Codex Learn to see a bigger picture

There are two ways to start working on a project. The visionary method and the worker bee method.

What does a worker bee do? It starts working in small increments from the very beginning, tries to do everything pixel-perfect right away, gets caught up in the minutiae, and sometimes fails to complete the work on time. When one part of the work doesn't go as planned, it gets upset and sometimes gets stuck mid-task.

A visionary sees the complete solution right away. During the first meeting with a client, the visionary has roughly constructed the complete solution. At the first meeting, it is very vague, but yet it is complete. The longer the visionary works on the task, the more details they clarify. Essentially, time is just for rendering and depth of elaboration.

Artemy Lebedev called this idea the "progressive JPEG method," but I prefer the analogy of how a neural network generates an image.

In the first instant, it sees an outline that, for example, is definitely a person, but the final facial expression, details of appearance, clothing, and posture are still only potential. In the second rendering, we see the posture and we see the hand, but the exact position of the fingers is again in a potential state.

Thus, a designer should see the contours of the finished product, but the details should be in a potential state.