The Cause

At some point, we land that job. The job. Years of building our portfolio and work experience have led us all to this one career that will propel us into greatness. Not only that, but you’ve been working there for more than a year now, becoming an established part of the company and team. You feel awesome. You feel indestructible. You feel like the f%cking Hulk, and all you want to do is hulk smash.

Then it happens—we get comfortable. Not only do we get snug in our new position, but after several successful projects, and gaining a reputation of quality and productivity, we become confident; some would even say cocky.

We start to do things like find little loopholes in our new position. We discover how long it actually takes for product owners to give us feedback on our work. We find out how long we can go without doing any actual work, and we start to take advantage, even if it’s just little by little.

There is something else you start to notice, too. That fire you once had—the one thing that made you hungry, has now turned into an ember. It’s there, just miniscule. You don’t have the motivation anymore to even do design for fun.

What used to motivate and inspire you, has now turned into a some-what laborious and tedious task. When we take our first steps out of the university (or community collage, like me… I don’t judge. hah!) and into the real world, we are hungry. Nay, we’re starving. We’d do anything to start designing anything for anybody. Late nights were something to look forward to, and seeing the sun rise after an all nighter was a sort of a weird badge of honor. We constantly looked to improve our quality of work, and fed off of our peers for inspiration.

Now you struggle to design simple things. Of course, some days are better than others, but the fire you once had is now a low, steady burning ember.

You’ve become complacent.

“But, but I’m not complacent! I kick ass! Everyone says designers start fires and shake things up. Surely, I’m a doer!” You say.

That’s the problem, I think. We as designers are known as shakers and disrupters. People expect us to shake things up, and the farthest thing anyone expects is a complacent designer.

Designers are people. Being a person means you get the variable of human error! Congratulations human!

Sure, you can still turn in your work, technically, on time. And sure, you can still reply to emails and show up to all your meetings on time.

But you know.

You know you are not the designer you used to be. Something happened. Somewhere, at some point, you let your guard down—now you feel more like a cog in the wheel than a disrupter in the company.

Everybody always talks about how to land that dream job, or how to create awesome projects using all sorts of new tools and processes, but no one talks about actually keeping that job.