It’s been more than ten years since I started my professional career as a designer. While realizing this, few thoughts arose. First “damn I’m getting old” and second “I’ve been lucky because I had the opportunity to try and work on with wide variety of things”.
Ten years in design is a real milestone for me. Looking back over the past 10 years. What kind of journey has it been for me and what I have learned. My projects have varied, everything from visual design to service design and from coding (tried it and sucked at it) to design sales. And more importantly I’ve worked with a number of people who have contributed to my professional development and skills.
I have done some spectacular stuff and something I wouldn’t admit was done by me. I wanted to give myself some time to ponder what have I done during these years and what have I learned? What kind of tips would I give ten year younger version of me? That young self-confident guy really needed some of these advices.
Embrace collaboration
You need others to do your best and learn new skills and improve your practise. The value of working with various teams with different type of experts is incredibly beneficial. It tests your social and articulation skills when you need to share and pitch ideas. Working in various teams forces you to test new working methods and gives perspective to your work.
Collaboration opens doors to multidisciplinary design, which is in my book perfect approach to solve complex problems.
Get things done
Done is better than perfect. People don’t buy ideas, they buy actions and results.
Finish what you have started. Of course with customer projects but you should also keep the same attitude with your personal projects, studies or other goals, big or small.
Fight against anxiety, distractions and passion to start something new when you haven’t finished previous task is hard. Be sure that you can finish what you have started and get familiar where are your limits in multitasking.
Take it easy
Stress can be a killer. Deadlines, learning new skills and catching up with the new trends all adds stress to your life. You might find yourself obligated to be concerned all these various things. It won’t take much to get overwhelmed.
Being a designer is one of the most exciting jobs in the world, but it’s crucial that you can keep your cool and avoid building a burden you can’t handle.
Loosen up and take some time for yourself. Even a small break from all the hassle will give perspective to your work and everyday life.
Be kind
This last one may sound simple but has to be the hardest thing to learn.
In the end your skills and knowledge are useless if you don’t get along with others. Nobody likes assholes, nobody wants to work with assholes and most of the people don’t do business with assholes.
You should give time to develop your empathy skills. Give your full attention to others, understand their entire message what they are communicating and how they react to your actions. Listening to others is a nice way to start developing a nicer version of yourself.
And after all, being kind will make also you happy!