Be willing to kill your darlings

Why this rule exists

Every designer accumulates darlings: the clever interaction they are proud of, the beautiful screen that took a week, the idea they fell in love with early. The trouble is that pride in an element is not evidence that it serves the user, and the very effort that makes something a darling is what makes it hard to cut when it stops earning its place. Attachment quietly distorts judgment, and the strongest work often comes from the willingness to remove the thing you like most because the design is better without it. Killing a darling hurts precisely because you value it, which is exactly why the ability to do it separates designers who serve the work from those who serve their own attachments. The measure of an element is never how much you love it or how hard it was to make; it is whether it helps the person using the product. When those two disagree, the darling loses.