Jeremy Smith is a designer/developer in Greenville, SC. He runs HYBRD, a tiny web studio. More…

Give Your Best a Timeframe

You’re stuck. Wanting to do “your best,” but believing it’s just one more hour or just one more day from where you are now.

You want to do your best, you want to show your best work, but your best needs a timeframe. With unlimited time, of course you could do better. But thinking that way, you’ll never be done, never ship, never get that project out the door.

There’s no partial credit for unfinished projects. No one benefits from work that forever remains in draft mode. If you don’t hit publish, “they” will never be able to judge you for what your best is. But they will never be influenced by you either.

So set a timeframe.

This is the best picture I could draw in 15 minutes.

This is the best feature I could deliver in 2 afternoons.

This is the best novel I could write in a month.

This is the best app I could build in a year’s worth of Fridays.

Feel free to tell others the timeframe you used, if it helps. It’s mainly for your sake. So you can preempt any criticism about your ability. So you can stop worrying and finish.

This is the best blog post I could write in 20 minutes.

Posted September 18, 2013 at 10:36 am