Lessons I Have Learned from Designing My Life
I have put together career-related insights I have learnt from living my life as a product designer. Whether you're a designer or not, these lessons likely apply.
Intro: As I write this, a day before my 28th birthday, I'm reflecting on the past year. Sitting beside a pool, I'm torn between writing a technical article and simply sharing personal lessons. To make this interesting, I've chosen to focus on career-related insights from 2023-2024. Whether you're a designer or not, these lessons likely apply.
The last time I wrote to you about my life was in 2021, while I was serving my country (Nigeria) through the National Youth Service Corps and working as a Product Marketer. Much has changed since then. I'll share these changes and my deliberate efforts to achieve them.
I think one important thing I must mention before we proceed is that you must intentionally design the kind of life you want. As much as I might want to believe in luck and acknowledge the place of God in everything I am about to tell you, He even requires us to make choices, albeit sometimes guided by Him. In the end, it is our choices that make us, not primarily luck or predestination. If you are not the acting type, you might as well stop reading now.
Recap
Fresh out of school in 2020 and faced with the realities of the lockdown, I had to make significant changes to my post-campus plans—some of which backfired. As 2021 came to a close, I resolved to focus on just three things: living, working, and creating (which I have now changed to live, love, create), I stuck with this mantra for life, and eventually, things started to fall into place.
How it started
I made a switch from product marketing to product design in September 2021. The switch was necessary because I did not find fulfilment in what I was doing at the time, and product design seemed to have what I was looking for. Although challenging, I pushed myself to make the switch by learning all I could at the time using YouTube and free resources I found online. It took me two months of consistency, which was in no way easy, to publish my first UI/UX design case study. Things spiralled quickly after the publication of my case study, faster than I imagined it would be. I got a collaborative gig through a colleague - Ayanbisi Akorede - at the time, and not long after, I got a gig to work on an insurance provider aggregation platform. That was when things changed for me. I left my former job and decided to focus on product design full-time, which turned out to be the best decision of my career life so far.
Where am I?
From wanting to work on just one project in 2021, I went on to work on three projects and got a full-time role in 2022. In a bid to give back to the community which ensured there were free resources for me to learn when I started out, I began sharing things I had learned on X (fka. Twitter) in October 2022, and my followership has grown by over 34,000 followers since then. I have spoken at several tech events, and at the top of the list was my panel at the Open Source Festival (OSCAFEST) 2023, which had about 2,500 persons in attendance. In summary, I couldn't have imagined what I have done in about three years in product design when I was struggling to learn in my little room in Osogbo in 2021. This is the main reason for this article: for me to take a personal inventory and also share what I have learned with you.
You Have to Ask to Be Given
I mentioned how I got my first gig earlier; let me tell you how it happened, and how I got my first gig. It's actually simple: I asked. One of my favorite verses of scripture is Matthew 7:7, very simple, yet very instructive.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
After publishing my first case study, as a self-taught individual, I wanted to know if I was up to any good. I shared it with the colleague I mentioned earlier; his words of encouragement were what I needed, and the fact that he gave them alongside some critical opinions on what I should do was enough for me. Weeks after I had shown it to him, he reached out for us to work on a paid project together, an act I deeply appreciate to this day, not just because I wasn't making yearly the money I got from the project, but because I was exposed to the fragility of the knowledge ladder I was standing on at the time.
The confidence boost the project gave me was very necessary when I had to take on a gig on my own that involved immense effort and required genuine creativity. I hit rock bottom creatively many times when I was designing the product; many times, I felt like returning the money the client had paid just so I could be free. I remember a particular time I contemplated going back to product marketing; it was months before I found out that there's such a thing as creative block and impostor syndrome. I got out of the pit because I reached out to people who had more experience than me on ADPList (where I am now a mentor myself). They shared numerous pieces of advice that I sifted through and found what eventually worked for me.
It wasn't long before I felt the confidence to join a company building something I am passionate about, and it wasn't far-fetched. I asked myself, “What if I could get a job at the company whose product I worked on for my first case study?” I reached out to one of the executive officers on LinkedIn to tell him about what I had done with their product. He didn't respond until I sent a follow-up message about 4 months later. When he responded, he asked for a coffee chat, and it was on that call he expressed his desire to bring me on board. I joined the company about a month later, and I have been creating pure magic with the team.
See, there are a lot of things out there waiting for you to just ask for them. Until you ask, they will keep on waiting, and at some point, someone who can ask will pick them up. To you, it will seem unfair, but to them, it will be very fair. Once you feel you have done enough work to deserve something, ask for it - you may get it or not, but in the end, you will feel good for asking and learn something.
Do It, Then Do It Again
Korty EO has a picture on her header (as of the time of writing this article) that says “we will take it to the moon, then start”. I love it, and my version of that is “Do it, then do it again”. My Twitter followers (I will never get used to calling it X) are very familiar with my obsession with practicing. If you hit search on my profile, you will probably find the word too many times. The reason for this is that it is one thing that has worked for me greatly, not just in design but in any new thing I have learned in the past three years. I basically try to learn it, then do it the first time, and do it as many times as needed again.
A friend asked me recently how I became such a good swimmer (relatively) in just 9 weeks; she was curious if I paid a tutor. I answered her, “I learned on my own. I basically pick a particular style I want to learn, watch YouTube videos, and then practice over and over, and if I hit a block, I ask for help.” This style of learning is not just for a particular time; if you want, you can learn the same way.
