Another cycling analogy here (last one I promise!). This one is about momentum. For me, cycling to work is divided into three very clear types of terrain: downhill (easy), flat (neutral) and uphill (hard). After a long day, those uphills can take a lot out of me and I’m not the only one struggling.

But this post is about what people do on the downhills and flats. Every now and again, I’ll see a cyclist on the same route who takes it REALLY slow on those parts. I can understand that – conserving energy for the hills, I guess. But here’s the thing: on my route most of those downhills or flats end in a hill and the faster you take the easy parts the more momentum you build for the hills. Approach a hill slowly and you have to work so much harder to make progress. Whereas if you take advantage of the momentum you can build on the easy or neutral sections, half the work is done for you when you hit that hard section.

Production isn’t cycling but it still has its easy parts, neutral parts and its hard parts. There will be challenges. There will be struggles. So the more you can take advantage of the easy and neutral parts, the better. You can get that momentum going, you can build a bank of great work, make plans for the tougher sections ahead, create any buffers possible and buy you that bit of extra leeway for when things get hard. And they will get hard at times.

Even if you can take it easy… don’t. Keep pedalling.

It’s a cycling analogy today. I have recently been cycling into our lovely Mooshku studio to make some wonderful things for kids. Cycling is is a great way to travel but it’s not without its obstacles in Dublin city. One of those is a particular cyclist on my route.

When everyone is waiting at red lights (there are actually some cyclists who stop at red lights in Dublin… a few of us), this cyclist moves past everyone and goes to the front. Jumping the queue. Now there is an etiquette question there but that’s not the real issue. The issue is that this cyclist is a REALLY SLOW cyclist.

So this cyclist jumps to the top of the pack and, once that light goes green, every other cyclist is hampered by her lack of speed. They have to find safe places to pass, which isn’t easy in Dublin. And then it happens all over again if you’re unlucky enough to land at the same set of lights again. This cyclist gets in the way of other cyclists and becomes an obstacle in the journey we’re all taking.

So two things here relate to production and they both come from the basic reality that everything has an order in production.

1) Know the optimum order of events. There is usually a very clear set of steps in any production and they have to happen in the correct order. Find out what depends on the elements you are supplying. Who are they critical to? There may be opportunities to skip ahead but you might gain nothing doing so. You might even build in more problems to solve. So know your order. Unlike that cyclist jumping ahead and gaining nothing, assess the production equivalent of the cyclists around you and find that optimum order and try to stick to it.

2) Once you know your place in that order, keep the pace. Don’t slow down. Don’t delay the other processes coming behind you. They shouldn’t ever need to pass you. You must keep up with the schedule. Everything behind you depends on it. Don’t be late.

There are too many stages to animation production, too many potential logjams, to let one part of it break the whole production or put too much stress on everyone else trying to keep to the schedule. Be aware of the order and keep the pace.