There’s a wonderful little book by Architect Matthew Frederick called “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School” that is chock-full of great design advice, not just for Architects, but for anyone designing space.

Here is #29:
Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop.

Being process-oriented means:
1. seeking to understand a design problem before chasing after solutions;
2. not force-fitting solutions to old problems onto new problems;
3. removing yourself from prideful investment in your projects and being slow to fall in love with your ideas;
4. making design investigations and decisions holistically (that address several aspects of a design problem at once) rather than sequentially (that finalize one aspect of a solution before investigating the next);
5. making design decisions conditionally – that is, with the awareness that they may or may not work out as you continue toward a final solution;
6. knowing when to change and when to stick with previous decisions;
7. accepting as normal the anxiety that comes from not knowing what to do;
8. working fluidly between concept-scale and detail-scale to see how each informs the other;
9. always asking “What if…?” regardless of how satisfied you are with your solution.