She said: “Well, why you don’t write about that as well? Your site is full of roundups, some tips in such cases could be useful as well!”. Right and so I took paper and actually wrote down my ideas! This is very short article, but I am expecting you to add your ideas as well! What can we do to get out from daily work flow, from struggling, get organized and feel good?

1. Take a rest

Take a walk out to breathe some fresh air and get work a little bit out of your system or even better look at all from aside to rethink your strategy, future goals and things you could change or do to get better what are you working on.

2. Read design related book

I bet you have several books in your bookshelf you always wanted to read but never got time! At least I have a lot of them, now is a great time to remember about them and use your free time to do what you love to do!

3. Watch Video Tutorials

Again if you are obsessed designer like I am, you certainly should have to be 30-40gb video tutorials you downloaded a while ago, but never got time to learn them! Usually in busy work-flow we forget to learn tools first, we just need to get job done, but if you continue to learn and evolve your skills, you will suddenly discover some more different ways and techniques, how to achieve necessary outcome much faster! It’s amazing how much we still don’t know after many years working in design niche!

4. Create a new design, artwork

It really helps if you store your favorite designs, photos, artworks on local hard-drive for later use, so you can get inspiration also when you have no Internet connection. Anyway you can spend hours playing with effects, fonts, textures, artworks – to perfect your skills.

5. Take a pencil, paints and paper

Take your time and enjoy how creative you can be while sketching or drawing – do something different to enjoy your life even more!

6. Go And Meet Friend

Such things happen to everybody – in all rush, sometimes we forget about really great friends, so this time be first to call them out! If you have some good friends in your own design niche, it’s even more useful – you can meet up, exchange opinions and get fresh ideas. I really evaluate such friends, where we both can contribute in some way from each other.

7. Get out and start to do some sport

We spend a lot of our time in front of computer, but we shouldn’t forget about our health – it’s more worth than anything! Start to do yoga, play football, volleyball, swimming, run or find out where is the nearest gym from your home! You will definitely feel better each day, I assure you!

8. Listen relaxing music

Get lazy, relax, watch movie, listen music – you earned it! Whole life doesn’t consist from rush, struggling from lack of time. Take your breathe slowly and enjoy selfhanded free time!

9. Go out to museum, exhibition – any creative and inspiring place!

Find out if there are any interesting exhibitions, design conferences happening in your town and again get out!

10. Organize, clean up your workspace

It may happen to all of us – while we are working hard, we are creating mess around us and slowly it’s affecting our work-flow as well. Our environment changes us as well as people around you. Maybe you need to change also how your furniture, computer, lights are organized?

11. Organize, clean up your desktop

Sounds obvious, but you cannot imagine how much you waste time while searching through numerous folders necessary file or image, when you could easily organize everything! Clean up desktop, create folders, move files to appropriate directories! Very helpful in daily work-flow!

12. Create organized schedule

In all rush you sometimes forget things you must do? Create schedule and get used to it, definitely will help to organize your daily workflow and you will feel much better, it’s about organizing your life! Article I created a while ago could actually help you as well – Plan Your Daily Schedule: Useful Resources.

13. Don’t do anything!

If you are always running and running you should enjoy something different as well – watch movie, sleep a little bit longer – don’t make it as regular habit, but from time to time it’s really relaxing!

I would love to hear your advices how you enjoy and spend your free time, what you do to get out from struggling in your work and where you find inspiration to keep on doing what are you doing!?!

So why You need to plan schedule? In business world and workflow there are many things You must remember,  and I struggled to remember everything and notes always can disappear, but online scheduler is always handy. I am reviewing the most useful online resources – Google Calendar, FireFox add-ons, Mozilla Thunderbird scheduler, to help You organize works.

Google Calendar

So as online scheduler Google Calendar is irreplaceable tool  assigning and reminding You things You could forget. Also do not forget to remind Yourself for some rest times – going to cinema, go out for holidays, not only jobs and meetings. Google Calendar is very easy to use – switch between day/week/month, dates, times etc.

Also You can add other friend calendar, for example if You are doing the same project and Google Reader is the most easiest way to organize works.

If You add events and set place with location – Google automatically  detects and gives You map of that place and how to get to it, the same is with Gmail and locations. You can use Google Calendar if You’ve got Google Mail or any account in Google, so You can get to Your own calendar here.

GoogCal Firefox Plug-in

If You use Google Calendar and Firefox, I suggest to use this handy plug-in GoogCal too. Installing this plug-in will give moveable toolbar button that opens Google Calendar in the current tab.

Mozilla Sunbird and Mozilla Lightning add-on

If You use Mozilla Thunderbird as I do, You could also think about using Lightning Mozilla add-on so You can organize Your schedule right from Thunderbird e-mail client and sending/receiving meeting invitations via email becomes a lot easier with calendar. Lightning has the same good all features as usual schedule. Also You can set reminder for Your tasks, add tasks, find events and etc.

Or You can use Sunbird, which is standalone application built upon Mozilla Toolkit. You could choose this case if You aren’t using Mozilla or don’t like addons, but anyway You enjoy application.

You can download Sunbird or Lightning add-on here.

Reminder Fox – Firefox Add-on

This FireFox is neat plug-in scheduler, very handy built-in application to remember Your must do things.

ReminderFox displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo’s. ReminderFox does not seek to be a full-fledged calendar. In fact, the target audience is anybody that simply wants to remember important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, bills, etc) without having to run a whole calendar application. ReminderFox makes sure you remember all of your important dates via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarm notifications.

I hope this will help to organize Your workflow and also will help to schedule Your relaxation. Maybe You are in good harmony organizing Your works? Why don’t You share with us?  Comments will be appreciated!