Why You Need to Use the Rule of Three Passes
A simple trick for finishing any project quickly and with quality.
There’s a lot of different takes on effective work methods out there.
You might subscribe to chunking your time in 5-minute blocks like Elon Musk. Or maybe the Pomodoro Technique is more your thing.
If you’re a writer, perhaps you’re into fast drafting.
For me, it’s all about the Rule of Three Passes:
- Make it Work
- Make it Fast
- Make it Pretty
I don’t remember where I picked up this little tip, but I’ve used it for almost two decades now when working on code and scripts. But I’ve found it works just as well with any creative task you take on.
Breaking your work into three focused passes, each with a purposeful goal that builds off of the last step, is a great way to be productive with your time and avoid spinning on perfection.
Make it Work
The first pass is all about getting something functional created. It doesn’t need to be pretty or ready for others to see; this is your time to prove your idea is workable.
In coding, this is your first pass at demonstrating functionality.
With writing, this could be your fast draft where you turn off your internal editor. If you’re manufacturing something, this is your proof of concept or prototype.
The entire point of this pass is to make something workable. That’s it.
After all, if you don’t have something functionally working, there’s no point in going any farther with it.
By focusing on making something functional, you avoid the perfection trap by continually telling yourself that this isn’t the final product.
You’re not trying to make anything for consumption yet. Let your first pass be ugly. Let it be un-optimized.
It’s only meant to demonstrate that there is a working solution to the goal. You’ll clean it up later.
Make it Fast
Once you have a working solution, now you can begin to refine it.
In code, this is all about making it fast with optimized algorithms and memory usage.
But the same mentality applies to other creative processes. With writing, this is your editing pass to make your work read well. With manufacturing, this is about streamlining your product with cheaper materials or construction methods.
Because you started this step with a functional product, you’ve already eliminated many other options that could have caused you to spin on perfectionism. You shouldn’t be concerned with different solutions to something that you’ve already made work; your focus should only be on cleaning up what you have.
Again, though, at this step, it’s still not about the final product. Your focus is on making a clean product, but it will probably still be ugly. It’s not meant to be ready for others to use yet.
Your code might be hard to read. Your writing might not have the right word choices. Your physical product doesn’t have the final colors or labeling.
What matters is that whatever you’re making, after this step, is now streamlined and fast. All of the fat has is now trimmed from your functional working pass.
Make it Pretty
The last step is to take your lean working product and make it pretty.
For coding, this meant creating interfaces that people could understand, such as renaming variables or functions to be more intuitive to others, as well as fixing any bugs.
With writing, this step is about nailing down the final word choices and doing any proofreading or final edits. It can include adding images or hyperlinks and finalizing the title and headers as well.
For a physical product, this step is about deciding on things like the final color schemes, labeling, or naming.
At this point, your product only needs the final polish, so again you can avoid the perfectionist trap by focusing on what’s missing to your basically completed product. There’s no need to go back and try different approaches to functionality or optimization; you already did all of that.
This step is where you finally focus on how other people will interact or use the thing you’re making.
You might even consider bringing in other people for feedback or testing to help nail down the final details.
By breaking your workflow into three discrete steps, you can give more focus to the goal of each pass without distractions from unnecessary things at the time.
Too often, we spin on perfection, worrying about making something pretty before we’ve even made it work, or work well. And this prevents us from ever finishing.
If you practice and stick to the Rule of Three Passes, you’ll find that it starts to become easier to ignore the perfectionist trap and produce quality work quickly.