Struggling with Portfolio Procrastination? Crush Perfectionism with These 7 Tips!

Here’s Your Way Out. Break the Chains with These Portfolio Hacks.

The scariest client for a designer? It’s yourself. The elusive quest for perfection, an expanding scope, and the absence of deadlines — all symptoms of your own creative project.

Hi, my name is Nikita Kolyugin. I am a product designer with experience in projects serving millions of users. 👋🏻

I couldn’t finish my portfolio website for six months, tweaking the design ten times and snatching features from fellow designers. Then, I realized a change in approach was crucial.

Sharing seven principles to help you push your project to release, applicable to portfolios and any personal creative endeavor.

In this article, you’ll discover:

1. The step you shouldn’t skip.
2. How to find your MVP structure.
3. How to iterate.
4. Why we have to kill good ideas.
5. What to avoid.
6. Why strict deadlines are crucial.
7. When it's too late to publish your portfolio.

1. Define Your Audience and Context

Imagine you want to create a portfolio website to stand out among Behance designers.

Pause the fantasy and ask yourself three questions:

• Who will visit the site?
• Why would someone scroll through it?
• Under what circumstances would this happen?

Example: We want to land a design job at international companies like Spotify, Amazon, or Google. We’ll send our portfolio to hiring managers or art directors on LinkedIn.

The site will be seen by English-speaking professionals with a discerning eye. Design leads review hundreds of portfolios a day, so our site will only get a literal “minute of fame.”

At this point, we’ve already outlined the order of content blocks, language and tone-of-voice, what we’ll highlight and what we’ll modestly omit. The key is understanding what definitely won’t be on the site. Our design fees won’t matter much to an average art director.

2. Write down your MVP.

Know your audience’s desires; create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

For the MVP, include:

• Illustrated case studies;
• An “About Me” section;
• A link to your CV;
• Contact information.

Put any extra features into the backlog:

• A blog;
• Cool 3D animation;
• Experimental poster gallery;
• Newsletter subscription form.

Hiring managers should find what they need without noticing that something is missing.

3. Break down the backlog into versions.

I won’t convince you that a portfolio without wow effects is ok for publishing.

Organize non-MVP elements into versions. Ripple animation buttons in 1.1, 3D animations in 1.2. Prioritize tasks in a version table, calming your inner perfectionist while expediting the project.

The example of the website versions queue

We consider the iPhone a technological marvel, but the first model launched without the App Store, front camera, video recording, flashlight, GPS, and 3G.

4. Kill good ideas.

Let’s embrace “via negativa” — the path of eliminating the unnecessary. Our goal is not to endlessly add but to subtract everything that doesn’t belong to our dream portfolio.

“… focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things. “

— Steve Jobs

Matte glass effect is beautiful, but it might ruin the cartoonish grotesque style. Vibrant gradients are cool and trendy, but do they match highlights and skeuomorphism?

Try not to deviate from the main concept, especially under the pressure of cooler ideas. This leads to the fifth piece of advice.

5. Don’t get inspired too often.

We often browse others’ portfolios, feeling inspired yet pressured to copy. If creative envy tempts you to replicate a trend, take a break.

Every new idea seems cool. We naturally prefer new things over old ones — that’s human nature. The project risks turning into a patchwork.

Young designers face another dangerous thing — negative comparison. When you see an awwward-winning website of some design lead and start to compare yourself to this guy, it’s easy to lose motivation.

Remember, everyone started somewhere. You don’t need to compete with those senior designers, as you’re unlikely to aim for the same job positions.

6. Set a Firm Deadline

There is an excellent management principle called FFF (Fix time, fix budget, flex scope). Let’s adopt it for our project too.

Set a clear deadline by which you commit to releasing the portfolio. Let’s say we agree to share the link to our new site exactly a month from now. Anything we can’t finish by the set date will be pushed to the next release.

Imagine presenting the project tomorrow; how would it look? — Self-management exercise by Ilya Birman

Tasks expand to fill allocated time. A project without a deadline never reaches 100%. Deadlines force completion.

7. Ashamed of the result? Publish it.

You’ll definitely be dissatisfied with your portfolio, trust me. The problem is that you made it. Don’t hesitate; show the world the first version and go design the second one.

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

— Reid Hoffman (Co founder of LinkedIn)

Conclusion

Building a portfolio, website, or any creative project is like constructing a plane mid-flight. This article aims to slightly tame the chaos.

Like paying a fraction for a mortgaged home, enjoy comfort today. Look at your portfolio through the lens of this principle.

Launch it; perfection can wait!