Bonk Against The Boundaries

This week on Overtime, we discuss whether remote work is the new normal after more companies announce permanent work-from-home policies. Then, Meg helps us embrace all of the ways we’ve changed as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

Last but not least, Meg helps us navigate those icky feelings of impostor syndrome while encouraging us to redefine the pre-determined labels of what it means to be a designer.

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Transcript:

Meg: Hey hey Hey! It’s me, your host, Meg “Why Do I Have So Many Sets of Tongs” Lewis, and welcome back to Overtime. As you probably know, this is Dribbble’s weekly podcast where I give you the design news you didn’t know you wanted to hear and give you the tips you need to create your very best work. This week on Overtime, companies announce a permanent work from home policy, and I get real curious about how location and where we live relates to our sense of community. Plus, it’s only been two months, but I’ve changed so much: I’m now a person who buys wind chimes. And I get real about imposter syndrome and how finally calling myself a comedian is allowing me to have a more fulfilling career.

Are you a member of Dribbble Pro? I am and I love it. With Dribbble Pro, I can create a little portfolio site for myself, I can scour a bunch of freelance opportunities, and on those days where I think all is lost, and all the clients have moved on without me, I can look for full-time jobs there too. I can even get discounts on the design tools I need to create my best work. They have deals, they have more deals, and also deals! Dribbble Pro is the number one place for designers and teams to find full-time and freelance work. You can access the freelance projects board to browse and message potential clients from Dribbble’s exclusive list of projects. I was shocked at how many projects were actually in there. It’s perfect for freelancers, it’s great for agencies, and even good for moonlighters. Mmmmm, to work under moonlight sounds romantic. Sign up at Dribbble.com/Pro.

Okay, let’s get right into the news today. So, as you’ve noticed, a lot of companies are announcing that they are going to do a permanent work-from-home dealy-bob. Like, Twitter has made this announcement, Square has made this announcement, Shopify, lots of companies are saying that they’re just going to go remote and work from home from now on. Even Facebook has announced that they’re probably going to do that too, which is a big deal, I guess. But let’s talk about the issue that we’re all realizing is probably going to happen, where it means that companies like Facebook, they’ve already said this is probably going to happen, is they’re now going to be looking at pools of candidates from all around the country, maybe from all around the world. And maybe they’ll start selecting candidates from smaller towns, smaller cities, where they can get away with paying these people less money than they’d be paying them in Silicon Valley.

And that’s a bummer. As someone, me, I used to live in New York and now I live in Minneapolis, I’m still charging the same amount that I’ve always charged, and that means a lot of times that I can’t work for local Minneapolis companies, because I’m charging too much money. But that’s just because I don’t want to take a pay cut. And I know it’s hard to talk about money, I know this is bleh and everybody has different feelings about it. Look, I get it. I truly understand why you would pay somebody differently based on the cost of living of the city they live in. But I also don’t love the fact that we just blanket pay people less even though they have the same skill set. And okay, yes, maybe you’re paying them more to commute to your office, which is like you’re winning a little bit more in that scenario, so you give them more money to compensate for that. Okay? But I feel like if your company has the budget to pay people what you were paying them before, then keep it up, right?

But I really want to know what’s going to happen in this scenario of say, the majority of companies that were requiring people to come into their offices prior are now saying, “Nope, nope, nope, you can work from home.” Does that mean there’s going to be some sort of mass move away from cities? Especially certain cities that are employing a lot of these workers like San Francisco, or Seattle, for example, maybe in New York? Maybe Austin? I don’t know. So, does that mean that people are going to start moving away? Because I’m already hearing a lot of chatter on Twitter, from people who live in San Francisco or live in the Bay Area that are like, “Oh, now I don’t have to be here anymore? I’m going to go somewhere else!”

And of course, people are saying that. It really bums me out that people dislike the places where they live so much, or that you feel like you have to move to a city just for work. I know that’s a thing people do. And maybe this is giving people the freedom to finally feel more fulfilled where they live, which I love, because that’s one of the many reasons why I’ve always worked for myself. I love my freedom. I like to be able to move around a lot. I am a collector of cities, that’s why I live in Minneapolis. I just love it here, so I wanted to live here, and I’ll probably go live somewhere else eventually, because I just want to live in every city.

And I’ve also heard a lot of chatter about how we approach the cities we live in. We often, especially when you move somewhere for work, we think of a city kind of more as a commodity, I’m hearing, than a community. And I think we’re getting a lot of that approach here right now with companies announcing work from home policies that people are like, “I don’t need the city anymore at all,” because we weren’t thinking of our city as a community, which is a really great point. And I’m also hearing from people that they do think of their city as their community. So, they’re excited about these companies moving to work from home permanently, because that means they have more options because they love the city they live in. They love their community and they don’t want to leave. So, this is actually a great thing for them because it means that they will be able to expand their job pool, which is great. That is a great thing.

So, a lot more questions than answers here, of course, because we aren’t able to see the clearer picture. Because the future is so unknown, there’s so many what ifs and what’s going to happens and a lot of questions that we’re all asking right now, and I think that this is a really great indicator. But I think there’s also a lot of people panicking, because so many of us do not like working from home, right? Working from home is not that healthy for some of us. We don’t enjoy it. We don’t get our social time. We love having face to face interactions. And I think it’s important to know that just because we’re all stuck at home right now, we’re all working from home right now, and the term right now is working from home, it doesn’t always have to be that way.

