When you’re using Tableau time seems to fly by, one minute your just getting started and the next it’s late at night and you still have plenty more to do.

Yesterday Andy asked us to design a viz based on a data set look at time utilisation, a pretty straightforward task.

I planned out my idea and set to work (here’s my idea):

But here lies the problem and why the utilisation of your time is so important, there is lots of functionality needed to achieve this (dashboard actions etc), there are lots of graphics to create (stock images that will probably need editing) and I don’t even have all of the data available to achieve the final concept!

We were only given a few hours to complete the task and there is no way I would be able to achieve this….even if I did work on the train home and spent most of the evening on it.

So my lesson for today is, be conscious of the time available to complete a task and work on something that is actually achievable. Scale back your idea or change the completely if needed.

Here endeth the lesson.