The laziness lightning bolt

Fine arts degree: dozens of simultaneous projects across painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking — each requiring finished physical work plus a full written process journal. First three years, I worked more hours than the calendar had. No Christmas break, mediocre output across the board, and a portfolio of completely unrelated pieces with no coherence.

The real problem wasn't the workload. It was that I was choosing each project's theme on the day I had to start it — and then brute-forcing my way through with maximum effort and no strategy.

In my fourth year, I stopped. Instead of launching straight into making things, I gathered every project brief from every subject and sat with them. I didn't touch a brush for weeks — well into late November — while I looked for a single underlying concept that could serve all of them at once.

That discomfort of not starting was real. But I pushed through it and found the thread: one conceptual project that could be adapted across all subjects and serve as the theoretical foundation for my final degree project.

Timeline: First designs in three months, stable version in nine months.

Company: LCSV upload, batch management, single consolidated invoice, payment monitoring.

Influencer: Simple payment requests, invoice upload, minimal streamlined interface.

Admin: Combined capabilities with full permissions and oversight.

Each user saw only relevant features, reducing cognitive load.

• Identified multi-user problem and proposed solution.
• Translated between teams and converted input into requirements.
• Created all information architecture, flows, and designs.

• Designed reusable component system for junior developers.
• Made prioritization decisions to unblock work.

Multi-user design:

• Task-aligned interfaces beat feature buffets.
• Design reusable components with user-specific variations.

Product design:

• Balance business goals, technical constraints, and user needs.
• Translation between teams matters as much as visual work.

What I'd do differently:

• Trust judgment earlier, learn metrics tools sooner, polish less in early stages.

About myself:

• I blend creative and analytical thinking, see details and big picture, stay resilient, and advocate effectively.