Archinect - News

Three tips for overcoming procrastination during the creative process

2022-05-19T11:53:00-04:00

As creative professionals, architects are prone to procrastination. In his acclaimed book The War of Art, author Steven Pressfield breaks down the many reasons why procrastination is a prevalent part in the creative process. “Procrastination is the most common manifestation of [creative resistance] because it’s the easiest to rationalize,” Pressfield wrote. “We don’t tell ourselves, 'I’m never going to write my symphony.' Instead we say, 'I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.'”

For some experts on the topic, procrastination in the creative process is a necessary evil. One such expert is Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist and author of the book Stress-Free Productivity. On a recent episode of the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast, Boyes explains that “lots of forms of problem solving benefit from an incubation period where you take a pause between when you hear the problem and when you start working on it.”

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Architectural professionals share the emotional impacts of COVID-19

2020-03-26T13:22:00-04:00

There's no hiding the emotional toll this unprecedented pandemic has had on the entire globe. As a part of our efforts to learn about the impacts of this situation, Archinect reached out to its international community to get a sense of how things have been going. We wanted to hear how our colleagues have been holding up, discovering along the way that many of us share the same challenges, concerns, and uncertainties. As a part of our outreach, we asked how professionals were doing emotionally. Through that inquiry, we found 4 main areas of emotional impact:

Feeling distracted, drained, and anxious from news and updates
Worried about the economic implications of the pandemic
Hit to productivity and focus due to stress and anxiety
Familial concerns and impacts

We'll look at each one more in-depth and share some personal remarks from our colleagues across the industry.

Feeling distracted, drained, and anxious from news

As we learn about this novel situation together, our tendency to check ...

Turning obstacles into opportunities in architectural practice

2020-03-23T18:04:00-04:00

Today, with the developing inconveniences of life, the hardships and frustrations, and the multitude of circumstantial consequences many of us face, it can be tough to know how to navigate the challenges we encounter. How do we trek this rocky path?

In his book The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday takes the timeless teachings of stoic philosophy and translates them for the modern reader, pulling stories from history to teach the art of "turning obstacles upside down." The book is based off of a passage written by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

Our actions may be impeded...but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting...The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

As we all face obstacles in our professional and personal lives, the lessons Holiday expounds are crucially important during this time. Many firms of all ...

Dealing with passive-aggression in the workplace

2019-10-29T14:15:00-04:00

Collaborative conceptions

Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; and shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets one's heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he or she is automatically involved in fear of losing status.

- Lao Tzu

Architecture is a field filled with intellectuals and we often find ourselves in deep discussions about design, philosophies, and methodologies. More trickily, in the workplace, in the heat of collaboration, we present our ideas and often must defend or support them. This practice is fruitful and heightens the quality of the team, as everyone participates in this collective creativity.

But sometimes you'll encounter that team member who has to have the last word, who must always end up on top. When you present your ideas to the team, they seek to find fault in it, subtly showing how it can't work, even if your suggestions are favo...

When it comes to planning your day, keep it simple

2019-10-23T11:08:00-04:00

Like many professionals, our days in architecture can get hectic. We try to manage the emails, the meetings, and the deadlines. In our efforts to check off all of our boxes we can sometimes fall short. With everything from calendar apps to team management softwares, we have a multitude of tools to pull from. But, despite the abundance of aids at our disposal, there is one thing that consistently proves helpful. Keeping it simple.

When it comes to tasks, we have the big ones that will significantly move us forward to our end goal. And then we have the small ones, that still help toward that goal, but in comparison, hold less value, it could be things like responding to certain emails, adjusting annotations in a Revit file, or ordering samples.

Milestones and the theory of the few

Say we have a DD set of drawings due to a client in a couple of weeks and we've made good progress on our plans, sections, and elevations, but are lagging on our detail sheets; maybe it's casework and wall d...

Tips for handling email overload

2019-10-07T14:30:00-04:00

Any busy person understands the overwhelming sight of countless emails sitting in an inbox on a Monday morning. They come in all shapes and sizes: there are those that don't require a response, easy enough, on to the next; the sales ones asking us to check out a new glass product, annoying; there are the more stressful, maybe a note from a client, or even worse, a contractor with 25 RFIs.

The list goes on, but the common denominator remains the demand of our time and mental bandwidth, which can become cumbersome throughout our complex workdays. How can we manage this digital phenomenon? The skilled reader will have a well-oiled process, share your insights in the comments.

For everyone else, here are some tips:

Filter

In 10 Steps to Become an Email Ninja, Tim Ferriss advocates a focus on the essential and an elimination of the inessential, things like spam. He achieves this by using Gmail, which he believes has the best spam filter. Additionally, he limits email notifications from...