I’m an ambitious person, which means I attempt things that might be scary or intimidating to other people—starting businesses, public speaking, etc. It’s not that they’re any less scary to me. It’s that I’ve assembled tools over years that help me get over the fear or trepidation more quickly than others.

For example, one of the upcoming projects I’d to tackle soon is to revive the dormant social media accounts for Design System University

But ugh. Emotionally, it feels like a mountain of work that I’m not looking forward to.

That is, until I introduce it to one of my favorite design tools to make work feel more approachable. Emotional mountain of work: meet my good friend, Math.

Math suggests, “Let’s put some specificity to the vague ‘revive social media accounts’ brief. How ’bout 1 month’s worth of posts?”

As soon as I start adding specificity—specifically by adding a number—it gives me some more action to take. What is 1 month’s worth of posts? Maybe it’s posting 3 times per week, for a grand total of 12 posts (3 posts per week × 4 weeks).

Suddenly, making 12 posts doesn’t seem so daunting. I can make 12 posts.

How long would it take to make 12 posts?

Let’s say it takes me about an hour to make 1 post, which feels pretty generous. That’s 12 hours. If I block out the next day and a half for this, I’ll be done in 2 days max.

Knocking out 2 days of work feels much more doable than a nebulous “1 month’s worth of posts”… even though they’re the same thing.

Scoping is a key part of valuable design work, but very few designers are ever shown how to do it. All it takes is a little Math.

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