This morning, it hit me: Projects are like antibiotics. I know, weird. But, hear me out. I’m known for making up nonsensical metaphors, but this one’s good. (At least I like it, so there’s that.) It came to me after being on antibiotics for what felt like a century because I kept skipping pills once I felt better. If you’ve ever taken antibiotics, you know they make the rest of your body want to jump off a cliff.

Anyway, the metaphor: For every project that comes in the door of an agency, it’s important to stay the course, as prescribed, from start to finish. There should be no cheating, no cutting corners or being duped by the false feeling that it’s “solved.” You have to see the whole thing through or you become immune to mediocrity.

The levels of excitement, enthusiasm, attention to detail, critical thinking and creativity should be steady throughout a project, just like the medicine. Those seemingly mundane parts of the project are akin to taking every individual pill—even once you’ve started to feel human again. If you don’t follow the treatment plan and take every pill prescribed, the bacteria you’re trying to kill can mutate and become immune to the antibiotic. Then the next time you take it, your body is resistant to its healing powers.

Wow, that got wonky. But stick with me.

Projects start off exciting and fun, so we’re into them and we’re eager to learn and make and design and achieve these award-worthy things that make us gooey and happy inside. (And by we, I mean client and agency. Project fatigue is universal.) Then we start getting complacent and stop paying enough attention to the finer details. Spellcheck is out the window. Checking files and working through all the important tiny bits to ensure everything is “just so” feels optional, not required. If we do this enough with every project we touch, it becomes the norm, which leads to bad work … and then merely “okay” work starts to feel like the equivalent of the next Mona Lisa.

Skipping a pill should never be the norm, so drink your juice, Shelby*, and run that spellcheck for a third time so we can all feel better.

*This is a movie reference and is in no way referring to our own Shelby.