Impulsiveness often meets a person where it’s least expected. I think everyone has, at some point, suddenly moved to another country, changed jobs, or cut their hair.
This is the moment when you’re overwhelmed by strong emotions, and the way you cope is through fast, intense, and often irrational actions. I know what it means to be impulsive in design—I would say it has been both a challenge for me and an area of growth.
One of the common mistakes inexperienced designers make is impulsively taking on a project without reading the brief (I’ve done that too). But more often, I faced a different kind of impulsiveness—I would get excited about an idea in the very first lines, or if I was lucky, somewhere in the middle of the brief, and never finish reading it. Within the first few minutes, I would somehow feel completely certain that I knew exactly what to create. But in reality, the outcome required something entirely different—and it was clearly described somewhere near the end of the brief. I can’t count how many times I felt uncomfortable because of mistakes like that.
Dealing with this was quite difficult for me, because it wasn’t about organizing a process or being attentive—it was about learning to control my emotions.
What helped me was setting challenges. I told myself: one month of reading every brief to the very last word. Sometimes ideas would start pouring in—so intensely my fingers would almost sweat—but I’d remind myself that what I’m thinking right now might not be what actually deserves my time and energy.
That’s how I built the habit of reading briefs all the way through. At first, I had to reread everything ten times just to absorb it—sometimes long texts that were hard to hold in my head. Over time, reading a brief shifted to a different level: you almost sink into the text, and there’s no need to reread—you’ve lived through it.
Then I realized that briefs don’t just contain words—they carry the client’s energy and ideas, often hidden between the lines.
