Whenever someone tells me to design something, I quickly take a piece of paper and sketch some wireframes. After a while, I open Photoshop and do my magic. My subconscious mind tells me that this one is going to be the best design ever.

Snap. I’m done.
Man! That looks good.

Now its time for me to share these designs with my co-workers. I’m obviously expecting them to say some good words. Duh! I designed it.

C0- worker 1 : Nice work dude! But I think there’s still some alignment issues.
C0- worker 2 : Looks good but I think there’s quite a lot of content in there.
And it goes on and on…

Ah! It was the best design, how can I be so wrong? ... but… but... So, the conclusion is that :

The human eye when constantly getting adapted to the environment also takes in all the problems as a part of it. So after a while our eye understands these problems as part of the solutions.

It’s a little science known as adaptation of the eye.

Problem — Our work always overcome some kind of changes/iterations. This will take most of our time. (Yea..yea.. mistakes are good to learn, but what if you can reduce the number of mistakes?)

Solution — Take smarter breaks, switch between work and get back to it after a while.

Some of these methods may help you.

Major and minor

Divide your work into two types and call it whatever you want to. For me, it’s major and minor. The major one are your ongoing projects (product design, wireframes… etc). The minor ones are something that you love/want to do (rethink a flow, fix something that no one has touched). Always have major and minor things to do which will keep you busy and never have continous majors or minors as it will bore you.

Longer breaks

Seriously? WTF?…

One of my friends once mentioned that the employees of Github work only for 4 hours. But they had a good 4 hour work. Meetings and catchups are not part of work. It’s jus telling others about your work. So plan your breaks wisely. Breaks can involve anything other than glueing yourself to work. I got my noise cancellation headphones from Bose to do the magic for me.

Power nap or Being quiet

Letting your mind speak to you or looking at a good view is good for recollection. It helps me think about the decisions I’ve made, the conversations I’ve had and the stupid things I said.

5 rule freedom

Getting things done is a good feeling. It helps us to feel that we are finally free from the busy day and can chill for a while. Wunderlist saves my day for this one. I write five things to perform for the day at work and I make sure to complete it whatever happens. They need not include only majors. Minors like visit a link, send an email are also good to add.

This may not be a great achievement but our subconscious always craves for success and glory. So in the longer run, completing a task regardless of how silly it is will make a difference. Try it and see.

So to achieve something with less iterations, maybe try to take a second look after getting involved in something totally different.