Visioning and planning

Leading on from the presentation this morning on the importance of planning in order to achieve as much as possible, we had to write a little statement of where we see ourselves in 5 years time. It was written in 1st person as if it was us in 5 years, it will discuss our career and also our lifestyle. 

NOVEMBER 2023

It is November 2023 and I am living in a flat in London, a nice location and very central. I find the buzz of London exciting and inspiring, enjoying the art scene and the bars. I have a daily commute to the studio of which I am a junior designer trying to work my way up. I have over the years enjoyed travelling and experiencing different studios so this may be the first studio I have decided to settle in.

I have enjoyed having the opportunity to travel to various places such as Japan to further enrich my creative practice. I have set up connections to go and visit some different studios and stay with a Japanese family. I enjoyed travelling around and meeting new people, fully getting involved with the local culture and learning a lot of new things. To get to where I am now I have previously spent 6 months in Melbourne as a Graphic Design intern. I loved travelling to lots of different parts of Australia and on the way home enjoyed Singapore. I built up my portfolio and contacts across the world and brought back my experience and design confidence to London ready to start to settle down.

My lifestyle is active and busy, I thrive off of a full to-do list with lots of variety in terms of exercise and work. I am at a point where if I do not have much on for a couple of days I can jet off for the weekend to explore as this is what motivates me, taking a friend or two with me. I drive home to the country every now and then in my charcoal Audi A1to walk the family dogs and drink wine.

We then discussed the different ways in which planning out our weeks can help us to keep on track of what needs to be done and by what date. We looked at some different strategies that people use and some apps such as SelfControl which allows you to create a blacklist on your computer so that for a set amount of time you do not have access to the selected websites. 

As a way to implement what we had discussed, we had to use Google Calendar to plan our next working week so we could see exactly what we wanted to achieve that week. Upon reflection, I need to split the bigger task into smaller ones that I can tick off much more regularly. 

We then had to write down our goals for the end of the year and the term by term. This was useful because I had thought about it all but it now is much easier to try and achieve when they are all written down. 

Annual goals (by the time of graduation)

Graduate with a 1^st, 2:1 at an absolute push

Have entered a number of competitions

Have a plan/goals for what to do when I graduate

Have a portfolio that I am happy with – a large one that can be adapted for each studio

Have a cover letter template that I can easily work with

Term 1

Confidently finish COP

Keep on top of blogging

Finish

Term 2

Get a placement in London/Leeds/Manchester

Complete the majority of the 10 projects, to a point that does not leave me too much at the end of the year

Keep on top of blogging

Term 3

Prepare for the final show

Enter the competition briefs to a high standard

Have somewhere fun to travel to planned