[00:00:09.06] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.21] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.06] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.22] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last 7 days. And thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:23.14] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:24.05] - Gordon
How's your week been, first of all?
[00:00:25.20] - Taylor
It's been very good.
[00:00:27.22] - Gordon
Excellent. Just moving the camera just a tiny bit there, just to give a bit more room on the side there. Good, yes, it's been very full on for me. I'm in a play at the moment, or I'm rehearsing for a play at the moment. We're doing "The Diary of Anne Frank," although we are using the Dutch pronunciations. And so instead of Anne Frank, it's Anna Frank, which is how the Dutch would have said her name. So that's taken up lots of time, but let's get straight into our topic. Do you want to go first?
[00:01:01.05] - Taylor
I mean, I can do.
[00:01:02.09] - Gordon
Yeah, go for it.
[00:01:03.11] - Taylor
So on Tuesday, we had a coworking session.
[00:01:08.22] - Gordon
We did.
[00:01:10.20] - Taylor
And the idea was that there's lots of projects that we both want to work on, both kind of in our business, but also side projects, personal projects, and sometimes it's very difficult to do it by yourself. Sometimes it's good to kind of bounce ideas off someone. And so we decided that every Tuesday we would spend a couple of hours each week working on either mine or your projects and kind of making progress, really.
[00:01:45.07] - Gordon
Yeah, it's a way of keeping you accountable, isn't it, really? I, excuse me. Oh, pardon me. I did this a long, long time ago, before you were born, with my friend Marc, friend of the podcast, Marc Summers. And we used to have a day that we would put aside each week. And one week we would work on things for him, one week we would work for things on me. And you know, you would know that if you had something that you needed someone's help with, or you know that the other person has a skill that you would like to use, then you sort of, you line them up for your day. And by doing that, you know that it, when it's going to get done, and you know that the other person is going to be putting that time aside to be there with you, same as you're going to be putting time aside to be there with them. And it's a way to make sure that things get done. And I do this now with my friend Paul. We meet on a Thursday, and I think we're going to have to slightly change it a bit because the last 3 weeks I think, we've not been able to make through, you know, one of us or both of us being busy.
[00:03:06.04]
But we may have to sort of change it a little bit and make it maybe half a day because maybe a whole day is just too much. And I know that whenever we are coming up to that event, I've got a list of things that I've made that I want to work through, or maybe just talk through. Maybe it's just something that I want to get feedback about. And, you know, "is it worth doing this?" And "what do you think of this idea?" And you're talking to someone who has sort of similar experiences or knowledge or is in the same sort of business sphere as you are, so a magician in this case. And with you on Tuesday, it's great because you're in the website business so I can talk to you about those sort of things. And for the magic side of the things, I can talk to Paul.
[00:04:01.22] - Taylor
It was when we kind of were trying to figure out when to do it. One of the things that I think I was mainly conscious of was that I didn't want to take up a whole day because, you know, I already have so many other commitments already with all my sports, all my contract work, all my own client work and things like that. And the other part or other side to that was that if you spend the whole day, well, you spend probably, I don't know, quite a few hours just chatting and not really making progress per se, which is not anything wrong, but I already talk to you most of the week anyway about things here and there. So having, you know, 4 hours that are kind of focused means we're going to get the most done. You know, we can still chat and things like that, but we're going to get the most done and not going to waste time just kind of doing things here and there, really.
[00:04:59.06] - Gordon
Yeah, and the nice thing about it is you can do something and sort of get started on something. And then the person whose project it is can then go away and continue with it. And then, you know, in a couple of weeks when it's your turn again, you can come back and we can relook at it and say, "right, okay, maybe we should look at doing this or do that." Or maybe there's just a lot of work that needs doing and by both doing it at the same time, you can progress so much quicker than you would if you were doing it on your own.
[00:05:32.20] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:33.03] - Gordon
And you have a lot of really useful and great skills in this area. And I have, you know, lots of different skills in different areas. I mean, I like to think that I've got quite a good eye for design and so forth.
[00:05:49.14] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:50.04] - Gordon
So you're very good at coding. So it works really well. And I think the reason that we are talking about this is not only because it's affected our businesses and hopefully it'll improve our businesses, but it's something that you, the listener, might find works for you as well. If you've got like-minded people that you can sort of meet up with on a regular basis. Now that basis could be once a week, could be once every fortnight, could be once a month, you know, whatever that basis is. But it's got to be regular. And just like we have with our Wednesdays when we go to the cinema, we sort of, we put that time aside and unless it's unavoidable, that time will always be booked in the diary. And it'll always be, "this is the time that we're going to be doing our work and this is the time we're going to be going to the cinema."
