Traditionally, in August, the creative industries have their annual lull. Whilst clients are taking their infants to the Costa del Sol and saving their projects for the autumn, you have a small amount of time to play with. This year, although the heatwave has dried up Victoria Park, it certainly hasn’t dried up our work stream, as we’re having one of our busiest ever summers. Should you get the time, however, here are some of the things that we would be doing during downtime.
1. Learn
Learn something new. Start the autumn with a new skill to offer your clients and add another layer to your own work. Learn to use InDesign, qualify in Google Adwords, learn how to code. Adding strings to your creative bow is much easier when you have some time away from client work and deadlines. All in the name of personal development, as they say.
2. Write
As a copywriter, shockingly, I am advocating for spending more time writing. When you double as an account manager and junior strategist, finding time to write an engaging weekly blog/article/newsletter can be quite the task. Unleash your inner Wordsworth and put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard, let’s be honest) and write up a stack of content to distribute over the coming months when you’re up to your turtleneck in client tasks.
3. Get Outside
Being the trendy East London agency that we are, we’re lucky enough to be based right by the canal, meaning our lunch breaks are full of waterside strolls, punctuated with ducks and aggressive cyclists. Lovely. We also occasionally get the chance to use it as an opportunity to soak up some vitamin D during internal meetings. We take our team down to the canalside café and do a status meeting. Fighting procrastination and rickets all at once. That’s my kind of multitasking.
4. Team building
By this point, everyone is sick to the back teeth with the concept of ‘teambuilding’. There’s only so many away days or icebreakers one can participate in, but go with me on this. Have a bake-off. Take it in turns to make lunch for the team. Arrange a book club. All of these activities can take place over your lunch hour, that you can actually afford to take in the summer months, and help you get to know each other a bit better. What’s not to love?
5. Move those boxes
Whilst half your office is probably looking rather like a poached lobster somewhere in the South of France, you can embrace some Feng Shui and get your office decluttered. Now is the time to organize, sort, file and categorize as if your life depended on it. I for one, spend an inordinate amount of time looking for staples, so will personally be creating a staple drawer.
So there we have it, summer is positively brimming with possibilities if you have downtime to fill, to make you and your workplace stronger and happier. With no end to this heatwave in sight, I suggest you get cracking.