On Time Management and Innovation
It’s amusing to me that time is a near-infinite resource in the universe that we never seem to have enough of…
Time Management
I’ve spent a lot of time writing and rewriting this post, bouncing between—and dismissing—ideas like that well-known Days of our Lives quote (you know the one), the curious poetry of using sand as an hourglass medium, and the distorted perception of time during a “flow state.”
That is all to say: Time has been on my mind a lot lately, and here’s why.
When I first started Inanna Designs, I didn’t expect that time management would be one of my biggest challenges. I come from journalism, after all, where I constantly juggled multiple assignments for different editors or venues. And these stories often required scheduling, prepping for, and conducting various interviews with people across different timezones.
But there’s always so much to manage, to do, for Inanna Designs. On the creation side of things alone, there’s:
Hunting for fabric at local secondhand stores
Pairing fabrics (all Inanna Designs products use at least two different fabrics) and figuring out what types of products they work best for
Determining the sizes and types of the products needed based on current stock and demand
Cutting out the patterns (resizing as necessary) and sewing the products, which sometimes requires first sewing together multiple smaller pieces of fabric to have enough usable material
Washing all the products and conducting quality control
Then there’s all the other stuff like photographing items, managing social media and website content, and working events. Somewhere in between all that, I have to fit in time to work on freelance writing projects. 😮💨 And so I jump from task to task with the ever-pressing feeling that I am behind where I want to be, am not doing enough, and somehow need to be more productive.
Though it doesn’t help to stop these feelings, I know that, logically, this just isn’t true. Things just take time.
It also doesn’t help my time-management struggles that I have a drive to innovate and I love creating new types of products—and I tend to lose all track of time when I do (there’s that flow state I mentioned…).
Innovation
Except for our bags, all of our products use patterns I created from scratch, typically by first deconstructing something I own (mentally and/or materially) to figure out how it’s made. It’s then a slow, iterative process to develop a pattern and production procedure that I like and that fits with the Inanna style and brand.
You can see this process at work for the two types of shorts I’ve been spending most of my Inanna work-time on for the past few weeks (has it really been that long!?).
Design progression of short shorts from top left→top right→bottom left→bottom right.
For the non-reversible short shorts, I have shorts with: one fabric and a waistband that flares at the bottom; two fabrics with the flared waistband bottom; two fabrics with blended pockets and no flared waistband; and, finally, two fabrics with a bottom trim, pockets, and non-flaring waistband that match.
Design progression for reversible, layered shorts similar to our wrap pants.
And for the reversible flap shorts, I have shorts with: ties for the waistband and no pockets; elastic waistband and no pockets; and elastic waistband and pockets, created with a more efficient method for adding the elastic waistband. I’ve also made reversible shorts that are, well, shorter, because I like to wear either all the fabric or as little as is deemed appropriate.
And these are just the usable products—I’ve left out all the failed experiments. Or the fact that even after I’ve “finalized” a design, I can’t help but continue to refine them as I crank out product.
Gosh, R&D is time-consuming. At least I get a bunch of fun prototypes in the process. 😆
Alright, I’ve spent enough time on this.
Be well,
Joey