visit the site

The Apple Country Snowmobile Club was looking for a new website that would serve a few purposes. They wanted a central hub for delivering news to members, a high-ranking site that would allow area snowmobilers to find local information, a place for new members to learn about the Club and signup to be a member, and a connection into their forray into social media. In addition the site needed to be friendly and extremely easy to use.

Instead of trying to add all of that to their old site we decided the ACSC needed to start fresh. I helped them design a minimal site that reflected the beauty of their winter playground and the warmth of the people involved. The site not only met all of their objectives, it exceeded their expectations and now helps them get information to current members and recruit new ones.

Or, read one of these:

1. Apple Annie’s Antiques Website
2. Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce Website
3. Inner Circle Gym Website

visit the website

Kelly Allen of Full Bloom Marketing had an idea. She wanted to build an online resource for brides looking to get married in the beauty of North Central Washington. From this idea was born NCWWeddings.com. Having worked with Apt Design before she knew where to come for a uniquely designed website that delivered for both her and her visitors. After some strategy sessions and wireframing of the entire site, I designed and developed NCWWeddings.com. The site uses subtle design elements of ornamentation, texture and color to match the beauty of North Central Washington and the weddings taking place here.

Kelly now updates the site herself, doing everything from adding new posts from multiple authors to adding new ads from her vendors. Backend analytics provide her with easy-to-digest data about who is visiting her site and what they are doing, and she is also able to provide her advertisers detailed reports about the views and clicks they received on their ads.

Or, read one of these:

1. Gold’s Gym Blog
2. Write on the River Website
3. RunWenatchee.com

In January of 2010 I took a private business retreat that quickly turned into a holistic life retreat. One idea that really came to me as I meditated was the idea “Share Life.” It seemed like such an important epiphany that I added it to my personal mission statement:

• Simplify Life
• Enjoy Life
• Purify Life
• Share Life

And so this Creating Work/Life Balance series ends not with a 50-tip list for arranging your paper clips or a post on how to increase your productivity 1,000-fold, but a simple reminder to spend time with each other.

Because if you think about it aren’t the best parts of your life – the most glorious moments, the minutes filled with ringing laughter, the deepest experiences, the most special and significant seconds – aren’t they the times when you were together with other people?

Coming to this realization has put things into perspective for me. Now, part of achieving a work-life balance is being able to work little enough so that I have time for the important people in my life. Cause that’s what its all about. Spending time in a tea party with my daughter (even when she’s too young to remember it later!) becomes more important than doing more work for work’s sake. Turning off email to spend quality time in conversation with my wife just make sense. Flexing my schedule to help out a friend in the middle of the day becomes no big deal.

Work is nice and work is great, but let’s remember what’s really important at the end of the day, week, and career. The time spent with people is what we should be working for.

Life with a Capital L

And as a Christian sharing life is more than just hanging out with others. Its sharing the Abundant Life that has been freely shared with me. Its about sharing the Truth and Love that is Life and pouring love into other people as a calling in life.

Whether you life by faith or not, we should all take time to share the life we have with those less fortunate than us – either financially, physically or emotionally. Sharing life is just as much about helping others as it is anything else.

Do this Now:

Go make an appointment right now to hang out with someone (in person) that you should spend time with.

Download the Wallpaper:

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Or, read one of these:

1. Separate Work and Life
2. The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance
3. Find a Non-Work-Related Hobby

As a freelance designer I’m immersed in design all day, which works out great because I love design. Hopefully you love your job as well. But sometimes when we love our jobs we tend to want to keep doing them even when we’re not working. So we create hobbies – “personal projects” – that we do for fun oftentimes without getting paid for them. I know many designers, developers, writers and other business owners who spend plenty of unpaid time working on personal projects.

Personal projects are great.

But when they are essentially the same thing you do all day at your job, they don’t really help you become a fuller, more well-rounded person.

And I think that can be a problem.

Being Well-Rounded

Ancient cultures considered you to be a gentleman only if you were well-studied in many areas. Confucious said the “perfect man” is one who “combines the qualities of saint, scholar, and gentleman.” And in the 16th century the Italians said a gentleman needed “attainment in physical (sports and war) intellectual (education, literary and musical accomplishments) and also moral and social mores.” (source)

Being “well-rounded” will look different for each of us, but the whole point of being well rounded stems from the idea of being round, or being a complete circle. If your entire life is pencil-thin focused on one thing (like your job), then your are not filling out the circle of your life. I think a fuller life is one that is balanced. And that means having a variety of interests, hobbies, influences and experiences.

So, get a hobby. And get one that’s not the same thing as your job. In fact, in my opinion the further away your personal hobby is from your daily job the better. Be more than your job, more than just your profession. Basically, don’t let your work be your life. There are a myriad of new things waiting for you out there – go and explore them! You’ll be better for it.

Do This Now:

Similar to the exercise list, make a list of 3-5 new hobbies you’d like to try or new experiences you’d like to have. Then give yourself a month or two to try out each one.

