Joining us this week for our interview on the importance of time management is Gerardo Martinez. Gerardo is a graphic designer and illustrator who has three separate jobs, and lots of little jobs inside of those jobs. As a father-to-be, time management is extremely important to Gerardo, who wants to make sure he has time for his new baby. Gerardo explains to us how the OfficeTime app and time management skills has helped him juggle his sometimes hectic life.
Tell us about your company, Gerardo, and the services you provide.
Well put simply, I’m a freelance graphic designer/ illustrator, a one man base company. I also give one-on-one training lessons to people who want to master their skills with the use of computers and graphic design software.
During the morning hours I’m in charge of the graphics department for a screen printing company located on the central coast ofCaliforniaas well.
The services I provide through my own company are graphic design related. It’s mostly the creation of iconography, logotypes, custom illustration, marketing, ad development, stationary, business presentation and now I’m expanding into the web design platform.
How important is time management in the day-to-day running of your business AND your life?
Having to divide my time between three different jobs in my professional life, (gerardodesign.com, the silkscreen shop and the one-on-one tutoring) time management is crucial, a number one priority. Thanks to the Office Time app, I now have the ability to enjoy more of my free time rather than getting home and having to plan and re-plan my entire schedule based on the events of that day and the upcoming days. This is truly a blessing for any busy person in a situation like mine, where trying to coordinate the tasks and responsibilities between three jobs is like another job in itself. Now that I have this wonderful time management tool, I’m better able to focus on the task at hand rather than worrying about scheduling, coordinating, and organizing everything seperately.
Talk to me specifically about OfficeTime. What’s been your biggest takeaway of using it?
My biggest takeaway of using Office Time as one of my day-to-day work tools is that it encompasses, covers, and unifies all of my time management needs in just one app. It’s powerful and very organized yet simple to use.
Before Office Time, I had to spend a lot of my own personal time transcribing all of the information for my hours, costs, and invoices from different apps and synchronize them all in another final app to load onto my iMac. Now with the ease of your app on my iPad and iMac, all that information gets recorded into just one app. I don’t even notice the automatic synchronization between my gadgets because all of the built in features allow it to do so smoothly and easily. The time of my work sessions, billable and not billable time, categories, and their individual costs are all there in a very neatly organized, clean, user- friendly, and well designed interface. As a graphic designer, I was really impressed with Office Time’s simple design and how that translated well into an easy and pleasant customer experience
So what new and awesome things have you been able to create in your business, since you’ve freed up so much time with the OfficeTime time tracking tool? (That’s sort of half joking — what new things are exciting in your life and company is the real uptake.)
Now that I get to have some more free time I started working on a couple of projects that I had in mind for a while but that I’ve never had the time for. I’m working on creating some baby toys and sculpting puppets as a hobby for my soon-to arrive baby to play with. With a little one on the way, my time will be even more valuable and I want to make sure that I get to spend as much of it as possible with them. After all, this is why we push ourselves a little further every day, to be better people for ourselves and our surrounding community.
Absolutely and that’s one of the reasons why OfficeTime was created, to help ourselves and others. For Gerardo, Office Time allows him to keep track of and manage his time throughout his busy days. By tracking and managing his time he’s able to make more time for himself and the ones he loves, a truly priceless value. If you would like to see some of Gerardos artwork and designs visit his website at gerardodesign.com
Tune in next week for another great blog on how time management = success.
Time. The real commodity.