Roughly inspired by Charlie O’ Donnell’s blogpost here: How to talk about the arc of your career
As many of you know, since the start of the pandemic, I’m officially out of a full-time job, by choice. I wanted a fresh start, but most of all, I wanted the freedom and the flexibility of time. I think we can all agree that this has been an exceptionally hard year for most, if not all, of us.
It’s been a few months since then and I’d like to share what was going through my mind the whole time.
Life/work as an endless experiment
At 30, I see life/work as a series of decisions that bring immense value in one’s life, but at the price of responsibility. Work is not just a mindless activity we’ve been trained for our entire academic life. Work, to me, is a calling, a vocation. I’ve defined what a design career in tech is on this separate post. I have been in situations where I’ve despised Mondays because of a job I felt “trapped” at.
I can’t bring myself to go back to that kind of lifestyle. It felt like, to me, a significant step backwards. I wanted a full-time job, but maybe a vastly different one.
I wanted more things, a mixture of different things. I wanted… to throw myself into my work in a way that’s going to make me more valuable, more productive.
More useful, in the sense of what I had to offer. (And I can offer a lot!)
Steve Jobs has widely used quote for this: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.".
Tradeoffs as a north star
This article from Farnam Street loosely defined tradeoffs as “…as any situation where making one choice means losing something else, usually forgoing a benefit or opportunity.”. If there is anything that this era of COVID-19 is teaching us, it is that we have enough time to make critical life decisions. Suddenly, the little things are anything but little. From the way I spend my weekday mornings all the way to how I sleep at night, I became so unusually self-conscious of all the mundane things I do. It’s almost as if I wanted a repository of where all of my time is being spent.
Time, at one point, became the single most important thing that I have on my life.
By choosing one thing to spend it on, it also means I am choosing to ignore the rest. The rest, in this case, could be an infinite number of things: leisure, hobbies, work I enjoy doing, work I don’t enjoy doing, personal relationships etc. I found myself internally asking these question over and over again:
“Is this the best use of my time today?”
“Is this increasing the quality of my life, of my identity?”
“Will this activity bring me closer to where I would like to be?”
Almost always, the answer was No. I knew I had to make a decision.
Job titles as an increasingly irrelevant detail on my resumé
Screenshot courtesy of @naval on Twitter
Part of what makes me excited about the Product Design and UX industry is the deep respect for multidisciplinary work. We can be anything from writers of softwares to designers of voice interfaces. Much like the products we design, we are in the midst of transformation. I can’t say this enough— there’s never been a better time to be a designer than today.
In line with that, here’s a list of things that I think are worth more than job titles:
Body of work (writing, design, code)
Diversity of experiences
What you do on your free time
Where you spend your free time
What books you’ve read recently
Case studies you’ve authored
Organizations you’ve founded
Talks you’ve given
The depth of your industry knowledge
How invigorating of a conversationalist you are
Your ambition
Your curiosity
You get the picture
I won’t get to where I want to be if I let myself be defined by something as superfluous as a “job title”. The best (design) jobs are those that are free of it.
Some steps I’ve taken
👩🏽💻I will be giving a talk next year at UX Camp Winter Edition. It’s such a great opportunity to do so alongside many other renowned people in the industry. Thank you so much Russ and the team at UX Camp for this!
“Mapping the Journey of a Design Career”
How do you design a career you’ll be proud of? How do you turn constraints into advantages? These are the questions I want to explore as I talk about my own journey into UX from traditional design. From past failures to wake up calls and personal reinventions, I’ll map out this human’s journey so far.
I hope to see you all there!
→I still co-teach a UX Design course over at General Assembly and mentor amazing designers at RookieUp. Shoutout to Angeline and Shelby! You guys are fantastic and creative people. I look forward to seeing your work in the real world.
→Yes, I am available for full-time, part-time, contractual and consulting work. Click here to read the rest of my professional bio.
🧠 ‼️ Excellent reads
Articles
We live in a data-driven world where everything can be measured and compared. The clothes you wear and the car you drive is immediately associated with words like “cool”, “lame”, “average”, “wealthy”.
We do this type of categorization with others, and they do it to us. Naturally, to differentiate and distinguish ourselves from our peers. To send a message and to increase our value as a potential mate or a friend, we focus more on external signals that can boost our position in the social hierarchy and less on other things that are “invisible” to others – but far more important.
“Escaping the Modern Rat Race: How to Handle the Game of Competitive Signaling”, by Ivaylo Durmonski
Uncertainty is profoundly uncomfortable. And thriving in an uncertain world comes with a lot of pain, in particular emotional pain. It basically means that you can never be “good” at something because if you’re good at something, it means you’ve been complacent (and not ambitious enough). It’s exhausting! Few people will deliberately seek the uncomfortable.
The Uncertainty Mindset & the Future of Work by Laëtitia Vitaud
Thank you Jeff for the recommendation!
Private writings on UX:
Would you be interested in reading rough drafts of documentations, writings, essays on the topics of product design, user experience, design and technology? I’d love your feedback. They always make my work better. Email me at: nikkiespartinez@gmail.com
Thank you for reading,
Nikki Espartinez