You may or may not know this, but I’m a terrible wannabe overachiever.

When I start working on a project, I don’t just want it to succeed, I want it to be the best. I have visions of extended A+ reviews from fellow web designers and enthusiastic phone calls from clients, analytics pages that go really over the top and thousands millions of happy users.

Of course, all this fantasy gets me in trouble more often than not. I bet you know why: creative procrastination.

What does it mean, in a nutshell? I’ll visualize it for you: me, staring at the screen, pen & paper in hand, designing in my mind, laying out HTML snippets, styling with CSS, solving complex design problems, conducting usability reports and studying ROI analyses.

All. In. My. Head.

That’s a bit too much, as you know. It usually means that by the time I lay down a single line of CSS I’m so tired and confused it’s not even fun anymore. But I love my work, so it should be fun right? Right. That’s why you just need to keep going.

Every time you stumble upon a web design roadblock and lose two minutes of your precious time thinking of how to overcome it, stop and run in the opposite direction, immediately.

If you’re pondering too much over a design problem, do a bit of brain-dead form coding. If you’re totally bored of coding HTML, stop and sprinkle a bit of CSS magic to your project. If you feel confined in your browser window, fire up Photoshop and start designing out of the box. Most important: never stop working on your project. Less thought, more work.

I guarantee, a moment’s gonna come that your project will just look at you, shiny, finished, and you’ll marvel at how streamlined your process was this time.

“But, Sug, what about the correct way of web designing?”, I hear you thinking. As with most design workflows, there is really no spoon. No panacea, no proper way of doing stuff. Hell, I always say “HTML first, CSS second” yet I always start coding CSS as soon as I get a vague idea of the site. Nasty, nasty Sug.

Learn your way of working and try to live with it. Don’t fret over the little things, they will eventually get ironed out before launch, promise.

Just don’t stop working.