These days, whenever anyone comes to me saying they would love to learn design, I have a particular YouTube playlist I give them to learn from. If they are able to watch all the videos through, it's enough of a test of their tenacity and will to learn. After doing this, I basically give them sets of designs to replicate daily. I have done this over and over again. Want to guess my finding? Yes, you are right, they improved. Whenever I am done doing this with anyone, they are usually amazed at their own growth; it's always almost unbelievable.
Repetition is the principle of all learning. This is something that has been scientifically proven, so why go against the science? If you repeat a particular process many times, your brain recognizes it and gets better at it. If you have anything you have been yearning to learn, all you have to do is do it the first time, then do it over and over again. I have learned about five new skills this year, and this is the principle I used in learning all of them. If you feel you are not good enough on any particular subject, it is because you have not done it enough times. When you practice, you will realize areas you need to grow in and master the areas you are already good at.
Iterate, Don’t Be Arrogant
Whenever I am designing, I usually have a page (in all my design files) I call ‘trash’ - this is where I put all the designs that I make but don't look good at the time. I do this because I have realized that I usually go back to this page to pick some of the things I thought were trash at the time. When I created them, they always looked like mistakes, they looked useless, but some of them have formed crucial components of the resulting products.
Mistakes are a crucial part of life. Mistakes are not bugs in the program of life; they are designed into it for specific purposes. So instead of fighting them, I think it is even more important that we embrace them. Instead of focusing on not making mistakes, focus on adjusting very fast. It will surprise you to learn that the man the Bible recorded as the man after God's heart (David) wasn't the holiest in the Bible; he was the man who made mistakes but was also very quick to correct them. Life is meant to be lived, not avoided. Focus on doing things like I mentioned earlier, and when you do things, you will make a lot of mistakes.
“I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.”
Self-awareness is very important. You must always be able to tell where you stand on every subject you hold dear. You have to constantly evaluate what you doing, find room for improvement, seek help if needed, and make rapid adjustments. The fact that we haven't lived life before means we always need as much help as we can get, and you wouldn't even know what you don't know if you don't act. There's a story I usually tell about myself whenever I find the opportunity: one of the tools I (and many other designers) use most on Figma today is the auto-layout, and I did not even know of its existence until after my first year in design. I only found out about it because I worked on a collaborative project with a senior designer who pointed out that my design was slow and could be faster if I used auto-layout. When I started using it, my design speed increased tenfold.
Be big on doing things fast, not avoiding mistakes, and making adjustments when necessary. Arrogant people always phase out because they are too comfortable with what worked. Some companies and people have phased out just because they refuse to adjust when their foolery or ignorance was called out.
Prepare for Sunny Days, Learn Finance
I mentioned how the first gig I got from designing products was more than my annual salary at the time. It was not a lot, but for me - it was unprecedented; it wasn't something I looked forward to. When I started learning design, it wasn't the money that motivated me (although money is now at the top of my list of motivators). Throughout my time of learning, I never even imagined what my dream salary should look like. When I got the payment for my first design gig, I did not touch it for a while; I was just looking at it in my account and admiring the figures.
When you start taking steps in the right direction, you might make money you never thought possible, so you must prepare for such days if you really expect them. I know all you have mostly heard is to prepare for rainy days, but it is as important for you to prepare for bountiful days. I remember reading a news article some days ago, and it made me remember the same scenario in the Bible where the Egyptians stocked up their barns when there was plenty. Plan for when you are going to have plenty so that you don't splurge and lavish needlessly.
If you are from my side of the world, finance was probably one of the things you were not taught in school. You probably learned the concept of tax, interest, and stocks outside the four walls of the formal education system. I remember explaining the concept of mortgage to a friend recently; it wasn't his fault for not knowing, he probably wasn't taught and never found a need to learn it.
I remember losing all the money I made in my first six months after school because I lacked the money management skill. In preparation for the bountiful days, go out of your way to learn about personal finance. Follow people like Oluwatosin Olaseinde, read books like “The Psychology of Money” to equip yourself with the skills needed to manage your money even as you plan to make it. I am sharing these because I have seen people who went from earning their dream salary to struggling to pay rent after the 2021 tech lay-offs happened.
Write Your Own Story
I should probably sleep now to enjoy my day, but completing this letter to you is very important. Whenever I'm on a panel or a podcast, the host always asks, “What last words do you have for our audience?” In the same spirit, I want to tell you: Go out there and write your own story - don’t let anyone write it for you or tell you something that was written for you to follow unless they are God. Be your own media house, and write the story you would be happy to read.
One self-evaluation I love is asking yourself this question: “If your life were showing in a cinema, would you be happy to pay to see it? Would you be proud of what you've created in the world? Would your life be an exciting story? Would it be one filled with tragedy or life” However your story goes, it’s because you chose it (inaction itself is a choice).
Let me close with the words of a wise man, one of the best of us at envisioning the future:
“People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Don’t forget, if you want to move your career forward, you have to ask, practice relentlessly, iterate as fast as possible, and prepare for the day when you have plenty.
Until I write to you again, send me your prayers and wishes on this birthday of mine, and keep creating the future you want to live in.
Footnote1
Nice read! Happy belated birthday, and thank you for all you do for the design community. God bless you.
Happy Birthday Sir.
This article is inspiring. I should write my own story.