Beating imposter syndrome as a designer
You're coasting along feeling good about your design skills. You're producing good work on demand, with ease. You decide to see what's going on today on design twitter and... there's an army of incredibly talented designers out there producing masterpieces without batting an eyelid.
They're doing better and more interesting work than you. They're making way more than you, working at cooler companies than you, and they have better hair than you.
You start to wonder whether you're as good as you think. In fact, you're starting to wonder whether you actually suck as a designer.
Don't worry, you're not alone. We've all been there at some point. But that feeling needs to be addressed.
Why? Because confidence lets you sell your designs with conviction, take creative risks, and gain the credibility to influence meaningful strategic choices.
It's a very important part of the inner game of being a designer. So how can we cultivate creative confidence? First, we have to understand where it comes from.
The source of confidence
Confidence comes from competence and integrity. Competence takes time and effort to build, but integrity is always available to you.
Integrity is an incredibly overloaded term. What do I mean by integrity here?
- Keeping promises to yourself and others
- Putting sufficient mental effort and time into your work
- Being disciplined about improving your skills over time
Competence is a moving target. Integrity is a much more attainable and durable source of confidence. Did you show up and spend enough time working on a design? You said you would explore three variations of this flow. Did you knock out all three? Have you taken steps to level up your design skills this week?
These are things you can do whether it's your first time opening Figma or whether you're a design god. It's a source of confidence that stays with you regardless of circumstance.
Some practical advice
Slow and steady progress over long periods of time breeds excellence. If you make and keep small promises to yourself, you will accumulate competence over time.
I would start out by simply setting aside time for improving your skills. Don't worry too much about working on the perfect thing. First, just carve out time consistently. I would do it early in the day before other tasks and obligations crowd out your opportunity for improvement.
It's hard to systematically improve at putting sufficient mental effort into your work and keeping promises. I would suggest you keep a journal to track what promises you're making and how much mental effort you're putting in to your work. Assess yourself each day on how you did and sketch out how you can do better tomorrow.
You'd be shocked at how much progress you can make on elusive, crucial character goals using a simple journal and some earnest reflection.
A corollary on interpersonal confidence
Confidence is not just about feeling good about yourself when you go on design twitter. It's much more about being willing to advocate for good design on teams of people, being able to sell your ideas, and feeling empowered to take design risks.
If you're trying to sell an idea to your engineering team and they're consistently unconvinced, you need to really ask yourself if you did the work.
Did you really take the time to explore all the possibilities so that you could pre-empt their objections? Did you proactively reach out to them so you could understand their constraints? Were you very intentional with all of your design choices so that you could justify them under pressure?
If you did all those things, you'd have much more confidence in pushing back and arguing firmly in good faith for great design.
And if you did all those things and you're still not convincing, then perhaps it's the skill of influence that you need to focus on cultivating.
The inner citadel
A good poker player judges themselves on how they played their hand rather than on the outcome. As a designer, you don't control other people's perceptions, team dynamics, design trends, changes in your tech stack. In fact, you don't even control your own skill level. You can't snap your fingers and become a design god just because you will it. It takes time and can be a somewhat non-linear process.
But you can play your hand in the best possible way every day. That's where you should focus and that should be the wellspring of your confidence. If you do that, you'll gain overwhelming competence over the long term. But more importantly, you'll be playing a deeper and more meaningful game that will save you from life as a hungry ghost, chasing moving targets that you can never ultimately reach.
Become the type of person who would rather play the game well and lose than play it badly and win. You'll be happier and more confident for it.