How To Know When A Project Is Complete (And Avoid Overworking)
Posted March 26, 2009 in How-To, Lifestyle
When is a project done? Do you really know how to tell when you should stop working?
New freelancers often ask me nervously how many times they should check over their work. My own commitment is to look at a project at least three times before turning it in.
However, caution can be overdone. Many freelancers are guilty of overdoing their projects without really intending to. If you tend to be a perfectionist (like I am) it is really easy to overdo it. Rechecking over your work usually means redoing, and redoing it, and redoing it. . .all in the hopes of “perfecting” it.
Sometimes a minimalist approach is really the best answer.
I think that there is an awful lot of overwriting, over programming, and over designing going on in the freelancing world. Overwork happens because freelancers tend to be quality-driven (and in general, that’s a good thing).
However, sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. Unfortunately, all of this extra work takes a lot of time. It can cost the freelancer in terms of lost opportunities. It could even cause the freelancer to miss deadlines.
How To Avoid Overworking
Here are a few tips that will help you discern the end of a project and avoid overworking yourself:
- Look at the instructions. The old adage, “when in doubt, read the instructions” is still true. Examine what the client really asked for. Compare the original requirements to what you are now doing. If necessary, make some changes to get the project back on track.
- Consider the client’s needs. Sometimes a client benefits when a freelancer does extra work on a project. We all know that sometimes clients don’t ask for what they really need. However, sometimes the additional work is just a waste of time. Learn to determine the difference.
- Take a break and come back to it later. It is easy to get off-track if you’re tired and stressed. Taking a short break to get your mind off the project for a while can be very helpful. When you come back from your break, you can take a look at the project with a fresh set of eyes.
- Get a second opinion. If you are still unhappy with the direction that the project is going, ask a peer or mentor if they would mind looking at what you have done. Often, another person can offer an objective opinion and bring out aspects of the project that you missed.
- Ask the client. If you have a good relationship with the client, why not involve them? Let them know that you have done what they asked, but that you really feel that the project should include a bit more. When you do get their opinion, be sure to treat it with respect.
- Acknowledge your abilities. Often, the cause of freelancer overwork is a feeling of inadequacy. If you secretly feel that you aren’t very good at what you do, then you may have trouble feeling that your finished work is good enough to turn in. Acknowledge your own expertise at what you do.
Share Your Experiences about Overwork
Here are some questions that Freelance Folder readers may wish to discuss:
How have you dealt with the tendency to perfectionism and overworking a project in your freelancing career?
Have you ever overworked a project beyond what the client originally asked for? Was the result positive, or negative?
Has a client ever been dissatisfied or unhappy because you took a project beyond their original requirements?
Top image by Dwonderwall
Related posts:
- The Complete Guide to Creating Effective Square Banner Ads
- How To Avoid Monumental Screw Ups When Working On Projects
- 10 Types of Bad Clients and How To Avoid Them
- Living Project-To-Project?
- How To Avoid the Feast-or-Famine Cycle
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 20 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts. Laura is also on Google+.
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41 Comments
Thiago Cavalcanti
March 26th, 2009 at 10:32 amI don’t think I ever had this problem.
It really is simple: once I know I’ve done what I wanted to do I stop developing and start a “quality-check” of my work, if there’s something to be fixed I’ll fix it, if not then I’ll call it done and deliver it!
PS: It does happens, from time to time, that I’ll see fit to add something which didn’t came up on the client meeting. But it never caused me to delay the project, neither it made the client unhappy.
Colin Wright
March 26th, 2009 at 10:41 amIt’s definitely important to be confident in your abilities. If you, the professional, think it’s done, then it’s done. If the client has an issue they will likely bring it up, so there’s no need to overthink it. Just have a routine established where you give everything one last look (no typos, please!) and then send it off. No muss, no fuss.
Peter
March 26th, 2009 at 10:45 amHeh – this one strikes a little too close to home.
I’m sure everyone finds this, but I absolutely have the most trouble with projects when we (the client and I) arent absolutely and completely clear in the target result beforehand. It happens most often with clients I know well, because they trust me to know what they want, and deliver it, even if they don’t quite know how to put it into words. The problem is, my perfectionism kicks in, and wherever any requirement is vague, I end up really going over the top, spending far too much time on the job.
As far as a client being unhappy with my going above and beyond – that’s happened to me too. As a coder, making things bigger or better often also means making them more complicated, which means they’ll take longer to complete. I’ve turned in projects before with functionality that I thought the client *might* need instead of just what we’d discussed, where the client is upset that I’ve taken so long for pieces that they didnt necessarily need.
The moral of the story – figure out what your client absolutely needs, and focus only on delivering that.
Yani
March 26th, 2009 at 11:03 amI spent several months trying to win freelance projects on Elance. I started using the advice in this blog: http://freelancemoney.wordpress.com/ and have been working consistently ever since. Can be “salesy” at times, but the information is invaluable. Read it!
Yani
Laura Spencer
March 26th, 2009 at 11:17 amGreat comments!
