Photo by Mounzer Awad on Unsplash.
Editor's note: This article was originally published 5/19.
When church staff take summer vacation and pastors take sabbaticals, church designers can find themselves with extra time on their hands. And while you could just take it easy, you could also leverage the extra time to invest in yourself.
Here are 5 wise ways to do that:
1. Take a drawing class to improve the way you communicate ideas.
Nothing beats the ability to pull out a pencil and sketch out ideas during a meeting. Whether you are starting from zero or brushing up on something you learned in school, taking a drawing class forces you to practice, which can sharpen your skills and improve real-time design communication with your clients.
There are a number of great resources available: check out books like Betty Edward’s popular Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, or Mark Kistler’s You Can Draw in 30 Days. Online video courses like Sketchbook Skool, How to Draw (The Great Courses) or Sketch Like an Architect (Udemy) are affordable, and come in modules so you can build your skills gradually over time.
Need the accountability of having an actual class to go to? Your local community college likely offers drawing classes, as do city recreation centers.
2. Pitch yourself as a presenter.
Are there things you find yourself sharing over and over with which clients resonate? Why not craft those ideas into a session for a conference?
Are there things you find yourself sharing over and over with which clients resonate?
A little bit of online research can help you find conferences your clients will likely attend. (And if not, you can always just ask your clients what their favorites are.) Most conferences do a call for presentations a year to six months before the event and have online forms you can fill out to pitch your ideas.
As you craft your session, keep in mind that the headline matters. Think about the conferences you’ve attended, and how you tend to select sessions from a long list. What guides your choices? Craft your content with these things in mind, write your bio around the things that matter most to your clients, then click the button to submit.
3. Re-engage in relationships.
Church designers live in a deadline-driven industry. We move so quickly that sometimes we find ourselves in what feels like a time warp. (This hits us particularly hard when Facebook shows us photos from a project opening and we find ourselves asking: “Was that really 5 years ago?”)
Taking time to reconnect keeps your relationships fresh and your network strong.
You can use your summer slowdown to reconnect with any clients with whom you’ve lost touch. You know, the people you used to speak with every day during a building project, but you haven’t reached out to in a while.
Taking time to reconnect keeps your relationships fresh and your network strong.
4. Change your physical space.
It’s easy to go “office blind.” We walk in on autopilot and fail to notice that our workspace isn’t very ergonomic or that there are stacks of boxes we haven’t dealt with in the rush. We ignore the piles of junk mail teetering precariously on the edge of our desk, and the mismatched bookshelf that leans a little to the right.
Luckily, as a designer, you have skills to fix this. Look at your immediate space with new eyes and figure out how to optimize it for the way you work right now. Ditch the collection of tchotchkes, deal with the junk mail, rearrange your desk space, repair any office furniture that looks worn, and update artwork that feels outdated.
(There’s a reason Marie Kondo is a bestselling author. There really is magic to tidying up.)
5. Launch a mastermind group.
Masterminds are peer-to-peer mentoring groups. The benefit to mastermind groups is leveraging the collective intelligence of those who are part of it.
The best mastermind groups include people with divergent backgrounds who have aligned goals. For example, an entrepreneur mastermind may have people from several different industries who are pursuing growth. In a designer’s mastermind, there could be mid-level leaders from different facets of the design profession who are all seeking C-suite roles. The best groups have a common pursuit with widely different perspectives represented.
The best groups have a common pursuit with widely different perspectives represented.
There are masterminds already formed that you can pay to join, but sometimes the best are the ones you create yourself.
Are there people you admire that you would want to learn from? Reach out to see if they are interested in forming a mastermind group with you. Start with 5-6 people and begin meeting on a consistent basis. You might be surprised at which “unsolvable” problems can be solved by group input, and how the relationships will impact your personal growth.
Investing in yourself pays dividends way beyond the summer.
Investing in yourself is about more than just using time well. It’s about getting off autopilot and reimagining who you are in your craft. This won’t just make you better at what you do--it will ignite your energy and keep you growing into the you that you most want to be.
