Avoid the Grind in Architecture: Tips to Maximize Enjoyment & Efficiency

There is a common refrain in our industry that Architects are supposed to work long hours, pull all-nighters, not get paid well, never marry and simply never be happy. That is all a huge lie and a mindset that the Architectural industry largely created for itself to mask one of it’s largest failures: Architects are not taught to properly prioritize and manage their time effectively. I’m being a little hyperbolic but it’s not by much. If you know someone in the industry or know someone interested in becoming an Architect, consider sharing this post which offers tactical strategies on how to break free of these architectural stereotypes.

One of the biggest adjustments I had to make during my first year as an architecture student was adapting to the studio culture. I did my undergraduate degree at UC Santa Barbara for Environmental Studies which was not a technical architecture program, it was a Liberal Arts program. As such, the primary “deliverable” I produced were long-format essays. I did one all-nighter during that four year program but it was effectively a voluntary all-nighter as I primarily wanted to be awake at 5am for a dawn surf session. Life was simpler.

My first year as an architecture student in my M.Arch Graduate program was a wake up call. Unsurprisingly, I was asked to produce floor plans, build digital and physical models, and create large format presentation boards. I hadn’t expected that relatively little direct guidance would be given on the various tools to make these deliverables which dramatically increased the amount of time it took to produce anything. Looking back, I believe this trial & error approach was intended to foster creativity. It doesn’t push everyone into the same style of drawing and expressing their design concepts. Fair enough.

The obvious downside to this approach is it doesn’t teach or prioritize efficiency. No one who is actively pushing for a hard deadline is going to prioritize learning their tools in the most effective way. This isn’t inherently a big issue, but pair that with the fact that architectural academia pushes the narrative that good architecture comes from people who are in a design studio 24/7 and you have an issue. I think it’s arguably the worst thing about our industry. 

There is a pervasive and thinly veiled narrative that the more raw time spent on design, the better the design work is. I have literally heard my peers walk into the studio on crit day, wired on coffee, bragging about how they got 20 minutes of sleep in the back of their car at 6:40am as though it’s a badge of honor. It’s not. It suggests they aren’t managing their time properly. It suggests they undervalue other important things in their lives such as diet, sleep, exercise, non-architecture hobbies and non-architect friends. It means they will probably experience burn-out at some point. I’d even argue that mentality directly leads to being undervalued and underpaid in the workforce as they’re more susceptible to taking positions at firms requiring long hours and low wages. I mean, that’s what we all did for 5 years school right?

For some reason, I feel like we’ve been subliminally taught that the cost of “getting” to do creative work for a living is that we need to work longer and harder than everyone else. I believe that is fundamentally wrong. It is fully possible to maintain a work-life balance while getting to do the design work we love.

I did my share of all-nighters my first year of architecture school but discovered, unsurprisingly, that I hated it. It drove me to focus on making efficiency a foundational quality of my workflow. I took a job at a visualization company to learn the proper way to do renderings. I got a 3d printer so I could get a full night of sleep while my 3d models were built. I learned Revit and set up View Templates so I could develop 2d plans almost as soon as I decided my design was good enough for presentation. 

I began judging the success of my designs not simply for how well it stacked up next to my peers, but for how well it stacked up to my peers relative to the amount of sleep I got the night before. I derived some type of sick pleasure coming into crit day, bright-eyed and cheery while others were groggy and tired. My “reach” goal for the remaining two years of my grad program was to always be in the top-5 presentations without needing to pull all-nighters. I was largely successful.

It was the result of shifting my priorities away from simply grinding away on the next design, and instead to grinding away on learning new tools and programs so that I could produce quality work without having to grind. The approach has paid dividends in the long run as I’ve regularly felt that I have a greater grasp of our software than my peers, both in school and in the real world. 

I want to be clear though, I don’t blame any of the students going through architectural programs for this overwork and grind culture. I think it’s probably a combination of famous star-chitect firms getting away with poor working conditions and professors who haven’t practiced in 20 years driving the narrative. Regardless… 

If you’re in the industry, here’s my challenge to you:

Take a step back to consider your priorities and how you’re producing your deliverables. Ask yourself the following questions:

Do you feel you are using your software and tools efficiently?
Are you relaxed leading up to your deadlines?
Are you valuing your time?
Do you have time for other activities outside of your studies and work?
Are you enjoying what you’re doing?

If you’ve answered ‘No’ to any of those questions, I’ve got a handful of strategies I routinely practice that you might find helpful. They are in no particular order.

Let’s get Tactical

1. Work Backward from your Deadline.

If you’re constantly stressed leading up to hit a deadline, you’re most likely struggling with time management. I typically approach time management like any other design problem. If I have a deadline (the ultimate goal of this design problem), I work backward from there to structure my available time. I list out the various deliverables I’ll need to hit for the presentation by that date and list out how much time I think I’ll need for each. I’ll then add 20% more for unintended issues. Set a countdown timer, if you need to, and stick to it. This helps determine the “pencils down” moment to transition from designing to documenting. I regularly finish a design several days before a deadline to give myself enough time to adequately prepare a presentation with no stress.

