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Sound advice, thanks. Keep it coming please JF.

I think it’s not the morning per se, but just a couple of hours after you designed something. I complete a lot of designs in the morning. When checking it back in the afternoon I see the truth :-)

Funny I read this. Its amazing how much it works. And as you Jason said “Sleep on it.” – 100% true. I love working on designs late afternoon, come back to a fresh start and some coffee for the fine tuning.

Truth!

It’s not just the morning, though. The morning gives us a clearly defined “beginning and end” which makes the process of stepping away from something easier. What’s really happening is you’re giving your brain a break, you’re moving away from that one missing puzzle piece and instead refocusing on the overall picture.

Morning or not, stepping away from anything for a decent amount of time and returning to it later will give you a fresh perspective.

The hard part, of course, is accepting what you see/feel when you come back to the work. It’s difficult to “scrap” something you worked so hard on earlier before, but doing so can be ultimately rewarding.

Not only for the design, this apply for the inventing, copywriting and programming as well. And maybe for a few more things :)

What happened to shipping something today and iterating as you go, based on actual feedback from customers?

Ditto for proofing documents / prose. If one has to revise one’s own work, then it’s best done after a run and/or a shower, or next morning.

What is the new thing you are working on? In other words, is it an entirely new product/service or is it a new feature in an existing service? Thanks for the post BTW

Nice post.

My 2 cents:

For me anyway, I’m better in the morning as compared to just waiting a few hours and looking at a design with a fresh pair of eyes.

Why?

1. I think there really is something to “sleeping on it” that involves your unconscious helping to sort through some things for you.

2. A few hours of sleep under my belt often helps me think more clearly in the morning.

3. In the afternoon / evening, whether we’d like to admit it or not, for many of us, there’s probably the equivalent of an angel on one shoulder (“Seek the truth! Seek perfection!”) and a devil on the other (“Enough already… What are you a workaholic?... You’ve put in a hard day’s work… Don’t obsess and grow old looking at the computer screen. Wrap up work for the day…. It looks great.”)

“Your brain is most intelligent when you don’t instruct it on what to do – something people who take showers discover on occasion.”
- Nassim Taleb

Very true, good advice. Coming back to a design mostly improves it. That’s why I have it built-in in my process. Only a few times that my first ideas stayed unaltered.

Agreed.

On the otherhand, I’ve experienced the opposite as well.

Design looks terrible at 7PM (WTF am I doin?!) Design looks amazing at 8AM (did I do that?!)

The temporal proximity to work and evaluation of the work does wonders for the mind.

This is also true for folks who hook up at bars and holiday parties. Wise advice indeed.

+1 to Jeff Plutz

“What happened to shipping something today and iterating as you go, based on actual feedback from customers?”

This very 37svn blog has taught me this. Even though JF responded, I still don’t understand why they don’t take their own (repetitive) advice.

Wow, I guess I always knew this but never put it into words. I will say I find in infinitely more satisfying to sit down in front of a design the next morning and know that I’ve found the right solution to the problem at hand.

The real task is to view an unsuccessful design as a challenge and not a defeat. Either way, it’s a great way to start the day!

And I’ve found that something that seems overwhelming at night when my brain is tired can often be easily managed in the morning.

Wow! What a great blog!

I just discovered 37signals from “I Oughta Be in Pictures” in the November 2011 edition of Inc. magazine.

Consider me your newest follower!

I could not agree more, the morning is always telling. Keep the great content coming! @kymchiho

Is this the end of “We don’t care when/where you work as long as you do your job”?

You realized that the corporation hours (9am-) are the most productive.

Be sure to make it a Design Decisions post. Love those.

I feel the same way about writing. I always re-read what I’ve written with fresh eyes.

The flaw in this concept lies in one word : procrastination

But, while it can be a tempting way to avoid making decisions (we’ll see better tomorrow), at the same time it can also be a cure for procrastination, by actually giving you the precise thing that you have to do right in the morning.

I think it’s Kent Beck who advises leaving a broken test, or even a non-compiling piece of code in the evening, so that the next day you’ll have it coming into your face right when you start your computer, and feel the urge to get your ands on it immediately instead of fooling around and wondering “what should I begin with…”.

So maybe, when postponing important decisions for the next day, you’ll also need to find out some trick like that to make it obvious that you actually have to make the decision first thing in the next morning.

Otherwise, I also happen to like the concept of “last responsible moment”, which can be kinda contradictory with this one, since once you’re at this last responsible moment you normally can’t wait for the next morning to make the decision…

If your workspace has windows in the room, i.e. is impacted by outdoor light from any source, I’ve noticed that things looking good under nighttime lighting may look significantly different compared with daylight impressions of the same. This may be more related to design color of course, but even minor UI elements may be impacted. It may nor always be just the stepping away part. ;)

This may be related to what psychologists call “decision fatigue”: your brain uses quite a lot of energy to make decisions - and isn’t designing about taking a lot of tiny decisions? If energy runs out, at the end of the day, the brain tends to get lazy. A not-so-optimal design might suddenly seem to be quite good enough. The same effect causes prisoners who apply for parole in the morning to have a much higher chance of actually getting parole. Or prisoners applying right after the judges have had lunch!

Knowing that this plays a role in my own psychology —just as in anyone else’s - - has been an important lesson for me. If you’re interested, there’s a nice New York Times article about this.

Wow, I wrote about exactly this back in 2008.

Decision fatigue is exactly what it is… And if you’re wondering if it really exist or if it is just another myth, just have a meeting with a timeshare seller one day, and you’ll just see…

I don’t buy the response. Of course you have to build it first. You’ve preached that you can’t make it perfect the first time, posted huge dissertations about how you’ve iterated over UX, from tweaking to massive redesign.

The point is, you’ve generally shipped. Why aren’t you shipping something now? It’s never perfect, and waiting for it to be flies in the face of all of the advice you’ve given over the years.

@ Dan @ JF

Actually Dan has a little bit of a point. Technically “regular” corp. hours do not necessarily have people weary eyed and working late at 7 p.m. and doing work more likely to be viewed as crap in the morning. Although “regular” 9-5 hours is not always the case at a lot of “regular” places if you want to be successful.

Also, if you have a bunch of work mantras, like ship and tweak later, etc. some of these are bound to be somewhat at odds with other mantras form time to time.

Maybe time to edit the list of mantras down to simplify even more!

@Maxim: I also find testing works best in the morning too:

http://www.thedeveloperscode.com/old-book.htm#lesson-11

@Onno Trudat. @JF Also true for medical diagnoses too. Attention and memory are limited resources. Sleep deprivation and stress rob us of very limited cognitive resources.

Also, a little bit before you go into design review? Might want to consider boosting people’s energy a bit, using glucose: http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar00/brainbox3.aspx

I find this to be true. Sometimes when an answer for a problem doesn’t come, I let it go for the day. Stop spinning my wheels. Usually finding that the next day will bring some fresh light on it.

If you are trying to turn this tidbit into a methodology – relax. This is another bit of advice to consider, not a new tool. The next time you’re stuck, sleep on it and take another look at it tomorrow. As my sage uncle sometimes tells me: you need to step back from this [whatever it is] for a little while.

If it looks good the next morning has been a design rule of mine for some time. It has equal power to reassure and to disappoint. :)

“Morning” to me means to ask someone who is not close to the design to see if they understand it with a “fresh” pair of eyes. Mostly my wife who is also my business partner (and probably has a better instinct).

That’s truth.

And don’t forget the classic rubberducking, it surely helps when stuck on a design question.

My father, a theatrical designer, used to say “the drawings always look better in the morning.” You must be doing something wrong.