Evaluating your own work and fixing it is REALLY hard. You’ll see things in the work of others that you will have a very hard time seeing in your own work. Your brain will be desperate to convince you that the problems in your work aren’t problems at all. You’ll often come away having no idea whether what you’ve done is good or not.

Why? A whole bunch of reasons but it is all tied into the fact that you are too close to your work. You immerse yourself in it, you give it your all and then you find it harder to see the larger view. And most of all, your brain goes into resistance mode. You might not even be that type of person but your brain will still try to protect you and the work you have done and that can make you blind to things that need fixing.

So what do you do? The first thing is to try to bring in someone else to edit and give notes. But if you can’t do that, if you really have to edit on your own, try to get some distance and then split the process into very separate tasks:

Step 1 – make notes. Do NOT attempt to fix anything. Do not even consider fixing anything. You NEVER have to fix any of this stuff. The only goal is to make notes – what doesn’t work, what needs clarification, tightening, amending. Simple quick notes. The trick here is that if you completely disassociate this from the act of having to fix these things, you’ll be more honest. Your brain will not go into resistance mode quite so much and so it’s like evaluating the work of someone else.

The moment you try to fix something in this stage, your brain will go into lockdown and try to protect you from the hard work of rewrites or re-editing. Don’t do it – you’re only making notes and, when that stage is done, you’re going to let it sit so you don’t have to worry about actually fixing anything. Just make those notes.

Step 2 – Let it settle. Give it some time.

Step 3 – Evaluate the notes and make plans to address them. Again, do NOT go in and do the fixes here. This is a PLANNING stage. Effectively it’s like giving someone suggestions: how about you do it this way instead? Like the first stage, if you get stuck into the work directly your brain will resist and try to save you work by convincing you some things are okay or trying to give you easy yet half-baked solves. You’re just jotting down some plans. You don’t need to consider ever carrying them out.

Step 4 – You’ve got your plans now. You know exactly what you’re doing, right? Hey, the hard work is over. All you have to do now is stick to the plans and do what your past self told you to do. It will take a bit of time but it’s just in the doing now. So work your way through your fixes, follow your plans and implement them as best you can.

Step 5 – Enjoy your good work. You did it.

I find it is still always helpful to get an outside view but being able to have some sense of your own work is a crucial skill. So split it up into tasks and it gives you the best chance of doing a great edit without your brain ruining things by trying to protect you.