Get Organized Part II: Your Projects

There’s nothing I love more than a good organizing project, and the new year is a perfect time to get your systems organized in your interior design business!  If you’ve been running around playing whack-a-mole with your chaotic to-do list, always feeling behind on your overwhelming design projects, you’re going to love this 4-part blog series where I’m going to show you exactly how to get your design process, your projects, and your calendar organized.  By the end of this series you’re going to be feeling refreshed and much more in control of your time and your interior design projects!  

Last week, we talked about getting your process organized.  If you missed that, you can CLICK HERE to read that post.  

This week, I’m excited to build on last week’s post and talk about organizing your design projects.  

Organizing your projects is going to automatically eliminate 90% of your to-do list.  It’s like magic.  

The most important thing you need to know about organizing your design projects is not the how, but the when. 

When do you organize your projects?  Not on a Monday morning, with a full inbox and texts piling up on your phone.  Not on a Friday afternoon, with a mile-long to-do list that you didn’t get done that week.  

The time to organize each project is at the very beginning of the project, right after the contract is signed.  If you take the time to plan out your projects from beginning to end before you even start, you’re going to get out ahead of your workload and stay organized from the very start.   You’re going to automate your weekly plan and eliminate about 90% of your to-do list before it even begins.  Sound magical? It is - let’s get started!  

First off, organizing our projects is going to be a breeze because we already organized our design process in the last blog post HERE.  If you haven’t done that yet, don’t skip this step!  Without a predefined design process, you’re going to feel like you’re reinventing the wheel with each new project, which will be exhausting and you’ll definitely quit before you even get started.  So if you haven’t yet, go back and create your design process.

With your process in hand, all that needs to be done with each new project is to plug your project into the process and customize it if necessary.  Two common customizations are a change in scale or scope. 

For instance, if your typical design process is for a kitchen, you’ll need to expand the timeframes for a whole house project.  The basic steps are the same, though - you still need to pick out plumbing fixtures, finishes and appliances…just more of them.  So the basic steps stay the same, but you’ll customize the timeframes.  

The other customization you may need is if the scope of work is different from your typical process.  For instance, you don’t normally do furniture, but this kitchen needs some barstools - you’d add that, and so on. 

With your standard process tweaked, your project can be quickly and easily plugged into a week-by-week plan with weekly goals in place.  

Now there’s just one more step that you don’t want to skip if you’re going to really make your plan actionable - and that is adding in weekly time estimates.  

Each week needs a time estimate for the amount of time you need that week to complete the work to meet your weekly goal. 

You can add up the timeframes for each task and get your time estimate that way, or you can divide your overall fee by your hourly rate.  Either way, this step is absolutely crucial for creating a project plan that can actually get done in the real world and not just on paper.   If you’re not going to overwhelm yourself with too much work, you absolutely can’t skip this step! 

You did it - you organized your projects! 

Now you can just follow your weekly plan and know how much time you have to complete the work.  With everything planned out ahead of time, can you see how this is going to eliminate most of your to-do list and automatically prioritize what you need to do each week?  You’ll no longer need to even write out a to-do list… you can just pull out your project plans and follow along.  

Getting your design projects organized is going to free up your brain-space, create focus and unleash your creativity like never before.  

If you’d like some more guidance in this, I have a few exciting options coming up.  

First, if you’re going to KBIS in Las Vegas I’ll be giving my Power of Process workshop on January 31st, 2022.  The Power of Process workshop takes you step-by-step through this process with a detailed workbook and you leave with your customized design process completed.   Click Below 👇 to get on my mailing list and get details for that.  

If you’re ready to finally get your process organized this year, you’re going to want to check out my Design Roadmap Course HERE.  It gives you everything you need to get your process, your projects and your calendar organized and under control in your interior design business. 

Our Winter Cohort is getting started soon with tons of extra bonuses to ensure your success, so now is the perfect time to get on my email list by clicking below 👇 so you’ll be the first to know when the cart opens for the Winter Cohort.