2. 10% Idea | 90% Execution

Have you heard the saying that a successful product is 10% idea and 90% execution? I feel like this concept is incredibly relevant to architectural design and is rarely discussed in practice. In my experience, architectural design is taught through iteration and repetition; Design is a matter of testing and testing and testing until you find the best design approach. That’s not inherently a problem but if your professors and mentors are not also helping teach a framework in which to determine when it’s appropriate to switch to documentation, then they are failing their job. I’ve found that my most successful projects, in both school and practice, are often the ones where I ran with my first instinct. I’ll still test a few other concepts but ultimately nobody is ever going to see those alternative concepts that you were considering. As long as your concept successfully covers all the program requirements, it is completely okay to deem that concept is worth moving forward with and call it a day! Not to be too black and white, but I would argue it’s better to execute your initial concept spectacularly rather than pull all-nighters testing a bunch of mediocre ideas that don’t provide much tangible benefit. Feel free to roast me.

3. 80/20 principle & Diminishing Returns

If you haven’t done so, go read the “80/20 Principle” by Richard Koch. The premise is that 80% of our results come from 20% of the efforts. Try to consider that idea relative to your architectural tasks:

It takes a few seconds to sheet some plans in Revit for a presentation. It takes a few more seconds to add a View Template to get some color and contrast onto the plan. Boom: I have a plan that conveys a design concept. But let’s take the plans further, I could save out that linework to manually color and render it in Procreate on my iPad. Does it take an hour? Yes. Is it a more beautiful plan? Yes. Does the added graphical beauty convey the design concept better than plans directly out of Revit? Maybe. Is it worth the added time? That is the judgment call you need to make relative to the other tasks you need to complete. 

My point is that for most tasks, there are a few simple things you can do to get most of the way to your goal. There will always be ways to push your designs and deliverables further but you’ll experience a diminishing return on the time you invest when adding more and more polish. I’m not saying don’t use Procreate, just don’t lose sight of whatever you define as the ‘big picture’. Which is a nice segway to….

4. Develop All Deliverables to an “Acceptable” Level, then Polish as Time Permits.

It’s tempting to perfect one drawing before moving on to the next. In my opinion, this is akin to seeing the trees rather than the forest. You’ll get sucked into one detailed task and all of a sudden several hours pass and you’re behind on your overall presentation. It’s much more relaxing to get all required deliverables to an “acceptable” level, then gradually and consistently add additional polish in the final days and hours leading to a deadline. I often aim to have all my drawings to an “acceptable” level several days before a deadline. That provides plenty of additional time to account for unforeseen issues and last minute changes. It means I can allocate the correct amount of time for both adding polish and getting 8 hours of sleep. 

5. Don’t do all-nighters.

Beyond perpetuating a stupid stereotype for the industry, it’s very unhealthy. I’m not a doctor but this fellow is. Go read his fantastic book on “why we sleep”, no pun intended.  I get it, occasionally you might need an all-nighter but keep it to a minimum and don’t be proud of it. Take care of yourself.

6. Learn your software like the back of your hand.

Was I writing those 12-page essays at UCSB while learning to hold a pencil? No, I’d learned to type 100 wpm which made it a fair bit easier. It is 100% worth taking a little bit of time to learn how to use your tools properly. All the professional tools we use in the industry are typically available to students for free (or at a discount). As such, from day one you’re probably working with professional level tools that real professionals are using. If you feel yourself bored doing a repetitive or mundane task, pause and search for a better way. Professionals aren’t (or shouldn’t be!) brute forcing their way through a task. If there is something incredibly repetitive and mundane, take a few minutes to search Google or YouTube for a faster way. If you find something inefficient, most likely someone else has as well and has shared a better method. The sooner you start weeding out inefficient practices, the better. I haven’t manually renumbered doors and windows in AutoCAD in years and I couldn’t be happier.

7. Do not take an unpaid internship. 

Just don’t. If a company is making money off work that you helped produce, you should be fairly compensated. Hopefully this is becoming a less common issue, but then again who knows. That this still exists in our industry is incredibly frustrating to me.

8. During job interviews, Ask your potential employer about the typical hours the employees work.

Find out if they work 9-5? 8-6? More? Do they require or encourage overtime to hit deadlines? I have first hand experience working at companies that value people’s time and offer normal working hours. They are out there, I promise. I would advise against settling for a company that requires or pushes overtime. I interpret that as a major red flag, indicating that they can’t manage resources and deadlines efficiently.

I used to feel that my non-architecture background from UCSB wasn’t very helpful but I’ve come to appreciate the different perspective it gave me. Other industries don’t expect people to work all the time and pull all-nighters. Full stop. I love what I do and I’m always shooting to produce the highest quality work possible, but I do so on my own terms and within my own boundaries. Value yourself, develop your own workflows according to what you enjoy, and set boundaries that you can stick to. The foundation of my entire professional workflow can be traced to the goals and boundaries that I set for myself in school. There is no better time than now to start practicing on your terms to maximize the value you get from your work. 

Have fun!

And don’t work for a star-chitect.