Inside a Designer's Brain

As I am working on filling out a design brief for my new ecommerce website, I am plagued with my designer brain once again. One simple question on the form elicits 99 questions in my head. Question 1 - What will the top navigation categories be named? Translation - what should the categories be named? How will people want to search for things? Is "collection" too generic? If I organize by collection, does it still make sense to have the glasses named people names from the 1930s? What designs will be in each collection? Uw uw, I just thought of a great new design! what if I put....   Oh right, back to the task; So how many collections do I have? How many do I want to have? When and how often will they be refreshed? And on and on it goes. I was up until 1 am last night trying to answer that one question. So as my first line of defense I hop on google and visit about 60 websites looking for navigation I like, what makes sense and how that could relate to my products or brand. Four hours later, a small overwhelming feeling creeps up and starts to make my eyebrows furrow in frustration... what the HECK!? Why can't I get anything done in a timely manner? I'm pretty sure I ask myself this at least once everyday. It feels like a plague of my personality that I was just not meant to deal with time, ever, at all. I'm sure everyone in my personal life would also agree :) All I wanted to do was complete this brief tonight and now my lopsided brain has made me all philosophical... Ewwwww I hate that feeling.

As I'm ready to hit the sac, I realize that although it may be frustrating to answer just that one question, I learned a very valuable business lesson. Well maybe two lessons. Lesson 1- Everything I am doing right now takes research because it is starting from scratch. And as a start-up, it is absolutely essential to do that research. You cannot plan or execute anything good in a bubble. So yes it may add time to your task completion deadline - but without it you won't be relevant.  Lesson 2- Ease up on yourself woman! It is not your personality flaw that it takes time to do research, just do it and get it over with and stop stressing about it. And that alone will make the task get done faster.