Architects Assist is a platform for Architects and Building Designers to provide pro bono services to people who are affected by disasters to assist in the rebuilding of their homes and lives.

Over the last year or so I have been discussing this with other designers and colleagues and have found that I’m not the only one feeling like this.  But beyond donating some money, how do you get started?  As an individual, how do I find the time, traction and influence to create something bigger than just a single person?

I have plans that will be implemented as Maike Design grows.  I am working to provide a workplace that provides flexibility for the requirements of family equally to both partners.  I want to look at sharing with my team the decision of where a portion of our profits will go in order to contribute to social and environmental causes.  I want to provide an environment that supports and encourages ongoing education and development opportunities including engaging with community agendas.

These plans are all in-house and feel too small.  But I’ve got to start somewhere.

I don’t have an answer, just a lot of questions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas you are implementing to make a positive change.

In the meantime I encourage you to join me in supporting the organisations who are providing critical support to the victims of this disaster.  Every little bit helps.

Wires wildlife rescue appeal

Red Cross disaster relief fund

Or get some ideas of changes you can make from Instagram account be_an_unfucker