Ignore Details Early On

One of my favorite companies is 37signals. Although they are a web development firm, there is a lot of similarity between what they do and what a traditional architect does. Their blog, Signal VS. Noise, is very worthwhile. This post about not tackling detail too soon is something that designers of all types struggle with from time to time. Seeing someone you admire address the topic is gratifying.

SIGNAL VS. NOISE                                                                               January 7, 2013
Ignore details early on
Jason Fried

There’s a lot of talk about how impor­tant details are. But what’s often left out of the dis­cus­sion is tim­ing. Details and tim­ing are inti­mate­ly relat­ed.

God, the devil, beau­ty, per­fec­tion, pre­ci­sion – these aren’t the only things you’ll find in the details. You’ll also find stag­na­tion, dis­agree­ment, meet­ings, and delays. These things can kill morale and lower your chances of suc­cess.

How often have you found your­self stuck on a sin­gle design or code ele­ment for a whole day? How often have you real­ized that the progress you made today wasn’t real progress? This hap­pens when you focus on details too early in the process. There’s plen­ty of time to be a per­fec­tion­ist. Just do it later.

Don’t worry about the size of your head­line font in week one. You don’t need to nail that per­fect shade of green in week two. You don’t need to move that “sub­mit” but­ton three pix­els to the right in week three. Just get the stuff on the page for now. Then use it. Make sure it works. Later on you can adjust and per­fect it.

Details reveal them­selves as you use what you’re build­ing. You’ll see what needs more atten­tion. You’ll feel what’s miss­ing. You’ll know which pot­holes to pave over because you’ll keep hit­ting them. That’s when you need to pay atten­tion, not soon­er. 
(Reprint­ed from Get­ting Real, The smarter, faster, eas­i­er way to build a suc­cess­ful web application.)


Jason Fried