Austin Saylor
Freelance 2D Motion Designer

Blog

blog on art + entrepreneurship

How to Make Fast Decisions and Increase Your Motion Design Output

austin-saylor-fast-decisions.png

The value and speed of your decisions drives your success

Your day is basically comprised of making decisions and acting on them.

  • What should I wear?
  • Should I eat that leftover pizza for breakfast, again?
  • Should I work on that high priority, but boring project?
  • Or that fun personal project?
  • How should the text animate on?
  • Would that new Reg Giant plugin speed up my workflow?

Life is a series of decisions and actions.

We have a finite amount of time. You have 24 hours in a day minus sleeping, eating, commuting, etc. Don't waste your time floundering back and forth in the decision making process. Being indecisive won't get your very far.

I want to help you get over yourself and make fast decisions that free up time and the mental struggle that indecisiveness creates.

Practical tools to help you make faster decisions

Follow any or all of these steps to keep from getting stuck so you can get on with making more and better motion design pieces:

  • If you have all the information you're going to get, make a decision now. Don’t wait until in the morning, not after your break. Now. You are not going to make a better decision by stalling, so stop putting it off.
  • If you don't have all the information you need, find it or find the person who knows it. Don't wait to do this. Make the decision to take action.
  • OHIO your emails. Only Handle It Once. How much time and energy do you spend by reading an email and waiting to respond, forgetting what the email said because it's been a couple days/weeks, and you have to re-read and maybe put it off for another day. Just deal with it. Most of your email can be addressed as soon as you read it.
  • When you're stuck on a motion design project and you're not sure how to animate something, think of 3 options… for example: scale from zero, slide in from the side, revealed through a wipe. Choose one and go with it. One beauty of working on the computer is you get to undo! Take advantage of Cmd Z.

Decide.

Act.

Adjust.

  • For the rest of your life, you will make "wrong" decisions. The best thing you can do is have a reason for your decisions. If you can conjure a solid reason, you've probably eliminated 1/2 of the wrong decisions. Now just do it.

Decision making is one thing that can make or break success.

How fast decisions making has helped me

I am far from being an expert fast-decision-maker. However, over the last few months, I've been very conscientious about making faster and better decisions. It's made a big difference.

The biggest improvement for me has been feeling a lot less weighed down. Answering emails right after I read them has been HUGE for me. Deciding on dinner in 30 seconds instead of looking at Pinterest for 30 minutes has been HUGE! That's time I can put towards my side projects. I LOVE it.

When I drag my feet on a decision, big (What should I do with that stalled IRA?) or small (What should I make for dinner?), it eats up mental energy I could be putting towards making something awesome.

I talk about all of this mental stuff because it has a huge effect on your work. I'm very interested in finding better ways to get in a creative state and free the mental clutter that is so good at distracting.

Your mind is brilliant, no matter what your friends say about you ;), but you have to set it up for success.

Learn to make great decisions faster, and you will certainly set yourself up for massive success.


Go make something awesome.

Austin Saylor