Member-only story
How to deal with an Engineering team that is outpacing your designs
How “Slow Productivity” taught me to deal with people rushing me for designs.
Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity, helped me during a time when everyone wanted to rush my design process.
This is one scenario every designer will encounter in their career. Whether it’s the Product team trying to rush you or a super-productive Engineering team, someone will always want to rush your design process.
This is because of two universal truths about any Design job:
- Design takes time
- There are more Engineers on the team than Designers
Learning to deal with this pressure is necessary to grow as a Designer, but it wasn’t until I read Slow Productivity that I understood how to help others deal with it.
Slow Productivity and a quiet revolution to how I approach work
Reading Slow Productivity has essentially been a capstone towards a slow transformation I’ve taken towards work.
It has been stressful suddenly becoming a UX team of one (in a team of a dozen Engineers) and trying to launch a course on Data-Informed Design. There’s this hidden pressure that makes me feel guilty that I’m not working extra hours, late nights, and weekends to get everything done quicker.
However, as a father of two young toddlers, my time isn't flexible. Every day, I have 1–2 hours for my course, 7–8 hours for work, and the rest is spent with the family. Whether it's a holiday, weekend, or a workday, my schedule hasn’t changed in 6 months (aside from not working on weekends).
According to Cal Newport, that’s enough to get quality work done. Slow Productivity centers on 3 major lessons that have helped me re-contextualize and make slow progress with everything I want to achieve:
- Do Fewer Things
- Work at a Natural Pace
- Focus on Quality