Download the Wallpaper:

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iPhone

Or, read one of these:

1. Separate Work and Life
2. Share Life
3. Know What You Want

view the app

Its not every day that you get to work with one of the top companies on the internet to create a brand-new app for the world’s leading smartphone. Working with eBay on their new Motors iPhone app was a dream project. The Shane&Peter team brought me onboard to help create a functional, friendly user experience and a beautiful, memorable design for this new app.

The project started with Shane and I creating wireframed screens and walkthroughs of the entire app – basically thinking through how the user would use and navigate every part of the program. After that was done I turned into lead designer on the project and worked with Ryan to create the look and feel of the entire app. I put together a style that was a throwback to the idea of old baseball cards (one of the themes of the app), while still being very clean and modern. I paired rough textures with clean, sharp fonts and lots of contrast to create one of my most favorite designs I’ve worked.

The app itself is packed with features. You can browse beautiful cars, save specific searches for your car, and even create your ‘garage’ which stores info and pictures about cars you own or want to own. Go ahead and download the app in the App Store, or read Shane&Peter’s announcement of the completed project.

In the end this was a great project for everyone. My client, Shane&Peter, was super happy with the way the design turned out; eBay was delighted with the app we gave them; and dozens of great customer reviews in the App Store show that the target audience is loving this work.

Or, read one of these:

1. Kashoo / Clarity Accounting Fluid Icon
2. Zillow Blog
3. Team Wilson Book

Part of creating the right work/life balance in your life is creating balance in all areas of your life – emotional, spiritual, and physical. This post is just a quick reminder that being physically active is good for you in general, and the best way to be physically active is to find an exercise you love.

There has been immense amounts of research done that proves when people work out regularly they are happier, healthier, less stressed, and have better self-image.* (*And no, I don’t actually have specific sources for this, but everyone knows this is true I think) So why doesn’t everyone just exercise more?

Because for so many people exercising is a horrible experience. But here’s the thing – it doesn’t have to be.

There are an endless variety of ways to get your blood pumping and your body moving. You need to find a way to workout that you enjoy. You need to find what works for you! Only then will you be willing, and even excited, to exercise consistently.

In his great free ebook, Sustainable Fitness, Blair McHaney writes,

You need to feel like there is more to the exercise than just the exercise. You want to be able to look forward to this as much as possible. Here we are looking for two things – fun and peace of mind.

For me the answer is running. I love to run. If I’m ever feeling stressed out after a long day of work a few miles on the trail will unknot all the tightness in my shoulders. Running is a meditation, an escape, a peaceful solitude.

My wife thought I was crazy – how could anyone actually enjoy exercising? She had tried running and working out at the gym and thought of working out only as a negative thing. Then she found swimming. Now she can’t wait to get to the lap pool, and has even cut out other activities she doesn’t enjoy as much so she can have time to swim.

It doesn’t matter what it is – just find the exercise that you love and do it!

Take it Outside

If possible, take your exercise outside. Doing what you love only gets better when you are in nature as well.

When you find the exercise you love you get to reap the rewards of fitness: being happier, healthier, having more energy and being less stressed.

Do this now:

If you already know of an exercise you love commit to doing it 3 times next week. If you don’t have an exercise you love – make a list of 3 you’d like to try and give each one a shot over the next 3 weeks.

Grab the Wallpaper:

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iPhone

Or, read one of these:

1. Find a Non-Work-Related Hobby
2. Know What You Want
3. The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance

Finding time away from work used to be about “unplugging.” No more. Now we have numerous ways we can be literally “unplugged” while still be hooked into the stream of information, media and ideas that compromise our current internet and media. Now something pulls us in more than the plug – the ubiquitous screen. You probably don’t even realize how much time you spend in front of a screen, and that’s a problem.

The Ever-Present Screen

Screens are all around us and they follow us through every part of our day. Many people wake up to a screen – whether it be their cell phone or a tv. Morning shows dominate many pre-work routines. At work more and more of us are spending all day at a desk – staring at a great big screen. And even if its not at a desk laptops make it easy to take our work screens anywhere. For some of us staring at a screen is about all we do at work.

photo by Mitch

Once we’re done with work, we want to relax unwind. Enter the screen. TVs are on all the time in some houses, and everyone can relate to just wanting to veg in front of TV or a movie. Video games are more interactive but require even more attention on the screen. As ereaders take off in the marketplace even reading a good book is becoming dominated by a screen.

This isn’t to mention the ever-present screen in our pockets – our cell phones that force us to look at a screen to do anything on it. And look at it we do – checking our phone tens or even hundreds of times a day.

I think you’re getting the point, and you may be able to think of even more screens you use that I haven’t mentioned. The screen is everywhere.

Be Conscious

Now, this post might be coming off so far as anti-technology, anti-screen. That’s not how I mean it. All these screens I mentioned have good reasons for being in our life – that’s why we put them there in the first place!

