You may or may not know this, but I’m a terrible wannabe overachiever.
When I start working on a project, I don’t just want it to succeed, I want it to be the best. I have visions of extended A+ reviews from fellow web designers and enthusiastic phone calls from clients, analytics pages that go really over the top and thousands millions of happy users.
Of course, all this fantasy gets me in trouble more often than not. I bet you know why: creative procrastination.
What does it mean, in a nutshell? I’ll visualize it for you: me, staring at the screen, pen & paper in hand, designing in my mind, laying out HTML snippets, styling with CSS, solving complex design problems, conducting usability reports and studying ROI analyses.
All. In. My. Head.
That’s a bit too much, as you know. It usually means that by the time I lay down a single line of CSS I’m so tired and confused it’s not even fun anymore. But I love my work, so it should be fun right? Right. That’s why you just need to keep going.
Every time you stumble upon a web design roadblock and lose two minutes of your precious time thinking of how to overcome it, stop and run in the opposite direction, immediately.
If you’re pondering too much over a design problem, do a bit of brain-dead form coding. If you’re totally bored of coding HTML, stop and sprinkle a bit of CSS magic to your project. If you feel confined in your browser window, fire up Photoshop and start designing out of the box. Most important: never stop working on your project. Less thought, more work.
I guarantee, a moment’s gonna come that your project will just look at you, shiny, finished, and you’ll marvel at how streamlined your process was this time.
“But, Sug, what about the correct way of web designing?”, I hear you thinking. As with most design workflows, there is really no spoon. No panacea, no proper way of doing stuff. Hell, I always say “HTML first, CSS second” yet I always start coding CSS as soon as I get a vague idea of the site. Nasty, nasty Sug.
Learn your way of working and try to live with it. Don’t fret over the little things, they will eventually get ironed out before launch, promise.
Just don’t stop working.
2 comments on this post
acidsmile #1
15.Jan.10
As the british say “there are more ways than one to skin a cat” (although I think this should be a more of a chinese saying than british but anw)
We all have our own little process and we all stumble against different obstacles. Like you say switching to a different task, if you are a one man designer / developer, or switching off completely and going for a walk is great for project progress.
I often switch from back-end to front-end or vice versa and when I truly hit a wall I walk outside and have a cigarette and think (filthy habit but it helps getting me away from my screen and giving me some space to think about what I’m doing and putting things in perspective]
I wholeheartedly agree with you, like the well know drink ad says, keep walking!
gagavida #2
15.Jan.10
Oh my god – I’m glad that you posted about this, because I have the exact same problem with every really “huge” project that comes my way lately. I am not a web designer, but because I do have my own business that is run almost completely online (and I simply do not have the funds to pay for web design, very unfortunately… along with hair/makeup people, or photographers for my photo shoots, etc.) I had no choice but to jump in head first to figure out how to use Photoshop and web design stuff about 3 years ago.
I long for the day when I can pay somebody to do it for me, but…
Until that happens, I have at least become competent enough to do what I need to do, etc. But, I can tell you right now that I cannot stand my site the way that it currently is designed, set up, and forth. I literally completed the design about 1.5 to 2 years ago, and as time goes on, I get better. This, of course, leads me to despise even further the old design. So, I decide to give it all a face lift… and that was last year.
Because I don’t want to have to redesign it again, I want it to look good enough to last until I can pay somebody to take it over – and that equals way too much over-thinking and indecision about everything from the basic design elements, to the menus, to the actual wording of the content within the site, and the list just keeps going.
The desire to “do it right the first time” has basically just left me stuck on every detail. And all the while, the old site is still out there as a representation of my work, and that drives me insane.
Being my own boss, I don’t really have “deadlines” for this kind of stuff – but, I created one finally this week. It just has to get done – it has to!