Things Take Time. Take Time.

But, as we’ve seen so many times before, something done fast doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s done well. Projects pushed on speed alone more often tend to flop — there are more mistakes, more changes as the finish line gets closer, and more frustration among those tasked with sleepless nights … and those things show in the final product. A cake doesn’t bake faster by turning up the heat. It just burns.

Or, as Australian alt-rocker Courtney Barnett says in the title of her 2021 album: Things Take Time, Take Time.

Take, for example, building a website.

You can think whatever you like about what your website is, but websites are, at their core, communication tools. They communicate to your users, and internally they communicate between departments through the editorial process. And there’s really only one constant when it comes to communication: it’s difficult. To do it right, you need patience. You need empathy. You need a full understanding of the audience and the medium. More than anything, you need time.

That’s a big ask, especially since our lives are becoming more and more maximized. More and more consolidated and streamlined. Yet, it’s a really important ask. Everyone wants a website in a month. Everyone wants content tomorrow. And it can be done! But, there’s a tradeoff — as the saying goes, when it comes to creating things, there’s fast, good, and cheap. You can only choose two, and if there is any level of complexity, it’s difficult for one of those to be “fast.”

NOW LISTEN: we get it. Time crunches are bound to happen — an emergency might pull a developer off of a project, or the marketing team might be juggling two or three projects at once. This isn’t about removing all urgency. Instead, it’s about understanding time from the beginning. Understanding the things that are going to rely on a bit more collaboration, or a bit more feedback. For example, here are a few notes we live by at Blend:

• The calendar is always the same. It’s our relationship to it that changes. Seeing an extended timeline beyond just days and weeks will help us identify and account for times when work might be slower — holidays, internal events, new product launches — and plan around that to avoid time crunches.
• Complexity multiplies effort, and simple questions can be the difference between a day and a week. Identify complexity and get answers quickly. Never let “We’ll figure it out later” linger longer than it needs to — getting an answer now might save weeks as you get closer to launch.
• Content always takes longer than you think, whether it’s wrapping our mind around a new content model or simply waiting for approval from the legal department. Saving two quick weeks at the end of a project to try to slam content out is the number one reason we see clients struggle to maintain their timeline.
• An iterative process saves hours, but requires more time. While consistent review and collaboration eventually saves on crunch-time changes and builds a much better process, it also takes a bit longer to keep everyone involved. This is normal. This is good.

It’s clear that “taking time” is a luxury, and often not possible. Emergencies warrant quick thinking. New trends can sink a ship faster than we can react. But the idea of taking time doesn’t mean doing everything slow, or accepting that you’ll be last to market — it means building a system that accounts for that time. It means understanding that a new product needs a few weeks of lead time, building that into the product process rather than reacting at the last moment. It means getting everything up front.

It means less that the process should drag on longer, and more that the process should start sooner.

If you are looking to build a new website, you’ll need time. If you are creating a deadline for your team to manage a migration, you’ll need time. If you are building a complex governance model, connecting departments and relying on multiple stakeholders, you’ll need time.

Things take time. Let them. In the end, the product will thank you.