Peter, you bring up an excellent point. It’s absolutely crucial that you and the client agree on what needs to be done beforehand. Otherwise, you can both wind up spinning your wheels for no reason.
Sarah
March 26th, 2009 at 11:18 am“Has a client ever been dissatisfied or unhappy because you took a project beyond their original requirements?”
I like this question. In fact, I have experienced dissatisfaction from one of my clients. Apparently, he said that I was getting off the right track but I was lucky enough to get back on track according to the requirements and working peacefully for the same client for months now.
Blog Expert
March 26th, 2009 at 11:42 amI overwork all the time. Can’t ever relax.
Matt Keegan
March 26th, 2009 at 11:58 amI don’t go nuts with my work, but I do have a pattern that I follow especially with my magazine submissions:
Write the article with or without an outline. The more familiar I am with the topic, then the latter applies.
Review the article and make corrections regarding punctuation, spelling and grammar. Go through it to make sure that I’m clear and concise. Employ brevity wherever possible.
Put the article to the side for a day or two. Take up again when no other deadlines are looming.
Usually, three solid reviews brings forth a great article, one that clients are happy with. When I follow these steps, I never have the client returning to me with changes. I let their editors make whatever changes they see fit and then they go to press.
Laura Spencer
March 26th, 2009 at 12:06 pmGreat process Matt! Thanks for sharing it.
Nikhil
March 26th, 2009 at 12:18 pmYa sometimes it had happened to me….
And the solution I have found over it is Being Confident…
Good Article
Mihaela Lica
March 26th, 2009 at 12:48 pmNumber two made me smile, Laura. “Learn to determine the difference” is probably the hardest advice to follow, because sometimes it’s impossible to determine what the client wants. The best you can do is to take a lucky guess, if you don’t first send to your customer an action plan for review – which would actually be my advice. :)
Courtney
March 26th, 2009 at 1:42 pmI like the point about acknowledging your abilities. I truly believe that writing (and anything in life, really) has to do with your inner game as much as your outer skills. If you go into a project believing that you won’t be good enough you’re going to try to work too hard on the project to compensate.
So much of this can be avoided by asking the right questions of your client to begin with – if you know exactly what they want, you can deliver exactly what they need.
Great article Laura!!
Laura Spencer
March 26th, 2009 at 2:21 pmThanks for the comments Nikhil, Mihaela, and Courtney!
Nearly everyone seems to agree the confidence is a key factor in determining whether or not you overdo it.
Yolander
March 26th, 2009 at 4:20 pmI find that I overwork projects when I’m especially tired or stressed. For some reason, those two situations create an anxiety in me that forces me to become obsessive. I will edit a sentence to within an inch of its life….and just like painting a room without getting new furniture–the other sentences around the edited sentence begin to look shabby and ill-suited. Luckily, this doesn’t happen often enough to impact my business or life, but I do notice it.
Dave Sherohman
March 26th, 2009 at 4:58 pmI can’t say I’ve had this problem, but, then, I’m a software developer, which is a bit less subjective than fields like writing or design.
When I bid on a project, I always include a proposal which states my understanding of what the (prospective) client is looking for and, therefore, what I will do. Assuming the bid is accepted, I then get to work producing a body of code which will do what the proposal specified. Once it does everything in the proposal and passes all of my test cases, it’s done.
Laura Spencer
March 26th, 2009 at 7:07 pmHmmm. . .
Perhaps this does vary by field.
I knew that this topic would probably resonate with writers and designers. I have, however, known a few programmers who overdid it by going beyond the specs.
Lee Munroe
March 26th, 2009 at 7:56 pmSo true Laura.
I’m a perfectionist myself and even after I’ve everything done and passed onto the client I’ll still occasionally work on it.
Say for example I hand over XHTML templates to a client and a developer then applies their programming, I’ll keep going through the site to make sure it validates and it’s well optimised etc. The client does appreciate it though and it helps get recommendations.
GoEverywhere Team
March 26th, 2009 at 11:29 pmWithout a doubt, I am guilty of compulsively overworking a project and have been since kindergarten. I find myself being overcautious if the guidelines are a bit vague by going far beyond what the guidelines even hint at.
Truly appreciate your tips on making a wise choice on when to stop.
Tracey Grady
March 27th, 2009 at 2:27 amOne suggestion I would add is to set yourself a deadline or timeframe for getting the work done. It should be a timeframe with a bit of flexibility in case extra time is needed for some reason.
Many freelancers would be used to the concept of time tracking already for managing their projects. The more experience you have in your field, the easier it will be to set a timeframe for carrying out the work. I find this often helps me deal with perfectionism when it threatens to take over.
Mitesh
March 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pmTo this day I overwork. Something about just feeling unproductive if I am not working…
But on the other note I can clearly see that I am not the only one. Perhaps we all need to just learn to let loose at times. Money will still come, its just a matter of learning to spend time on the right things.
Great post!
Paul
March 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pmThanks for the article.
