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A simple rule that you can use to succeed in design when it feels like you just can’t win.

Overview

Many times in your design career, you will feel like you are at the end of your wits. Nothing is working, there’s no forward motion, and everything you do seemingly amounts to very little, if anything at all.

These are the times that it can be hardest to keep the faith, but using “The Law of Ten,” can help give you perspective, insight, and the motivation to push through to the end.

The Law of Ten

The law itself is deceptively simple, but don’t let that fool you. Crucially, it is based off of The Pareto Principle, in which 20% of your inputs produce 80% of your outputs, but it goes even further than that because it factors in Murphy’s first law.

“On average, it takes nine failures to reach one success.”

That’s The Law of Ten. Simple, pithy, and I don’t think truer words have ever been said. You need to plan for and understand that for every ten attempts that you make, nine will more than likely fail.

I have seen this sentiment echoed in almost every profession; it has been said in various ways by the greats in their respective fields, and I have personally experienced it first-hand in my many years as a designer.

How you can apply this law

What this means for all of us in the design world is that we must learn to be exceedingly resilient, anti-fragile, and that failure is par for the course.

As designers we know two fundamental truths about our work: that half of it won’t ever see the light of day, and that the other half is more than likely going to get shot down, revamped, and resurrected in a near-infinite cycle of revision and rectification.

This is the goal of the wise designer: to understand that design is a process, and that good design is the product of many, many failed attempts.

So the next time you are thinking about giving up on your next project, count how many times you’ve failed already. I guarantee it hasn’t been nine yet; you’re almost there, keep going!

Nick Lawrence Design
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