Connor Wilson » Blog Archive » Betteringyourselfitis

Betteringyourselfitis

Posted on May 17th in Ramblings — No comments so far. Got something to say?

A common infection found throughout designers, betteringyourselfitis inflicts many of us. If you’re a designer, chances are you have it. Symptoms include:

Never happy with your own work
Always working to better your last project
You do your best work right after a big release
After you finish something, you get a better idea.

I’ll give you an example. I’ve already designed the next version of this site. The thing is, that you’ll likely never see that version. Why? Because I’ll do something better before it gets to coding it. Likely it’ll be right before, which can be a pain sometimes.

Also, with the impending release of AleoMedia, I have pretty much got my design down to two variations. Both are the same layout, just tweaked a little to give me some choice. But now, I have an awesome idea that would probably work much better. Why do I do that? Becasue I have betteringyourselfitis.

Now, down to making your best stuff right after you released something significant. As mentioned above, I have designed the next version of this site (tentatively ). I did this the following week of releasing this iteration. Now, because I release new designs chronically, I’m going to discipline my self into making each version stay for at least 6 months. Even better, I could wait till either May/November (reboot months) for the small amount of extra traffic a reboot might bring.

So with all these ideas coming right after it counts it makes you want to delay things, but sometimes you just have to take what you made, or believe in it if you will, and go with it. Think of it like a competition. What you do after the competition isn’t what places you, it’s what you do while it counts. There’s always next time for that great design, though. Unfortunately a true sufferer of betteringyourselfitis would have done something better by the time it rolls around

P.S. For anyone that notices, I am aware of the fact that “itis” refers to inflammation. It sounded cool, alright?