I think the problem comes when we don’t realize how much time we spend in front of screens. Screens are an awesome conduit into something else. But we need to realize that as we engage them we are unengaging (to some degree) that which is really around us.

This whole thought comes from very personal experience. When I first thought about screen time and how much of my day is spent in front of one screen or another I was staggered. I still don’t have all the answers for what to do about screen time, but just being aware has made me more conscious as I choose what to do with my time.

Engage in Real Life

An important part of this work/life balance discussion is about taking control of our decisions to make our lives the best they can be. Realizing how much time you spend screened-in is just another piece in that decision-making process. You are limiting yourself in that decision if your immediate reaction to free time is to move to a screen. You can choose to get away from the screen for a time and engage in real life happening around you with real people.

Give your eyes and your brain a chance to relax.  Give your mind something different. Spend time in real, personal relationships with people you can reach out and touch. Go outside, engage with nature. Do something active and physical. There are thousands of things that don’t involve a screen. Want to spend time doing something else besides watching a screen? The choice is yours.

Do This Now:

This can be a tough realization to have. First of all just spend the next week being conscious of your screen time. How you choose to change that time in the next week is up to you.

Wallpapers for Your Screens!

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Or, read one of these:

1. Know What You Want
2. Guard Your Time
3. Set Your Priorities

visit the website

This is another exciting project I worked on for Shane&Peter Inc. Zillow has an overall brand that we worked within to create a cleaner, more modern feeling style site. We also took a look at the content on the current blog and surfaced the most important features and stories, making the site more easily navigable by users.

As one of the two lead designers I was responsible for designing concepts of the site, detailing the final design, developing design direction, and working to make sure design elements stayed consistent across the entire site.

Or, read one of these:

1. AP College Football Website
2. Value Inn Website
3. Comfort Inn Website

Taking a dose of my own work/life balance medicine tonight and not going to finish the post for tomorrow. Posting a publishing schedule has been good to force me to write this series, but I think this is the perfect opportunity to put the balance idea into affect. We should be resuming next week with the post Reduce Screen Time. See you then!

(If you haven’t read them all you can still catch up on the work/life balance series up to this point!)

Or, read one of these:

1. You Need a Break
2. Guest Blog Post on Creating a Healthy Work/Life Balance
3. The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance

You move fast.

Admit it. Much of the time, maybe most of the time, you hit the floor running and don’t get a break till you climb into bed at night. Its a problem so many of us are facing more and more in modern times.

Leo Babauta puts it this way in his book Focus,

We live in curious times. It’s called the Age of Information, but in another light it can be called the Age of Distraction. … never have the distractions been so voluminous, so overwhelming, so intense, so persistent as they are now. … More and more, we are connected, we are up to our necks in the stream of information, we are in the crossfire of the battle for our attention, and we are engaged in a harrying blur of multitasking activity.

But now a reversal has begun. You’ve seen it in plenty of other places before this blog post – a cultural movement to slow down, turn off the noise and live more freely. Here’s a look at some ways to live a better life by slowing down and doing less:

Don’t Do. Just Be.

In our current American culture there is so much emphasis on Getting Things Done. We make todo lists for every part of our life and there are thousands of books and videos telling us how to be more productive. Built into our modern worldview is the idea that we are only worthwhile if we are accomplishing something.

Break that thought habit. You don’t need to be constantly doing. Take some time to stop doing and start being. Relax and be yourself. Think quietly. Reflect. Breathe. Look at the stars. Sip tea by yourself while the sun rises. Pet a sleeping animal. Just sit and be.

Kill the Need to Know Instantly

In the past it took awhile to hear about things that had happened. You may not read about events until days, weeks or even months later. As our technology has advanced the time it takes for us to find out about things has significantly decreased until now there are an endless amount of ways for you to know what’s going on as it happens.

People used to survive without that instant knowledge. You still can.

You don’t need to know everything that happens the second that it happens. Try turning off whatever it is that’s constantly bombarding you with the immediate and the now and the urgent. The less you are being invaded with what is happening elsewhere the more you can focus on what is happening where you are. The point is not to see how long you can go without the stream of information, but to kill the need to know everything instantly.

Urgent is Poison

This need for doing things immediately is often worst in your job. You see it stamped across papers and blaring its little “!!!” at you in your inbox. Its called Urgent. And its poison. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37Signals put it this way in their book Rework:

Most things just don’t warrant that kind of hysteria. If a task doesn’t get done this very instant, nobody is going to die. Nobody’s going to lose their job. It won’t cost the company a ton of money. What it will do is create artificial stress, which leads to burnout and worse.

Relax a little. Slow things down. Enjoy being without doing.

Do This Now:

Try this. Find 5 full minutes to lay on the floor quietly and do nothing but breath and clear your mind of thoughts. 5 full minutes. I think you’ll find 2 things: 1. It will be harder than you think and 2. Afterwards you will feel even better than you would have thought.

Download the Wallpaper:

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1024x768

iPhone

Or, read one of these:

1. Separate Work and Life
2. Guard Your Time
3. Know What You Want