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Designing for yourself: a guide to self-actualization.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for a living, you are your toughest critic.
Anyone who has ever tried to put together their own portfolio, or paint a picture for their bedroom, or write their own book, will attest to the difficulty involved in creating for one’s self. It seems that, no matter how hard you try, the ending results of your labor are never good enough. No matter how much time and effort you put into creating something for yourself, you always end up feeling like you could do better.
And the truth is that you probably can do better; but that doesn’t always mean you should feel as though what you have already come up with isn’t “good enough”. Here are a few ways to make sure that you are creating work that is - absolutely, without a doubt - good enough, every time.
Think of yourself as the customer.
One step to creating work for yourself that you can really be satisfied with is to think of yourself as a paying customer. Instead of looking at the project as something for yourself, make it into a pretend paying-customer project.
By looking at your project from the point of view as a customer - as well as the project manger - time, and results, will suddenly become much more important than if you were just doing something for yourself. You will no longer worry about what to do, but rather how to do it best, in a certain amount of time.
Spend some time putting together a project brief for yourself, planning out what exactly it is you want, as well as a time-budget that you can realistically work with, and a deadline for your project. Treat yourself as a valuable customer wanting to get results, and you will suddenly find that the project progresses a lot faster - and better - than if you were just creating something for yourself.
What do you really need? v.s. What do you really want?
While being a customer for yourself is a great way to define the line between what you need and what you want, only sitting down and really hammering out the details will help you figure out how to get the absolute best results from your work. The problem so many creative people have with creating something for themselves is that they don’t know exactly what they need, only what they want.
Ask yourself questions about what you really NEED, and try to ignore what you want (at least until you come up with the results that are needed). And don’t be afraid to get creative. Focusing on what you need doesn’t mean you can’t do fun and innovative things with your creative medium. Covering the basics of what you really need will always produce remarkable work because it is exactly what is needed, and adding a little creativity to the mix is guaranteed to make you - and everyone else - love the final result.
Before you start: ask yourself if there is a better way to do it.
Most of the time, after we have created something for ourselves, we realize that there could have been a different - and often better - way to do it. The trick is to create a plan for what you are going to do, before you do it. If you are going to design a website for yourself, mock up a plan to go through the steps of designing, programming, and testing. If you are going to paint a portrait for yourself, make a plan to prepare the canvas, what types of brushes you will use, and what strokes you will make. Then, before you actually follow through with your plan, look at the details in your mind and ask yourself if there is a better way you could do any of the steps. Chances are, you’ll come up with a better, more creative method than what you originally planned.
Get to it.
Creating something for yourself can be tough, but if you treat yourself like a paying customer, focus on what is needed, rather than what you want, and look for better ways to go about your business, you will be more than happy with the final product. And you may even begin to realize that you have been achieving your full creative potential, you just didn’t know it yet.
Original photo by Eric Murray.