I agree that going beyond the contract sometimes is well worth it to help build that long term relationship and to get future recommendations.
Chris Anthony
March 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pmAll good points, and especially for beginners, but I think there should be a differentiation between overwork (which is non-productive and symptomatic of a troubled project/process) and the natural obsessiveness of a well developed creative process. To explain: for years, I fought against what I thought of as my unhealthy perfectionism. When I found myself up until the wee hours, reworking a sketch or paragraph, I would often find that I had gone too far. I was definitely overworking.
However, after years of living with my creative process, I’ve learned to embrace my obsessiveness, at least when it comes to creative and/or coding. I can’t be sure if other producers just get it ‘right’ the first time, but I know that my work is bound to go through several rounds of revisions before it captures the right look/feel. And that’s ok…Great work takes a lot of effort! My inner critic has gone through as much training as I have, and so I’ve learned to trust that when he says somethings ‘not right’, then it really does need more work. In exchange, he has agreed to leave me alone when it comes to Sunday’s crossword puzzle.
To compensate, I start as soon as I get my first idea, and try to give myself ample room to review and revise. This means not taking on more than two or three projects at once, and being very mindful of the project goals and requirements.
Its also important to integrate this with any ‘outside’ goals or requirements. Unless you are the sole vendor, there are other team members depending on your work and adherence to deadlines, and so the above process only works if you have good faith in your perspective.
This isn’t meant to take away from anything said in the above article. Just thought I’d play devils advocate…
Paul the Knight
March 28th, 2009 at 4:02 amGreat article.
I think overworking comes from wanting to give your client more than they asked for, securing new work and referrals. Sometimes it makes sense to go that bit further
K@R!M
March 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pmIt’s really good points ,, i was doing this mistakes in my first projects ,, and sure for now :( .. but i am trying to reduce this actions .. Thanks :) ..
Krystian
March 29th, 2009 at 6:52 pmThanks for interesting article. It is really important problem.
I think that overworking shows us more about our personality than about work we do. What does it mean – being perfectionist? Isn’t it just a problem with separation (to leave our creation)? On the other hand to deal with self-esteem?
I think that each time we feel tendency toward overwork we should ask ourselves similar questions.
Jacob S. McMaster
March 30th, 2009 at 2:15 pmRead the project scope statement. Is everything addressed and meet the quality specs? If so your done, if not check your process. The PMI has very sound standards for addressing these types of issues for project based work i.e. freelancers/consultants.
Simon Stapleton
March 31st, 2009 at 9:46 amGreat idea for an article Laura! I speak from experience when I say that perfectionism can be counter-commercial. Notwithstanding the need to sleep at night (if anything but perfect keeps you awake) then the extras that we might add to create the ultimate product for a client are possible upgrades that can be charged for. This isn’t the same as over-delivery – if over-delivery is something that you believe in then the extras here should be planned in at the start. Not everyone agrees with over-delivery as it isn’t transparent, and a commercial risk.
In the past, I have kept a log of extras that I *could* add into a product, and then (one the project has ended) offer them to the client. Often, they choose to take some, but equally as often as not. At least this way I was paid for the work that was valuable.
It is also true (again, from experience) that some of the bells and whistles are added by freelancers because they are easier and fit into a comfort zone at the expense of more difficult deliverables that were in the original scope. This is lunacy, but a trap that is easily laid by ourselves.
Rick
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:26 pmPlanning the scope of a project up front is critical, which is why I always define all facets of a project in the statement of work (agreement/contract). Then, I can refer back to it as a reference for what we and the client agreed on.
Amy
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:49 amGreat article. :) It’s so true.
I agree with what Tracey said. It works well for me, especially if I set another somewhat urgent chore to be done right after my own deadline. Means I have to finish it by then, I’ve got no more time left.
Chris
April 4th, 2009 at 7:23 amGreat article!
I actually delayed starting my business for a couple of years because of fear of overworking, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
I was designing sites (among other things) for a small corporation, getting paid hourly. A couple of years of this had me convinced that my skill and experience were good enough to try doing my own thing, which I had always wanted to do on some level.
Still though, whenever I started thinking about how a one man web design business would actually work, it seemed rather impossible that I could do it without taking a pay cut, since it always took me forever to get anything to the point of completion. At least it seemed that way, since I was always able to see something that could be just a little bit better in any particular design if I looked at it enough times.
Doing things this way while charging by the project? I’d starve! It took a long time, and finally a conscious effort, but I’ve managed to deprogram myself from this practice of looking at a project with, “What can be better?” at the front of my mind. It is now (mostly) replaced with, “What still needs to be done before this meets the requirements in my notes?”
When the answer is nothing, I either move to another project or get away from my desk for a couple of hours, and return to review the project later. With a fresh eye on the project, I double-check that it meets the specs that I’m charging for, and if it does, I’m done.
web consulting
September 1st, 2011 at 6:46 pmI really like your website. The information is great! As a web consulting owner, I can appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into your information and site.
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