[00:06:44.27]
And, you know, most of the other things that we do gets booked in around that.
[00:06:50.10] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:51.02] - Gordon
Yeah. Now you were talking about having some sort of system so that we can monitor and check to see how productive we're being because it's all very well doing this, but if it's not actually achieving anything, then it's not potentially worth doing.
[00:07:11.29] - Taylor
Yeah. So, one of the ideas I had was that when you're working on kind of projects and things like that, I wanted to keep a track and keep a log of "what did we do that week." Partly just because, again, same reason why we started the podcast was I want to be able to look back and go, "what have we done, what progress have we made." But also then be able to kind of add completed projects. So again, we can come back in a year's time and go, "well, were those 4 hours we spent every week actually worth it, or could we be better off just, you know, working by ourselves for those 4 hours?" And we can look back and say, "okay, well, we actually got 4 big projects launched or pushed, or at least made progress on." But the other side to that is that when you're working with somebody else, if you're working on projects that are kind of joint projects, so we have a couple of projects that we work on together, well, you need somewhere to put ideas, you need somewhere to put notes, suggestions, or even things you want to work on.
[00:08:21.19]
So, we could have just a little calendar and you could basically schedule what you wanted so you can then map out and go, "well, I've got this booked in for my next session." And then you can then also put something in for the next session after that, which will obviously be in 2 weeks' time. And so it allows us to, potentially, keep track but also have a bit of, hindsight— or not hindsight, oversight— into, "okay, this is what you want to be looking at next week, let me just kind of pull that, have a look, check." And then over the next week or so, I have time to think about it, and then when we come to your week, I have an idea of what you already want to look at, and I can bring questions, I can bring suggestions if it's something that I can obviously help in. And yeah, we can add context around those things.
[00:09:18.18] - Gordon
And the meetings that we have are over Zoom because we both have our very own working spaces. You know, this is Taylor's office and I have my own office. And everything's set up how we want it. So instead of going physically to one of these locations and sort of making do with a smaller laptop screen and lesser resources, we're staying where we are and just connecting on Zoom.
[00:09:47.10] - Taylor
But you also don't have to do it that way. If you are not in the digital website industry, well, you may not have a setup that you've configured and are happy with. You may be doing stuff that actually requires in-person. If you're a coach, for example, you might be more visual. And so a lot of people like to print stuff out, people like to write stuff down and do big mind maps and do things very physically in person. And that obviously can work for you as well. It's just obviously the nature of what we do, it's just easier to do it online.
[00:10:26.14] - Gordon
Yeah. And by having it on Zoom for us, it means that we can both be accessing the same files or the same site. But we may not be sort of talking the whole time, but the channel is open so that when we have a question or we want to talk about something, we can just speak and the other person will be there and is sort of there to respond. But, we had on our Tuesday this last week, we had maybe sort of 20 minutes or so at one point where neither of us said anything because we were both busy doing something.
[00:10:58.14] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:59.01] - Gordon
And, after that happened, reported back to say, "right, I've done this bit now, have a look at it, see what you think. And we'll move on from there." And so you don't necessarily need to spend the time just talking, you can spend the time doing as well, which is the main point really, isn't it?
[00:11:20.18] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:21.22] - Gordon
Anything else you have to say about this, Taylor?
[00:11:23.28] - Taylor
I don't think so. Obviously we're only one week in, but we'll see how it goes and keep you updated.
[00:11:29.05] - Gordon
Yeah. So it's your turn next week. We worked on a site for me this week. So yes, we'll keep you informed as to how things are going. If you decide to do something like this, then please send us a message, let us know. We'd love to hear about it. And we'd love to hear what's been working for you if you've already been doing something like this. That's everything. Oh, bit of a cough today. Sorry about that. That's everything from me. Anything else from you?
[00:11:59.01] - Taylor
That's everything from me as well.
[00:12:00.17] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we're on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:12:05.29] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:12:12.21] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us instead of watch us, we're on all the major podcast platforms and also your smart speaker. Just ask it to play the latest episode of "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." We will be back with you next Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:12:32.23] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:12:35.05] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:12:35.23] - Taylor
Bye.
