Tool #6: Logging your time

Your internship may be full time, or it may be for part of the week. Within your internship, it’s a really good idea to keep track of how much time you’re spending doing different tasks and the length of the days you are working. You need to log the time you spend building the skills you negotiated at the start of your internship and make sure that you are not burning the candle at both ends.

Beyond your internship, it is a useful exercise to log how much of your time is spent doing paid work and unpaid work. You may be supporting your internship with another (paid) job – this will help you figure out how you are actually funding your internship and how you distinguish paid from unpaid work in your life more generally. Moreover, when you are envisaging running your own design practice in the future, getting a sense of the time you invest in design work will help you define your fee and make your practice economically viable.

“Logging your time” has been adapted from a text by the Carrotworkers’ Collective.

Last edit: 05.06.2014