On procrastination and despair

Last week I tweeted this:

Until a design is good, it is shit. After decades as a designer, I still struggle psychologically with this.

I’ve been a designer all my professional life, and throughout that time I would often hit a phase of despair, where I feel like a fraud, and where this feeling cripples my ability to concentrate, and I spiral into a cycle of procrastination and worse despair.

I keep telling myself, “I’ve felt like this before, and it has always turned out OK.” But then I answer, “Unless I stop procrastinating and do some work, there is no way it will turn out OK.” And I wonder,

Is this finally the time when I mess up completely?

I picture myself apologising to my boss. I picture him apologising to our client. I imagine the ramifications, in terms of money wasted and opportunity lost. I wonder if it would be possible to ever regain my self-confidence after that.

There are many projects where the design process goes smoothly, where I don’t go through this phase. Usually they’re the ones where I have a good idea of what I’m going to do. Starting with good research — especially user research — almost guarantees this. But, sometimes research and preparation is not enough.

I can usually see it coming. I have a bad feeling about a project. I don’t look forward to starting. I’m reluctant to go to sleep at night because it hastens the start.

But eventually I have to start. For days it feels like I’m getting nothing done. These are some of the things I tell myself:

• I need to spend more time sketching. I can’t spend more time sketching, or I’ll never finish.
• This is not as good as what they’ve come up with themselves already. I’m not contributing anything. I’m wasting their money.
• [Looking at competitor sites:] I wish I’d thought of that. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Now I want to start over. I can’t just copy this.
• My head feels empty. I can’t remember anything. I look at my notes and they’re on paper, but not in my head.
• I wouldn’t want myself as designer on this project. I’d want someone like [insert idol here].

I work alone. Home office, sole designer. This is not ideal. “Design is a team sport.” When I’m stuck, I feel I need someone to whom I can think out loud. Sometimes a phone call or a whiteboarding session with a colleague helps. But not always. Sometimes it just feels like postponing the hard decisions. I draw lots of boxes that are effectively “do something awesome here”. Nobody’s going to make the breakthrough but me.

When I’m in this state, life sucks. I’m dissatisfied with myself. With my career. With the world. There is little joy to be found. I feel like I’m carrying a stone around in my stomach. My heart beats loudly in my chest. I’m panicking inwardly. I struggle to fall asleep at night.

The turning point

I know from experience the only thing that makes me feel better is work*. (*not quite: see article coda.) Not working (which makes me miserable), but having worked, having put stuff on the page. Not “done”, but at least something to look at, not a void. So, somehow, I have to keep forcing myself to do work, even though I hate it. Because if I’m not doing anything, nothing will happen. And when I’m doing stuff, eventually, something happens.

Inspiration comes from work, not the other way round

The turning point is usually when I do some little thing, anything, which I feel is good. It could be any part of the site or app. It’s like when you’re building a jigsaw puzzle, and two pieces connect to each other. That gives you momentum, and gives you a kernel to build out from. (Unfortunately in design, you don’t have edges.)

I don’t mean to say that I stick with the first good idea I get. It often changes beyond recognition later. One of the things that make me feel good about a design how much it had changed, from my first ideas to the end. How often I find ways of improving things.

Other techniques that work for me:

• When I get stuck on anything, don’t stay stuck on it too long. Move on to something else.
• Don’t delete, duplicate. If I get an idea, I duplicate the current page, and work on it there. Perhaps I stick with that version. Perhaps I abandon it. Sometimes I’d just duplicate a bit of UI — say, a menu bar — and move it aside. Both versions stay on the page, while I work on other stuff and gradually realise which version I prefer. Eventually I have a document with several versions of everything. Then I duplicate that document, and in the new version, start to delete things, knowing that all those other versions are still safe.
• Don’t sweat the tidying and standardisation at the start, but don’t leave it to the end either. Sometimes it’s good to take some time mid-way to tidy things — it suddenly makes everything look a lot better, and also forces you to go through everything again.
• Remember things move from complex to simple. I know I want to end up with something simple, but everything will probably be too complex at the start. Too many menu items. Too much interaction. Too many instructions and introductions. That stuff gets removed eventually.
• When you can’t think of something to put in a section, or on a page, it probably doesn’t need to exist. You only created it because you thought you needed it at one point. Don’t feel obliged to fill it with something if you can’t think of something that does any good.

Will it always be like this?

After writing the tweet above, I also wrote this:

Conversely, when I do front-end development: Until the thing is done, it’s merely incomplete, not shit. And I don’t suffer nearly as much angst as when I design.

There’s a reason why I still enjoy doing front-end development in between design work. It feels more like colouring-in than creating. A craft, not an art. Where I can see where I am along the path from the beginning to the end. But I certainly don’t derive as much pride from it as from a good design.

I don’t think I can expect design to never feel like this. But I wish I could avoid the sense of despair. I’ve always been averse to pep talks —cheer up, it will be ok! —and have tended to look for reasons to worry when I’m threatening to cheer up. But having gone through the despair yet again, I decided to write myself a pep talk. And that’s what this is.

Coda: advice for managers

More than a year later, I realised this essay needs an update. All my advice above is to my future self, or other designers who also suffer from creative block or imposter syndrome.

But there is a truth so obvious that I left it out unthinkingly:

Any state of blockage or despair can be averted or resolved by encouragement or praise.

It’s great when clients express their happiness, but they don’t owe you this, and it usually comes after the struggle, anyway. But a manager, or anyone in a position of authority on the project or in the company, can make an enormous difference during the creative process. Design often feels like stumbling lost in a forest of choices, and getting some affirmation that you’re heading in the right direction, or at least doing your job well, can give a designer the momentum and positive state of mind to carry on productively.

As a professional, it feels hard to admit to a need so childish. And as a manager, you may think that it’s unnecessary, or even patronising, to tell a senior designer that they’re doing a good job. But it’s a basic human need. Don’t underestimate your ability to make a difference — to the quality of work delivered, and to someone’s mental wellbeing.