What is the last thing you do before getting ready to launch a website? As humans we establish habits, routines that allow us to complete tasks more efficiently and at better quality. Â Each of us as individual has different habits which we have formed. Most people will not be aware of these habits but for those who are aware, knowing the pros and cons of such habits can make you more aware of your situation and hence decrease the amount of careless mistakes made.
Habit 1: You Freak Out
This is experienced by many. You will freak and panic as a deadline draws closer. You find you have hidden energy that enables you to work hard to complete a deadline! A drawback of this is you will become unconfident in your work as you start to worry that due to the rush to things, it may not be to the standard of quality that is to your peak level. Based on the book “Why We Make Mistakes†by author Joe Hallinan – lack of confidence can allow you to pick up more errors in the drafting stage because you feel errors will exist.  The positive side of this is that because you can pick out these errors, your work will be more quality in the end which of course shines on your reputation. You can help erase some of this stress. Consider using a list of things to check during this stage.
Habit 2: Relax and Chill Out
The complete opposite approach to habit 1 is to relax. Often people find as a deadline draws closer, they feel they have done all they can in that time a –  Weather there’s not much to change in this time and the individual just accepts. Or people get over confident and wait for the good news and reviews to come in. The positive side of this is that your level of insanity will remain normal and you will feel good about yourself. You will be able to sleep well at night and have some leisure time to yourself. But with this comes some bad points too. You may being out an image of that you don’t care much about the project or that you have done your part of the project and things are out of your hands so that you can relax.  Confidence is not a negative state, but as mentioned above in Joe’s book, research shows that overconfidence can drag you down as it puts your mind into a mental mode which skips over mistakes.
Please stay tuned for part 2 “Last Minute to Do’s for Designers†the next article will cover habits including getting opinions and asking for payments.
