I spent a good chunk of last year feeling stuck. Without getting into all the details, I was working on major evolution of our product vision. It was bold, it was exciting, it was pushing us into new territory... and it was taking forever. I want everything I do to be great. And, like many designers, one of my superpowers is to sense when something isn't. I worked myself into this little ball of stress and frustration because all I could see was the delta between where the vision was and where I wanted it to be. I was letting my push for perfection take the joy out of the progress we were making.

A lot has been said about perfection ruining the creative process. Some of my favorites include Ira Glass on Storytelling, Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, or Adam Grant's TED Talk on original thinkers to name a few.

It's a new year, a time for reflecting and doing things differently. I wanted to share some of the things that helped me out the rut.

Timebox: Nothing More Powerful than a Deadline

Work is like a gas: it takes up as much space as you give it. If the deadlines are fuzzy or there's no commitment, things will drag on. With the vision, we were doing rev after rev and it still wasn't right. I was losing steam. Counterintuitively, the thing that helped met get it over the finish line was signing up to share it with the team in 2 weeks. The deadline gave clarity. I stopped worrying about less important details and focused on making sure the main points came through.

Solve a Simpler Problem First

Or said differently, break it down. With the deadline in place, I started breaking up the remaining work into smaller pieces, 1. so we could divide and conquer and 2. it was easier to solve something smaller. There were parts towards the end of the vision that didn't make sense and still needed to be figured out. Thanks to my superpower, I was dwelling on the parts that didn't make sense. Breaking it up, allowed me to ignore those parts for the time being so I could lock down the parts that were easier to communicate.

Rely on Scaffolding

Sometimes a formula is exactly what you need, at least to get you started. I used the classic Pixar story spine posted by Emma Coats to get the gist of the story I wanted to tell out of my head and on paper. Once it was on paper, I could share it, riff on it, start massaging it to make it ever better.

Create a Crappy Version

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of them. I love an outline, a rough draft, a first iteration. It gives me permission to let it be bad, to turn off my superpower. At some point, I gave myself the task to fill in all the remaining holes with crappy, black and white slides, default formatting, and boring, grey wireframes. Those slides helped get us all on the same page and feel good about the vision.

Talk It Out With People

The act of talking through my problems probably did more to help me get out of my funk than anything else. Having to put into words what I was struggling with helped me crystallize my problems and think through solutions. And it helped me realize I wasn't a failure. Some things were just hard to communicate. They were novel and required a different way of thinking about the product we were building.

But Don't Listen to Everyone

If you talk to people, just be aware you're going to get a lot of opinions. It's good to hear them. It's not good to listen to all of them. At some point, I was drowning in feedback. Some people wanted more detail, some people wanted less, some people felt things were missing, some felt it had too many things, some people felt it was too bold, some people felt it wasn't bold enough... I had to remind myself that I can always take what I need and leave what I don't.

Bonus: Journal

I also started journaling regularly. My partner, seeing the frustration, gave me a wonderful gift (although it took me a moment to fully appreciate it): The Five Minute Journal. It's become a little ritual to start and end my day with gratitude. It also has a section on your daily affirmation, "a simple statement that defines you as you want to be."

I landed on a mantra I write down every morning. I started with "It doesn't need to be perfect to be great" which evolved into "You don't need to be perfect to be great."