Quick Confidence
Close the loop
There's a personal project that's been sitting in my queue for months. Not forgotten, just never urgent enough to start, and never quiet enough to let go of either.
I finally did it recently. Not because I'd worked out the perfect way to approach it, but because I was tired of carrying it around half-finished in my head. It wasn't perfect when I called it done. It still isn't. But the relief was way out of proportion to the actual task.
I think that's what open loops do to us. They're not just unfinished items on a list – they're background noise. You stop noticing it, but it's still there, taking up space you could be using for something else.
The loop doesn't close when the work is flawless. It closes when you decide it's finished enough to move on. Mine needed archiving more than it needed perfecting.
What's something you've been waiting to get right before you'll call it done? Maybe it doesn't need to be right. Maybe it just needs to be done.
Stop typing, start talking with Wispr Flow
A good portion of my day as a designer is spent typing – emails, guides, that sort of thing. So when I noticed the dictation button on my keyboard, I gave it a go. I was hooked straight away, though the native Mac dictation had its limits – I talk differently than I write, so I'd still spend ages cleaning up the structure (and it never quite got my Kiwi accent right).
My brother told me about Wispr Flow. I'd seen the ads and wondered if it was actually that good. It is. It restructures what you say into proper sentences and paragraphs, so now I dictate emails and even texts when I need more than a quick reply – less typing, more time back in the day. I even wrote this newsletter with it.
If you've been curious, use my link below for a free month of Pro. (And yeah, whispering to it really does work).
Watch James Barnard design his own logo
There's an old joke that a builder's own house is the one that never gets finished – and you can probably relate to this as a designer too.
Fellow designer and educator James Barnard went without a logo of his own for ages. He's finally designed one, and released a playlist where you can watch his entire client process from start to finish, treating the project as if he's the client. Eight videos, each two to three minutes (about 17 minutes all up), covering everything from the brief and discovery call through to delivering the final logo and brand guidelines.
I love how he explains things – clearly, quickly, with a bit of humour mixed in. He mentioned the videos haven't performed well, which I don't really get, because they're genuinely good. He covers his whole process in a short amount of time, and I'm sure you'll pick up some tips for your own process.