When time permits, there is nothing better than really getting the small details nailed down in a project. Things which aren’t necessary, but make the end product feel nice. The features which make an experience more immersive.
Striving for this isn’t always possible, and often isn’t practical, but being able to do so makes me happy. Because of this, I tend to seek out situations which permit fretting over the little things.
For me this generally manifests in web design and development, but it could really apply to almost anything which can be called a craft: writing a newsletter, typesetting a document, building a chair, re-arranging the furniture in a room. There is a core quantity of work within our ability to be done, and any number of flourishes which could be added afterwards.
I’m hoping – after writing a blog post every day for a month – “writing a blog post” can fall under this category.
I want to maximise the amount I get done in this latter stage, so I can fill my work with well-crafted details. I want to do this because it is a joyful practice, and also because it puts some degree of joy out into the world. These are the things I’ve found which have been helpful so far.
Be better
Boring take, redundant take, applies to almost all discussions about productivity.
Still relevant. If you can build out the crucial bits with greater ease, you’ll have more bandwidth to spend cleaning up the rough edges.
Part of this is practicing at the edge of your abilities. Spending more time fine-tuning the hard parts of your processes helps you get to the fun part faster, and also helps you achieve more in the fun part.
Have a book of tricks
Keep the techniques you like close at hand. Keep a mental (or written) note on which ones work well together. Keep notes on how best to manipulate your material: whether it’s code, text, wood, or something else entirely. This doesn’t have to be an actual book, it could be a folder of bookmarks, a photo library, a private Gitlab/Github repo.
This will speed up the “hmm, what now?” phase, and (optionally) you’ll have an idea of where to look when you actually want to move to implementation.
Plan ahead
Again: there are myriad reasons to “plan ahead” with any project, but if you have some notion of what the end product will look like, any ideas for additional details will likely come to you earlier in the project life-cycle, giving you more time to think about implementation.
In the end, what really matters is how much these details matter to you, and the project they’ll be featuring on. If you have time, give it all you’ve got. If not, don’t stress too much: this is what personal projects are for!