The benefits of mindboxing content design

Setting brain boundaries can make things better for everyone

A few weeks ago I was asked to do some last minute copywriting on a project. What was really needed was content design, but it was clear that meaningful sense-making or concept definition wasn’t going to happen. So, my choices were: spend my energy complaining or make things slightly better.

I opted for the latter.

Calmly acknowledging reality and being clear on the impact I could have was my way of mindboxing the project. You’re probably familiar with timeboxing — spending a fixed amount of time on something. Mindboxing is about investing the right amount of psychological or emotional energy into a project. Now, this part is important: mindboxing isn’t passive apathy. It’s a strategic way of tackling certain kinds of content design requests to avoid burnout and frustration.

Stock photo of a person with a cardbox on their head that says “brain” (courtesy of Pexels).

For the copywriting-that-should-have-been-content-design project, mindboxing meant that I spent most of my effort on rationale. Here’s the NDA version of what I put into Figma:

• A lesson I learned the hard way at another company: everything in one place isn’t a value proposition, it’s a junk drawer. Everything in one place forces the user to imagine how their life will be better.
• We need to convince people who are busy, tired, or skeptical that the effort required to use this new feature will be worth it. To do that, we need to help people imagine how their life will be better if they start using it.
• We need to be concrete and specific whenever possible (llama, chinchilla, wolf). This helps to expand people’s understanding of the feature and makes them more likely to try it out.
• Whenever possible, centre the messaging around the user (“your llamas” “your partner’s chinchilla” “you can find wolves right away.”)
• Each of the tiles needs to be able to stand on their own and convince a user to take action. So we can’t just say “tell us about your llama, chinchilla, and wolf.” Those labels assume the user already understands the value of the feature. And they don’t — yet.

I knew my last minute copywriting wouldn’t solve many of these key product challenges. So I used my rationale to highlight the underlying problems so that they’d be addressed after the deadline was met. This made me feel useful, which is a super nice side effect of mindboxing.

Having more confidence in myself and my work has also made it easier to mindbox. I know I’m not the only content designer in this position — Jason Fox’s article about the limits of wording is a great example of confidence in action: “Words should describe reality, not bear the burden of making something broken appear less broken. If you find yourself toiling over a torturous UX writing task, chances are your words are overburdened.” Knowing what my skills can and cannot accomplish makes it easier for me to set boundaries and act accordingly.

Now, an important disclaimer: mindboxing works best on consulting projects like office hours. On embedded projects, it’s critical that content designers feel empowered to shape the process and the end result. You should invest more of yourself into work you have more control over. But keeping these two scenarios separate is something I’ve struggled with in the past, creating the content design equivalent of the sunk cost fallacy. And if you sink too much time and passion into the wrong thing, you’ll get sunk.

Last week I consulted on a short flow with yet another tight deadline. Instead of investing my heart and soul into the “perfect” solution, I made incremental improvements over a couple of quick collaboration sessions. This combination of timeboxing and mindboxing created space for the rest of the team to build upon my suggestions and fill in the gaps. Instead of acting like a hero trying to save the day at the eleventh hour, I was a mix of content designer and catalyst. Yes, I made the flow better, but the entire team made the flow a lot better.

There are, of course, limits to this approach. As Erica Jorgensen notes in her great article 11 key content design considerations, “Content design is complicated. It’s nuanced. And it’s often quite time-consuming. It’s not at all something that you want to rush.” In an ideal world, content designers wouldn’t have to rush, but that isn’t always possible.

Meanwhile, in her amazing Button 2022 talk “What is the value of content design” Relly Annett-Baker argues that word people are not “bad decisions paramedics” and boldly proclaims “death to office hours.” I think she’s right, but imperfect content design office hours can be useful if you’re clear on their limitations. Mindboxing my office hours means I act like a pragmatist instead of a paramedic, which is healthy and sustainable. As the old cliche goes, “we’re not saving lives here.” But learning how to invest the right amount of me into smaller projects is a real lifesaver.