Unlocking Personal Growth: 4 Lessons About Self-Reflection As A Designer.
1. “You are not your work”
It’s important to focus on vulnerabilities in the design industry, particularly when personal identity merges with work. Lot of designers have difficulties in handling criticism and feedbacks. The core message is the importance of acknowledging that one's worth is not solely defined by their work. For example, user testing results can’t have an impact on your professional and personal identity as a designer, because “you’re not your work”.
This shows the necessity of separating personal identity from work to maintain mental health and emotional resilience. To do that, you can work on it by engaging in activities outside work, keeping a diary and analyzing emotional patterns by identifying moments when you feel happy and, conversely, those when you feel unhappy. After identifying it, you can seek to understand the reasons behind and work on it to better navigate these challenges and enhance the ability to bounce back from difficulties.
2. “Surviving in the messy middle”
Starting optimistically, facing challenges in the middle, and finding satisfaction is the cyclical nature of a designer project. Surviving through disorderly situations in projects can be mentally hard but that’s the common journey where enthusiasm is followed by challenges, leading to a crisis before reaching success. By recognising the cyclical nature of the design process as normal, you could navigate the uncertainties and complexities of creative work more effectively. You can manage the “messy middle” phase of projects by being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and remain flexible to adapt to team needs.
3. “If your tastes isn’t increasing, then your skills or your talent cannot increase either”
Designers are urged to seek growth opportunities, learn from experts, and invest in themselves to enhance their talent. Improving taste in design is highlighted as crucial for talent development. There's a warning about the risk of stagnation if designers become complacent and do not actively pursue learning and evolution. It’s important for designers to actively pursue growth opportunities, seek mentorship, devour literature, and enroll in courses to consciously advance. Investing in oneself, refining skills, and cultivating a discerning taste are deemed pivotal for talent to flourish, while also cautioning against the peril of stagnation should designers become complacent and neglect continual learning and evolution.
4. “Play to learn without ego”
As a child that is learning and growing, it’s important to advocate for a mindset devoid of ego and focused on pure enjoyment. The transformative power of learning through joy can be done by embracing playfulness, maintaining multiple project versions, journaling to identify patterns, and adopting children's attitudes to reignite the spark of passion for creation.
“The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off”
In the professional and personal realms, self-reflection is important to improve problem-solving abilities, interpersonal interactions, and professional growth. Self-awareness and personal growth can enhance abilities as a colleague, manager or designer. That’s why fostering a culture that values introspection and the development of both soft and hard skills is significant. Self-reflection isn’t always the best solution, sometimes you have to change to a good space, go in a new life or just change a situation. But if you have a good space, life and situation and you still feel bad you should do that self-reflection and self-understanding work.
Some books you can read to unlock personal growth for industry leadership
Wanna know how to unlock your full potential as a designer? Unlock Kevin Cannon's Full Story.
Elevate your design practice and move on to the next level of your journey. Watch our exclusive masterclass with Kevin Cannon, Design Manager @ Pitch where he unveils his realization that many of the most important lessons he's learned in his career have been around self-reflection and understanding himself better.
Learn how to truly discover yourself so you can improve your soft-skills and get better in your craft!
