Day in the Life at The Idea Bureau: Tash Hockey

In our last blog post, we looked at what a day in the life is like for us at The Idea Bureau from Ben, our Technical Lead and Director’s perspective. Today, we’re following Tash, our Design Lead and Director, as she goes about a typical day:

Early morning

6am – 9am: Today is a personal training session day at my local gym – on these days, I start work early to get ahead, as the sessions don’t start until 9am. I’m an early bird, so I prefer to get up and hit the ground running in the mornings.

During the time before the gym, I’ll start by:

• Planning out my day
• Getting on top of emails
• Reviewing any marketing content or creating the newsletter
• Ensuring Teamwork, our Project Management app, is up to data across all our projects and Bureau⁺ clients

Occasionally, we have an early meeting during this time, particularly if it’s an international client, such as the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, who are based in Australia!

9am: I’m off to the gym – I started working with a personal trainer around a year ago and love having some dedicated time to leave the house, focus on myself and not think about work for a little bit. As someone who finds it hard to switch off this has been a game changer.

Mid morning

10:30am: After I’ve been to the gym, Ben and I jump straight into our daily stand up. This helps us to keep on track of everything, such as running through our core projects, and discussing priorities and tasks for the day ahead. It’s also an opportunity to discuss any business related tasks, such as our marketing content. This is only a 30 minute catch up, as we have a weekly planning session every Friday to really get into the details of what we’ve got on for the next week.

After this, I’ll usually jump into a weekly client catch up call for an hour. For all our big projects, we schedule routine calls throughout the project to make sure we’re on track with our milestones and just to check in with the client on how things are going.

12pm: I find it so important to spend my lunch break away from my desk. This isn’t always possible, but when I can, I try to get out with Monty (our mascot doggo 🐶) for some fresh air – we’ll go for a walk to get some steps in, then come home to make some lunch.

Sometimes, I try to sneak a cheeky DIY task into my lunch break – when you’re trying to renovate your house and work full-time simultaneously, you have to take the opportunities to get stuck in when you can!

Afternoon

1 – 4pm: This is my deep work time where I can really get stuck into some design work. Figma is my tool of choice for this. I’m currently working on a few big charity website designs, so there’s always a lot to do.

This afternoon, I did some UI design for a client of ours based in India: L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI). We’re a decent way through the design process now, so all of the style and design direction have already been signed off. This makes it so much faster to put pages together.

I try to break up big chunks of work by using my walking pad to keep active – it’s so good! It’s a little bit of a cliche purchase, but it’s definitely a great way to move about while being productive.

Evening

5:30pm: By this time, my brain is pretty fried, so I wrap up tasks and complete any admin tasks that have popped up to finish the day. I also check LinkedIn to see what’s been happening and if there’s anything interesting to read.

After that, it’s time for some dinner and another dog walk with Monty (that may or may not end with a cheeky pint at the pub 🍺😉)

Like Ben, I find it really useful to keep to a routine each day. It varies slightly, depending on whether or not I’m doing a gym session, but we try to keep things to a similar pace to maintain productivity. Having set periods of ‘deep work’ – and regularly scheduled calls or meetings – really helps to break up the day, but also lets me really focus when I need to. I really love being able to get out for some exercise during the working day, whether that’s in the gym or on a walk with Monty. It’s also great to have the freedom to do a bit of renovation work when I get the chance!