Leave it alone

Fresh eyes on your project can make a big difference. Take a walk, go on holiday or work on something else, then come back. In 2011, I was reminded of that when I looked at Amino Freelancer again.

Fresh eyes on your project after a break

Amino Freelancer was one of the projects I’d spent most time on. The broad outlines were falling into place, but users still struggled with some things.

When I returned after doing something else, I found it easier to see what wasn’t working. If you work on the same thing constantly, you can get so immersed that you no longer see the obvious problems.

The same thing happens with writing

Perhaps you know the feeling of writing something for your website and returning a couple of days later. Suddenly, you find spelling mistakes or wording you can barely understand yourself.

The text is the same, but you see it differently. That distance is a gift when you can get it.

Get someone else to look if it’s urgent

I know leaving a project alone for a long time can be a luxury. At Amino, I had several projects to switch between. Others might need to take a holiday or just a short break.

If you need something online quickly, get someone else to look at it with fresh eyes. If you have time, leave it and come back. That was the simple advice I wanted to share in the middle of moving from the USA.

Also read my experiences of taking a holiday and gaining perspective.

Fresh eyes on your project amid the chaos of moving

It had been a while since my last video. I was moving from the USA and heading off on the long family journey where we’d interview Danish entrepreneurs around the world for Amino.

We’d already made the first two great interviews. One was with freelance photographer Lotte, who’d started in Palm Beach two years earlier. The other was with a magician who was flown out to cruise ships to perform and then flown home again. He was also a big star in South America. I thought that was a fun story.

Over the next 14 days, I was selling the boat, jet ski and cars and clearing things out. We’d held a garage sale, where of course people haggled. Something we’d paid 20 dollars for and tried selling for one dollar could still get an offer of 25 cents.

I think we made something like 100 dollars from six hours’ work. I said that with a good dose of irony, but it was interesting and the children thought it was great fun. All the practical things really took up my time.

Amino Freelancer reminded me of the value of distance

That morning, I’d been working on Amino Freelancer. It was my baby and one of the Amino projects I’d spent most time on after the discussion forum. I thought it had become great, and the broad outlines were more or less in place.

But we’d received a couple of complaints about things users couldn’t figure out. So I sat down and looked at it again. And once more, it struck me how much it helps to step away from a project and return with fresh eyes.

If you keep working on the same thing, you can get completely sucked in. Eventually, you can barely tell which way is up. When you return after doing something else, the ridiculous mistakes suddenly jump out.

Sometimes I need to leave it for a month or so. I know that’s a luxury. At Amino, we had about ten projects, so I could work on one, then another and return later.

You can become blind to your own writing too

It’s the same experience when writing for your website. A couple of days later, you read it again and think: Bloody hell, did I really write that?

Then you find three spelling mistakes, even though you don’t usually make them. Or wording you can barely understand yourself. No new mistakes had appeared in the text. You could just finally see them.

If you can, take a holiday or decide to work on something else for a while. Go back afterwards and see what you discover.

If getting something online is urgent, get other people to look at it. And if you prefer working on things yourself, leave the bloody thing for a while and come back. I said it could become ten times better. That was my enthusiastic way of describing how big a difference I experienced. You’ll find more of my experiences of developing a business in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

A little app announcement from 2011

At the end, I also shared news from Amino: Our free Android app had arrived. I was pretty excited about how well it worked.

I almost said I used it all the time myself, but corrected myself: I had an iPhone, so it was the iPhone version I used. The two apps were almost identical.

The plan was to submit the iPhone app to Apple the next day. If all went well, we hoped it could be ready a week or ten days later. That was the status and expectation when I recorded the video in November 2011.

Moving was fucking chaos, so I didn’t know when the next video would come. But the advice was simple enough: Leave your project alone for a while, then return. Take care!

De bedste hilsner

Martin