I’ve spent the last few weeks in LOTS of meetings and talking to a lot of our clients at Genius Division.

It lead me to think a little bit more deeply about that entire process, actually TALKING to clients. I thought it'd be useful to talk about how to talk to clients.

There's lots of things I wish I would have done when I first started my design career, but this one is a big one. The worst bit? It's taken me 15 years to realise it.

So where have you been again Craig?!

This episode talks about my difficulty to find time to podcast (again) and what steps I've taken to overcome it.

It's hard for people to find time to do their marketing, especially when it isn't a priority for most people.

Between tweeting, blogging, doing LinkedIn and all that other guff, nobody has any time for anything.

Here's how I refocused and got back to doing stuff again.

I've just started a new show called The 9 Minute Design Show.

You can find it in your favourite way to consume podcasts, but I thought I'd let you have a listen to an episode without leaving here.

Let me know what you think.

When you're a designer you get so addicted to designing that you tend to do it too much. It usually leads to burnout and I know, because I've been there. Twice.

This episode talks about how to recognise burnout before it becomes a problem, and what to do about it.

1. To be an effective designer you need to:
2. Be creative
3. Be open to new ideas and points of view
4. Be working at your maximum capacity
5. Be happy
6. You can't be working at your maximum if you're burned out and working too hard
7. That usually leads to burnout: Can't think of new ideas
8. Aren't enjoying your job
9. You're working long hours but getting nothing done
10. You don't feel as good as you used to
11. I've burned out once, and nearly burned out a second time.
12. The first time I was just doing too much work.
13. My entire life used to be designing things, from 9am to 10pm.
14. I used to come home from work and do nothing else.
15. I was the most productive in terms of volume of work that I'd ever been, but it didn't last long.
16. The second time I made a massive change to my life: I designed less and threw myself into a new hobby: jiu jitsu.
17. A bit about jiu jitsu - problem solving, but in a physical realm (problem solving with dire physical consequences)
18. As creatives we need space.
19. You need space for creativity to thrive.
20. You can't do your best work when you're frazzled and tired. When you work all the time you're frazzled and tired.
21. Create more space.
22. Do less. Read more.
23. As much as you love what you're doing, doing it less so you keep loving it.
24. Write more! That's helped me loads.

440 million. Right now, that's roughly how many other blogs are out there on the web. You don't need me to tell you that blogging is huge on the internet, but…it's kind of a big deal.

Let's talk about how to write a good blog post, and how to make it interesting and get people reading.

I've also written an article to go with this episode: https://getdoingthings.com/blog/7-blogging-commandments/