Detach from your work to make it work - by Itay Dreyfus

SubscribeSign in

Detach from your work to make it work

Itay Dreyfus<br>Jul 31, 2026

Share

This is my first essay from a series about the creative process, which will be published in the upcoming Niche design issue.

When my wife and I decided to get married in the spring of 2024, we knew we wouldn’t do it traditionally. Not for religious or spiritual reasons, but more because we didn’t resonate with the concept of the popular modern wedding, which means getting a vanilla venue, inviting hundreds of people we don’t know, and following the rest of the common wedding checklist. We wanted to make it more intimate and authentic to us.<br>The truth is that our celebration wasn’t so radically different or unheard of. We had a religious ceremony, along with many of the usual wedding elements you’d expect. There were photographers, a catering service, DJ crew, open bar, and even a cyan Beetle converted into a photo booth. A wedding planner was also hired to help us coordinate it all.

The cyan Beetle<br>However, there was still something different about it. It was more DIY than a grandiose festival. Rather than renting a venue, it took place in the yard of a family friend who graciously lent it to us for the special day. In this spirit, we did many things by hand: my wife took care of the floral decorations, signage, seating arrangements, and anything else that could be handcrafted. We even supervised the gardener and cleaned the garden ourselves the evening before to make sure everything was ready.<br>Besides my main task, which was, of course, to show up on time, I was also responsible for the invitation design. As I had expected, making this small artifact turned out to be quite daunting and disproportionate to its physical size. It took me about a month of procrastination, going back and forth, until I finally settled on something, while making a few compromises. It also took my wife-to-be to get me into the mood and force me to finish it, so we could send it to our guests before the wedding was actually held.

A revision timelapse

In the following year, I was mainly focused on making the first Niche design issue, juggling an enormous list of to-dos: researching, writing, editing, curating, coordinating, testing, printing, and so on. I was also working wherever I could: at airport gates, on planes, in cafés, on my phone…<br>It required a ton of mental resilience to bring it to completion.<br>However, when I reached a point where like 90% of the project was completed, I got painfully slower. I was running out of steam—my ideas were drying up, and decisions were harder to make. Every week I was telling myself that next week is next week. But with each passing week, I became more and more delusional about how far I still was from the finish line.<br>Nevertheless, I kept reflecting on that particular experience as some kind of a post-mortem, but nothing could really crystallize in my head. Only when I started to prepare for this year’s issue did I realize there was a very personal sentiment that made it so difficult to work on. I had become deeply attached to the work—exactly like the wedding invitation.<br>Progress

“Reznor and Ross observe the same hours, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. “We show up,” Reznor told me. “Were not late. Were not coming in to start to fuck around.”<br>Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Have a Plan to Soundtrack Everything<br>Zach Baron

When I interviewed Pavel Kedzich for the first issue, he said something that immediately struck a chord: “Design isn’t about impact. It’s about finishing the work”. The context of our conversation was questioning the purpose of the designer role in our lives, but I find it applicable in broader contexts.<br>What’s the purpose of design, or any other practice? If we don’t finish and release the work to the outer world, outside of our head, screen, or notebook, then what does it matter at all? Is there anything, novel as it may be, that’s more important than making it a fact?<br>There have been a lot of misconceptions about the outcomes of work, which I’ve admittedly long held and wanted to believe in. Achievements like changing the world or making it a better place are quite popular in pop-design culture, and have romanticized creative work throughout the post-millennium startup era. However, after being immersed in this scene for quite some time, I’ve come to realize that these are only narcissistic aspirations, which don’t really hold in the business of money-making. These seemingly noble ambitions mostly exist in job postings and pitch-deck fairytales.<br>Therefore, “get the job done” seems to be the first and foremost important thing.<br>Then there’s this idea of making our work easier. Automation is now king amid the evolving AI revolution, but long before that, the internet was already full of people advocating for systems and frameworks with the premise of getting more done.<br>But the way I see it, meaningful work was never...