The Efficiency Killer : Desperation

In our last article we discussed the efficiency mindset:

“If you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, there must be a better way of doing it.”

The awareness of repeated tasks opens you up to the possibility of creating efficiencies. 

What destroys the efficiency mindset is desperation.  Being extremely busy and overwhelmed can block the ability to create efficiencies. When one is desperate, the idea of improving anything at all is a luxury. One is in survival mode: "How do I get all this work done?"

Recently I encountered a team of extremely frazzled creatives. The art director had just returned from a major shoot. The timelines had been compressed because of bad weather at the shoot location. The art director had to make photo selections for the digital magazine. Everyone was under pressure to make up for lost time.

The magazine was to be composed in Adobe InDesign. There are a lot of great tools in this software that can automate the creative workflow so I asked the art director how I could help her photo selection process. 

She said: “There’s too much to do.  I have to make my selections and that takes a long time - especially with all these meetings.” I asked her to briefly walk me through her selection process. She said: “I drag a page down (she gestured this as she spoke), I create a picture box, import the photo, and then resize it so I can see the whole image.” 

“And you do this again and again for all your selects?” I asked. She nodded. I said: “Ok I can give you an InDesign document that will make this whole process a lot easier. Give me 5 minutes.” 

I thought this series of repeated tasks and set on a course of action. Using InDesign I opened a new document and created a master page with a picture box. In the picture box I modified the attributes to: Fitting > Fit Content Proportionally. I set the anchor point to: Align from center of the picture box. This would be good beginning to streamline the photo selection workflow.

I put the InDesign document into the job folder, went over to the Art Director, and showed her the master page I had created.

Walking her through some steps I said “Ok drag down a master page. Now drag the first photo into the picture box.” The picture auto centered and auto fit, the Art Director’s eyes lit up, “This is great!” “Yes it is", I said, "now let’s try this. Select: add master pages and add 5 pages. Ok now select 5 photo and click on each of the five new pages.” One after the other all five images centered and fit in their picture boxes. “This is amazing! I can add 30 pages and place 30 images in one shot!” she said.

Desperation was replaced with relief and the Art Director was energized to make her selects. We worked together to create further process refinements. 

The fill color of the picture boxes was white and the Art Director wanted a grey background so it would more clearly show if retouched extensions would be needed. We added a grey fill to the picture box on the master page and it cascaded to all the pages in the document. 

A process that can sometime span a couple of days was shortened to less than two hours. We collaborated all along the way and added efficiencies that shortened the current task and would speed up this process the future.

Adobe InDesign's master pages are wonderful tools to automate repeated tasks and to create efficiencies. When faced with an overwhelming workload, rather than letting desperation take hold, step back, think a bit about the process, and become aware of any repeated tasks. Those are your targets for improvements.

Resources:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/master-pages.html