…after that, it’s time to templatize or automate.
There are lots of reasons to do things in a new way, as a custom “one-off.”
Your website home page probably should be your most unique page. Your first attempt to learn something. Your answer to a coworker’s question. Your prototype.
As soon as it’s time to do it again, it’s also time to offload that cognitive load or the extra code into a system that starts to take care of the thing for you.
Let’s get practical
I ask people to do a “hard refresh” ALL THE TIME at work. When you visit a website, your browser stores a little cache so that it doesn’t have to work as hard the next time you go to the same page (woah, that’s a little meta).
The problem is that when I’ve updated the styles—the visual code—the browser may still show the old visuals thanks to that cache.
I tell people to go check the site for the new update and they come back in a panic, because they are seeing their old cached page.
Then I tell them, “there may be some caching—try a hard refresh (CTRL/CMD + SHIFT + R) on that page to clear your browser cache.”
Since no one knows what a hard refresh is, I made a text shortcut to insert the keyboard combo for me. Now I can type hr and the computer swaps it out with: hard refresh (CTRL/CMD + SHIFT + R)
Text expanders are a great micro-automation for anyone using a computer.
Watch how I set that up on a Mac
Systems
We may be tempted to dismiss this idea, because what we do is so much more complex. How can I just automate something that is by definition custom every time? Working with people, creating designs or art, writing articles.
First, there are always processes around your custom thing that could (and probably should) be automated. It will serve you well to become aware of all of the repetitive things that you do, so that you can see how much extra work you're doing.
The systems we engage with to produce our custom thing are either unwittingly ruling you right now or they are waiting to be optimized.
Work Backwards
It may be helpful to look at the outcome of your custom thing and then retrace your steps.
For example, I have a finished artwork uploaded to my custom t-shirt store. Just before that, I had to enter in a bunch of tags describing my artwork—most are the same, since this is part of a series.
That’s our first tiny optimization opportunity. I could store all of the tags that are consistent across my series in one place and copy them over. (Or even just use the text expansion we talked about earlier.)
Keep rewinding:
- I cropped my image in Photoshop to be close to the boundaries of the artwork.
- I turned off the background color.
- I QA’d the image looking for any spots I missed while coloring or lines that aren’t right.
- I finished each layer.
- I opened a new canvas.
- I chose a sketch to redraw digitally.
- I sketched the initial version.
Phew, that’s a lot of custom work. Some of it can still be automated and save me some time (especially through templates).
Maybe even more important, writing out this process has saved some cognitive load.
Mental Drain
We looked at a pretty custom process. The biggest problem with this is actually that custom projects drain us. Sometimes—and especially with side-projects or hobbies—the fact that the thing we want to do is so custom, it feels harder to do. That feeling increases the chance we’ll give up on it before we finish.
A good way to help reduce this drain is by creating systems around it.
If I had to look up the dimensions every time I started a new t-shirt, I’m already delaying my creative engagement and stacking up mental load.
It sounds silly, but think back to the project or two you’ve got in the garage. You were so excited about it, but abandoned it because you hit a snag or you somehow lost steam. Don’t worry, I have plenty of those, too.
Even if you just documented the steps you take in this custom production process like we did with the t-shirts, that’s a whole lotta mental load you’ve now alleviated.
It’s way easier to follow a guide than to try and bushwhack your way through a new path every time.
Still better that you, yourself, made that guide. You don’t have to feel guilty for creating processes around your creative or custom endeavor. You just created something that will serve that custom thing in orders of magnitude over time.
Cyborg
There are systems everywhere, for everything. The worst system is the one you’re not aware of.
It may be as innocent as the habits you’ve formed as you do or create your custom thing. It may be as sinister as social systems that oppress people who aren’t like you.
While we’re not solving for the social systems in this article, it feels irresponsible not to mention it—maybe we’ll talk about that in a later email. If you have thoughts, feel free to reply and let me know!
The best thing you can do is start to look for the systems at play. Identify as many as possible. They may be disguised as routines, habits, or preparation work.
Intentionally creating or optimizing systems helps you take control of your work. I believe it fosters creativity, despite an intuition that it would do the opposite.
I think our humanity is best served when we discover systems, update them, and only do a truly custom thing once. After that, we integrate it so we have capacity for the next big thing to solve.