When You Deliver Work Late, You Invite More Scrutiny

Here’s another reason to get your work done fast (yep, even (especially!) deep, creative work):  you’ll get less scrutiny and fewer requested edits.

If you crank out a design, page, or product FAST – on or ahead of schedule – the momentum bleeds into the perception of the work by the recipient.  They’ll like it more, and be less focused on changes because they’re so happy with the speed.  They’ll respond to speed with speed: you got it to me fast, I’ll approve it fast with little deliberation.  Let’s launch this baby!

Take longer than you told them?  Get ready for them to respond in kind with long, drawn out, deliberative decisions over tiny details, lagging last minute tweaks, etc.

Every day past expectation the project takes, the expectation for perfection ratchets up.  From your customer’s perspective, it goes something like this: “I’m waiting so damn long for this thing, it’d better be perfect.  Is it perfect?  I don’t know.  Maybe we should tweak this one more thing…”

Creative types are notorious for delivering later than the expectations they set.  Then they get frustrated when people want to make changes and get picky.  When you kill momentum, you turn an otherwise big, excited greenlighter into a slow, skeptical analyst.

Tired of lots of late change requests?

Work faster.