Can you take care without taking time?
How quickly could you do $25 000 worth of damage?
I don't mean deliberately, I mean by accident.
The most obvious way that comes to my mind is you crash your car. Accruing the necessary value either through the value of the car you crash, or the value of the thing you crash into. Outside of that you'd generally have to be doing something kind of special to cause $25k worth of damage by accident.
Well, I had a good chat with a mate of mine during the week and he'd just had his apprentice crash one of his lathes. In less than a minute he'd done more than $25k damage. Somehow managing to have the machine attempt to part-off the piece with the boring bar still in it, if that means anything to you.
A careless mistake.
Of course, careless mistakes are no biggie for the things we don't care about. But for things we do care about, like our design work, careless mistakes can be painful reminders. Especially as the more experienced you become, the more you don't accept your own mistakes (as unfair as that may be).
Here's something that I think we hate to admit; taking care takes time. You can't rush and still take care.
Time For Preventing Mistakes
It's a well-worn path; the more you rush the more likely you are to make mistakes. Yet it's easy to forget when the deadline looms or you've suddenly realised you've bitten off more than you can chew. Of course it's good to be busy; there's always a certain level of validation that comes with being in demand. It is, however, easy to let it get away from you. Ask me how I know.
Yet avoiding careless mistakes is super easy. Just take your time. Do a double-check. Triple-check. Have someone else check. Or come back tomorrow for a fresh look.
Be deliberate with how you allocate your work. Give yourself the time, so you have the time to take.
This is Parkinson’s Law. The adage that work expands to fill its available time. While this means small jobs may take forever within loosely-defined boundaries, it also works in the the other direction. Work will also shrink to fill the available time. It can cause big jobs to leave the studio half-baked or with errors.
Plan ahead and block out the appropriate amount of time you need to get the job done to the level you expect. Do it beforehand (like, first thing in the morning) so the boundaries are in place before you start. Don't rush from one job to the next, but lay out your tasks deliberately. Importantly, this also gives you a framework for setting expectations with clients (or employers, hopefully).
Don't overpromise your time. And as you'll see, what you promise matters.
Time For Preventing Self-limitation
When your output is directly tied to your input, as it is in design, you can turn over more work at the same level or the same amount of work at a higher level. While it's true to some extent that as we get more skilled and experienced we can turn over more work better, there is also a limit if you want to be at the top of your game.
You can't be both the best and the fastest, and eventually you will have to choose which. To be the best means you have to give yourself the time to be your best.
This is the basis of Cal Newport's book Slow Productivity which I've mentioned here before. Doing less, better. If you care about something, and you want it to be a true reflection of who you are, you simply have to invest the time into it. If someone else isn't making that investment for you to take the time you need to achieve the level you (and they) desire, then you need to dip into your own reserves to do so (or turn the job down).
Designers do this all the time. From graduates, right through to the most decorated agencies in the country. The need for a great portfolio is universal to the whole spectrum of design. Investing or reinvesting their own time into their work to present a true example of the skills they have and the quality they deliver.
I have a distinct memory of the hosts of the Design Truth podcast chuckling about this quite some time ago. Comparing how much better the renders were that they'd redone for their own portfolios, over what was delivered and paid for by the client*.
* Note: I don't fully agree this is the right way to do it. If you're going to invest you're own time anyway, why not let the client also reap that benefit? If the investment is made with the objective of bringing in new work, surely making the investment to bring in repeat work has a better ROI.
The best people in the industry are focused and invested. If you want to be the best, you have to take care.
Care takes time.
Promises
Continuing to deliver a high standard of work over a long period of time can have consequences. Like, I don't know, a strong reputation. And a reputation is the foundation on which much design work is built.
This is especially true in a field like design. When the desired endpoint is often nebulous at best. The client (or employer) is entrusting the work to you on the promise that you can deliver to a certain standard. A standard presented through your work, through your portfolio, and through the people that recommend you. They are trusting you to keep that promise.
While we might think that punching out projects is great for business, it's important to ensure that as you do more the client isn't getting less. Either through a reduction in quality, an increase in mistakes, or both.
Reputations can dissolve as easily as they are hard to build.
Take care.
