At our Work in Progress conference in September, Lee further explained how the cyclical nature of his business forces him to focus. We were intrigued by the idea of leveraging limitations to your advantage. So we wanted to continue that conversation to find out how he structures his schedule to do his best work.
Do you have any daily habits or tricks that you use to protect focused creative time?
Definitely. Working with my team and collaborating on ideas—and allowing yourself to be challenged by other people's perception of things—are an important part of evolving concepts. However, I think protecting my schedule in terms of allowing myself to be able to spend time working on things on my own is an important part of that process.
Do you turn off notifications or not respond to emails for certain blocks of time? Do you make it known to your team that you're not available during certain windows of the day?
When I'm working from home, I definitely go offline. It also helps sometimes when I'm traveling. I find I get a lot of creative time when I am traveling, because my Sydney team and New York team are aware that I am in transit between places and there’s less of a reliance on me being available, which often does lend itself to make a bit more creative headspace.
When you're on an airplane, for example?
The flights from Australia, which I do very frequently, you know? It's 24 hours of travel, but broken up into two flights.
Does that end up giving you time for sketching or making notes to yourself?
Yeah, sometimes I get the opportunity to sketch things out. Often when I'm traveling and sketching, it's very rough kind of concepts rather than trying to detail things out. It's just getting the ideas out in a rough format. Often, I'll revisit those rough sketches in a more detailed way when I’m back in the office. Often I'm just writing notes as well. Sometimes I'm writing them in my phone and it can be just writing and capturing ideas.