Taking a break can make you a better designer

Hey everyone! I haven’t abandoned my blog or my IG videos. I’ll be back to making them soon. I’m just trying to get my day to day schedule aligned in a way that easily works for me again. Especially, now that I’m documenting my journey and lessons as a manager in a pandemic.

As rough as the pandemic has been on me mentally at times, it’s allowed me to restructure my life in a way that lets me explore more of my interests outside of UX Design. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I truly enjoy design, managing and building out a design team and establishing design processes and the foundation for the company. I actually didn’t think I would initially. However, I think experiencing this pandemic and feeling like we’re constantly living through a “historical event” combined with feeling as though I wasn’t living up to my own expectations was making me question my career choices. I was getting burned out with design topics, debates, newest portfolio must haves, UX hot takes on Twitter, Clubhouse and in articles. I re-evaluated what I was spending my time outside of work on and trying to determine if it was the best use of my time. It wasn’t. I was doing way too much, trying to not experience imposter syndrome, and I wasn’t giving myself room to just “be”. I felt uninspired and drained.

What was the best use of my time though was me exploring other mediums outside of UX , tuning out, and taking a break from even talking about it outside of work hours. I got back into product photography, cybersecurity, cars, cooking, working out, pole dancing, building a business, creating room sprays & laundry detergent and many other interests that I neglected to get to where I am now. I needed the break and time to get re-inspired and want to create again.

Sometimes we can get caught up in making sure we’re surviving that we forget to give ourselves the space to live. Life is too short and too long to not take a break to experience other aspects of yourself. Do some exploring in your other interests for awhile, it’ll make you a more well rounded and creative designer.

Til next time,

Nita