Most of us have heard this term. It is defined as "A Small spirit that lives inside all living things. In times of extreme emotion, it leaves the body".

If you are having a bad day somebody may offer to scare your Bajesus for you. Generally, that's not a good thing. But most often we scare the Bajesus out of ourselves. For the purposes of this article I hope to help you keep your Bajesus calm. He does scare easy and we don't want him/her to leave us when we need him.

I think this would work for any project, but as a web designer it's easiest use a web project as an example.

When I first start a project, I usually have very little to go on. The reason someone has hired a web designer is usually because they can't do it themselves. Especially, in the case of small businesses.

I used to make two major mistakes when I first started. One spending too much time on looking at the big picture. What do I mean by that? Of course you want to keep the end goal in mind. But if you spend too much time thinking of everything that has to be done, you may never get started. So after taking a little time to get an idea, I think it's best to just start working on it and stop thinking about it.

The second common mistake is almost the opposite of the first. You don't take enough time to get the basic concept of the project and you open up your favorite HTML editor and type out the code for the entire page and then go see what it looks like. Oops. I bet you made a mistake somewhere in the code. Now you have 100s of lines of code and little or no idea why it doesn't look or work like it should. And just like an old house, it may be best to get rid of it and start over.

To me, starting all over is the worst. Sometimes, if it's just a project for myself, it's enough for me to drop it and just never get it done. So I definitely want to avoid that.

The good news is there is a happy middle ground for everyone.

For instance, to avoid thinking about the big picture too much, I dive right in and make a skeleton of the site. Something like this:

It's just an image but it keeps me focused on the big picture without getting bogged down in the details of the new site too much. A great tip I got from a fellow developer was to just keep a notebook next to you. If you do think of something. Instead of stopping what you are doing just make a note of it and continue on. I know I'm guilty of being in the middle of something, getting distracted, and having trouble remembering what I was working on before the phone call, etc.

Then on a note pad, and I emphasize a note pad, as in paper. I have two monitors, and I still don't have enough room for all the windows I have open. Having some scratch paper will make it a lot easier to make notes. Navigating to yet another window and typing the note is a pain.

From there, I usually make an outline of all the pages for the site and determine which pages will need to be linked to from the home page. My next post will probably be about completing a web project step by step, but that's too much to go into here.

You will have to find the right balance for you between speed and testing. For me I usually don't type more than 50 lines of code without reloading the page and testing it.

As I said, I think this process works well for any project that requires multiple steps. For web design, it is something you have probably already been through the hard way. If you are a beginner though, avoid either getting overwhelmed by thinking to long about how complicated the site is, or to just try to create it all in on fell swoop, only to end up starting over, or spending hours, correcting that hard to find mistake in the code.

A couple more common sense tips that I often forget are to:
Know when to call it a day. You know when you are too tired to perform. If you keep going because of a deadline or some self imposed time limit, you will probably do more damage than good.

Take breaks. Once again, I'm guilty of spending hours at a time in front of the computer. If I just take a few minutes every couple of hours to practice putting or take a bike ride, or whatever you can think of, it really helps me recharge. As an added bonus, I often catch mistakes I would of missed by taking a break and getting a fresh look at the site or application.

Hope this is helpful.

• For my ever growing archive of blatherings or to drop me a private note visit my main site.