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Are we all fucked?
Which agencies are going through layoffs
Rising Star
The Man United social team 🥵🔥.
Love their layouts.
If you’re white like me it’s so important to realize that we were raised in a society where institutionalized racism is normalized, and we were born with privilege. You can’t choose the color of your skin, but you can choose to put ego aside and reflect on why this isn’t happening to me, and be vocal about being anti-racist.
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Most professional screenwriters only write for 4 serious hours a day. So deep work like writing shouldn’t be done for more than 2-4 hours. The rest of your time should be ideation, meetings, or messing about to actively not think about what your working on so your subconscious can fix it
Rising Star
8-10 hours is far too long. You should only be writing for 3-4 serious hours. The rest is time for research, ideation, meetings, etc.
The human brain can only do hard tasks for 90 minutes. Our minds process best when we’re in movement (walking/running) and sleeping. Your brain solves most problems while you sleep. You’ll also find you discover what other people find interesting or have already solved when talking to them over a couple drinks. The death of “creativity” which is really just problem solving is sitting at your computer for some absurd length of time.
Having worked on both a drawing board and a keyboard over the course of my career, I can tell you that one of the advantages of working on the art side is that you can dowshift periodically into a mode where the ratio of hand-work to brain-work goes up, and your brain gets a chance to rest and recharge. Back in the Jurassic period, when we used typewriters, retyping a fresh copy of marked up pages gave writers sort of the same opportunity. But today, writing is pretty much an always-on mode for your brain. Getting up and walking around sometimes helps. Otherwise, occupational hazard, I'm afraid.
Same, also worked in an art role and several “writing” roles. I could easily spend hours without getting tired in Photoshop/etc. working until late night. Could also put on a TV show on a side, or have music. When was in roles that required hyper focus on writing, my brain was fried every day at the end of the day - you can’t be in autopilot mode.
You’d be amazed how many deadlines are arbitrarily assigned. So within reason, if you need to give yourself more time, ask for it.
In addition to giving yourself space to be a human, remember to keep any and all ideas in a folder so you can pull them out on the next campaign. AD’s do this all the time.
Getting good sleep and having a balanced lifestyle is the best way I know to improve my work quality. Grinding only works until you burn out, then you're SOL.
Highly reco use of timers w/ planned breaks. 15-30 minutes of work (I usually do 20 min). When the timer goes off, try to take a 5 min break, but if you’re feeling the creative flow then set the timer again. Evaluate once more.
Try to not exceed 90 min of heads down working time. To echo another commenter, humans genuinely can’t really work intensively for more than 90 minutes without at least a short break.
If your wheels are spinning and you’re getting nothing and the stress is building, you’re going to grind metal against metal and the work you get probably won’t be your best.
Take. The. Break.
Also! To echo *another* commenter, deadlines can be more flexible than they’re made out to be. Client has corporate bureaucracy and hierarchy weighing on them, with their bosses pushing for more more more. Account hears client’s urgency and relays it to your team, and everything runs downhill to YOU.
Manage up!! Manage expectations of your manager, of resourcing, of production, of account, etc. Overcommunicate, strategically and professionally.
Have fun with it
Instead of spinning my wheels, I go for a run. Watch tv. Go to bed. Then get up early, chug coffee and let it flow. Even a few hours sleep will help you work faster and better than burning the midnight oil if you’re tired.