If you will go around asking people who have ever worked with me, “What kinda designer is Kiran Qureshi?” The first response you will get will be “Fast!”
Of course, they will start adding other things as well to the list after that, but the first thing that will come out of their pretty mouths will be “She’s freakishly fast!!!!!”
Which, to be honest, will not surprise me because I am notorious for being fast! Projects that can take weeks, I can finish them in days, and tasks that can take days I can finalize them in hours.
So what’s the secret behind my “speed”? you might ask…
The truth is, I am not fast! I don’t possess superpowers. I face all the similar issues faced by a million other designers. Some days I do hit designer blocks, major ones. I suffer from “Blank Page Syndrome” as well sometimes. I get stressed by uncanny project deadlines. I am no different than any other next-desk designer. But despite all these issues, I have the ability to turn around projects faster than your average designer.
How????!!!!
Because I learnt a rule at a very early age in my life. ‘The Construction Rule’ as I prefer to call it. My father (bless his soul!) introduced it to me. He used to work in the construction industry and one day he took me out with him on a site visit where they were starting out a new building. He got all very excited and started explaining to me the whole process. That little talk with my dad on that hot summer afternoon became the base of how I will deal with important and major responsibilities in my coming years.
‘The Construction Rule’ tells us that whenever you start constructing a building, the very first and the most critical step is putting the base. THE BASE! You have to put the base right. You have to put the base strong. You have to put the maximum effort into getting that base precisely in place. The whole structure depends on it. The taller it goes above the ground, the deeper it has to be in the ground. The more complicated is the structure, the stronger is the base it requires. You put it wrong, and the whole structure might fall one day!
I use ‘The Construction Rule’ to build my design projects as well. I treat every project as constructing a building. I put the base right! THE BASE! Now I’m not the kinda designer or director who does creative proposals and then hand them over to others for implementation and finalisation. That’s like giving birth to a child and then hand them over to a maid to raise them. All of my projects are like my kids. I take care of them myself. I usually dedicate my days for the creative work, and then spend my evenings and nights for the ‘middle-messy’ implementation process. And I do sleep as well, well some nights 
And I always try (I can only try, I can never force, you know) to teach the same rule to my fellow designers as well. “Work hard on the base of your project!” Especially when it comes to large-scale projects and long reports. A 400-page report can be a monstrous project to design, format and layout. But trust me, if you will take time to put its base right; the paragraph and character styles, your swatches, your margins, your master-templates, your guides, your links, your fonts, all those boring stuff, if you will base them right in the initial stage, the structure of the report will flow as smoothly as butter in a hot pan! And you will be surprised that how come a project that should have taken you at least a month to finish, got completed in 2 weeks!