Good Design is Good Business

I'm terrible at hustling. I'm bad at emailing people and semi-complimenting and asking for jobs. It's the truth. Some people are great it, you might say some were born to hustle; I'm just not one of those people.

I don't think I'm good at it and I don't think I ever will be. All this to say: that's what I'm bad at, but what I am good at is design. It's what I feel I was meant to do; in the quietness while I'm in some coffee shop somewhere or thinking about problems and ideas visually, I feel an insane amount of peace and calmness. (I mean work is work and sometimes it's frustrating, but at the end of the day, I find a way because I'm wired that way).  It's when I stop trying so hard to be good at what I'm bad at, that I'm able to do what I'm good at really well. Forgive kindergartener-like language, but I just realized this about myself.

For a long time, I felt that I had to be good at everything, to make myself valuable, to feel loved, to be worth someone's time. So the journey to become a jack of all trades and master of none began and I began killing myself.

I thought to myself: How is this ever going to be possible? How can I code and design and illustrate and edit photos and focus on user experience and think about user loads and have a life apart from work? And up until recently, I realized: I can't. If I try to be all those things, I find myself being a really bitter person who's obsessed with never being good enough. 

I read an interesting article recently and it opened my eyes of how I viewed myself, how I viewed the world, and how I thought others viewed me. There's a humility in saying that I'm bad at hustling and good at design. It's not from a place of pride in which I say I'm bad at something and good at something else, because I've (sort of) given up on the idea of pleasing people or proving them wrong. That initial idea of never being good enough was a pressure I put upon myself because I was so eager to earn people's approval, for fear of hurting my pride, I felt that I was never good enough; it stifled me, it stunted me from growth. In trying to be all things to all people, I became a people-pleaser who wasn't bad a lot of things but not great at them either.

And in this new life as a freelancer or designer in between jobs or whatever you want to call it, I want to be done with that. Honestly, I've talked myself out of some jobs, because as a designer who tries to solve problems, I've told people to not hire me because it wouldn't be the best decision for them in the bigger picture. Because I believe in holistic design, I've become bad at hustling. That's good design to me; good design assesses problems and finds the best solution even if I'm not part of the process, if need be. In the end, design means nothing without people, and by putting people first, I feel that I've become a better designer. If context means everything, my Dribbble screenshot means absolutely nothing if the client can't use my work. And I think by putting people first, I do better business because people know that I'm not hustling to get their money, that I'm invested, that I'm not going to take their money and run. 

In an ideal world, I wish I was getting tons of work and was able to say no whenever something bored me, but the reality is that business is whatever for the time-being. I don't know what I'm doing this upcoming week or where my next paycheck's coming from, but at the end of the day I'm a lot happier. I'm happier not being stuck in an office "designing" for hours on end and not seeing daylight and not having conversations with people.  I love the fact that I worked 3 hours the other day and was able to have awesome conversations with friends and getting to know people better. As long as I'm able to do that, I'll be fine.

So what if I'm bad at hustling? So what if I'm not working all the time? As long as I get to design and talk to people, I think business is going great.