I’ve got better at deciding where to focus. Not necessarily quicker (ask anyone who’s watched me try and choose from a restaurant menu 😬), but I am better at knowing which decisions deserve more attention.

For a long time, I could spend hours refining something that, if I’m honest, probably only I would ever notice. A tiny adjustment to an icon. A small detail in the corner of a layout. Pushing a few pixels here and there, then pushing them back again because that might make the difference between something being good and something being awesome. 

But things change and that’s OK. Kids, elderly parents, home renovations… the day to day takes up headspace. Having less time has made me think harder about where our agency’s time is most valuable. Is it really worth spending three hours perfecting a detail that only I might notice? If we can spend those three hours doing something that makes a bigger difference to the project, surely that’s more valuable.

At what point does ‘refining’ stop making things better. When does it become a poor use of our time? Tidying awkward edges. Removing stray anchor points. Nudging everything into alignment. Sure, it can make all the difference, but not always. Sometimes the best solution is the one that gets the job done well and is ready on Thursday. Sometimes it’s worth spending another week on it. It’s easy to think that time and effort equals value. But our clients buy our expertise, our thinking and our judgement. By spending less time on the things that don’t need our expertise, we can spend more time on the things that do. AI and other tools can help us with refinements and repetitive tasks that might otherwise eat up valuable hours.

We don’t use technology to replace our thinking. We use it to give us more time to think. More time to understand the business, explore the problem, think about the audience and consider bigger picture.

Good design is as much about knowing what not to do as it is about knowing what to do. If something doesn’t feel right, we need to figure out why. But if it’s working and we’re about to spend another hour nudging things around because maybe we can make it 3% better… maybe it’s worth asking if that’s really where our time is best spent. 

These days, I’m interested in making sure the most important things are right. Is the message clear? Does it communicate the right feeling? Does the idea work? Does it solve the problem for the business and the people it needs to reach? Once those things are right, it’s OK to ask does this actually need more work? That’s what experience gives us. Not lower standards, but better judgement. Knowing where our expertise can make the biggest difference.

The goal isn’t to spend as much time as possible making something. It’s to spend our time making the right things better.