So, even if your company has a work-from-home permanently policy, that doesn’t mean that you’re always going to have to work from home. This is why shared workspaces exist, this is why co-working spaces exist. Even if they can’t be in operation right now, like for me, I have a shared workspace that I own that we just had to announce is permanently closing because we can’t pay our rent anymore, because we don’t have any paying members, because they can’t come to our space. So, it’s a big old mess. But when things start to open back up, and it is safe and healthy for us to work near and around other people, and maybe more companies are doing a work from home policy permanently, maybe it just means that we can open up those new community shared workspaces, these little small businesses that we’re creating for ourselves or our friends and for our community, maybe those will thrive once again, and that will be very exciting.

So, it kind of just gives you the ability to create and cultivate a community that you want to have rather than thinking of your communities as more of a commodity. Whether that’s thinking of the office you normally work in as a commodity, now you have the freedom to choose your community, to choose the people you want to work around, the environment you want to work in, this is exciting. It’s giving you some freedom back into your life. Even though we don’t have that now, I think whenever you get worried about looking to the future, because it’s such a question mark, it’s such an unknown, remember that if your company that you work at, or perhaps a future company you might work at, has a permanent work from home policy or they become a remote company, maybe there’s a simple reframe of realizing that it gives you the freedom to create your own community, to choose who you get to work around, to choose what city you live in, that makes you truly fulfilled where you feel like you have a community surrounding you, and I think that’s a pretty exciting thing. So, I know there’s a lot of questions here. There’s a lot of uncertainty and unknowns, but I think just realizing that you are in charge of your own fulfillment, you are the only one that’s advocating for your own success in the way that you can. So, realizing, and reframing, and finding the silver linings to realize that permanent work from home is bad in many ways, but you are in charge of what that means for you and what that looks like for you, and you can create your own community out of all of this, which I think is pretty cool.

Okay, with that in mind, let’s go into the topic that I want to discuss, which is the fact that, oh my gosh, it’s been two months since we’ve been isolating and so much has changed. I don’t know about you, but I keep thinking like, “Oh, my life is passing by. I feel like I’m wasting so much of my life just being stuck in my home all day. Help me, I just want this to all be over because my life is passing by.” And it’s just so dramatic, these thoughts I have in my head, I just keep spiraling deep into these thoughts, these thought patterns, and it’s only been two months in the grand scheme of our lives. Two months is hardly anything, right?

It’s only been two months and all these companies are making these dramatic statements about “Nothing will be the same from now on.” And nothing will be the same probably, right? Because so much has happened. Our businesses are impacted so much. After two months, I had to shut down my shared workspace. It’s a really big deal. Everything feels different. Everything is changing so much. I’m sure you’re noticing that so much has changed about you. So much has changed about me. I’m utilizing what I have already so much more than I ever did before.

Rather than before, I think things were just – man, I was just consuming a lot more before. I was going out, I was doing things, I was purchasing things, things were moving fast. And now I’m just utilizing what I have. I’m utilizing my kitchen, I’m cooking more, I live in a house so I’m gardening. Me – gardening. I bought a wind chime yesterday; I’ve become a wind chime person. I’ve become a person that fills my bird feeder up every day. I look at the birds, I’ve started to name them. Earlier this week, I made fresh ginger ale. I mean I’m just making stuff with what I have, and it’s like this ability that I’m having to slow down and appreciate what I’ve always had that I never really slowed down and appreciated before. And of course, with all of this stuff, some days, I feel completely burnt out. I can’t make anything, I can’t seem to be productive, everything is a mess. And in those days, all I do is I listen to myself. I assess my own thoughts, and I realize my brain is not having it today. So, rather than fighting with my own brain and pushing against this wall that I’m clearly not going to get through, I just listen to my brain and say, “You know what, I’m going to relax, I’m going to focus on something totally different. I’m going to give my brain what it wants right now. And eventually, my brain will come around, I’m going to be patient and when my brain comes around, I’m going to get back to it. I’m going to be productive when my brain wants to be productive.”

And sometimes these little chunks of burnout last for a few hours, sometimes they last for a couple days. Sometimes they last for longer than I’d like for many days, for weeks. And in those times, I do what I need to do to take care of myself and to give my brain what it needs to feel protected and safe and to be cultivated so that I can feel better later on. And what I found works for me really well is adaptogens, I found [they] work really well to keep my stress and my anxiety levels low. I know a lot of people use CBD. I’ve never found that it worked for me, which is a big bummer, because it works so well for other people. But not for me, it’s such a such a shame. But adaptogens have worked really well for me. I also am not shy to say that I am on a prescription for anxiety medication which I take when I need to. And that works really well for me too. But there are so many ways that we can make our brains feel better, whether that’s mindfulness or meditation, whether that’s just watching your comfort TV show for a little while, doing your comfort activity. Giving your brain what it needs in that moment, whether it’s actual drugs, whether it’s adaptogens and herbs, whether it’s watching TV, playing videogames, that’s okay. What’s important is that you’re kind to yourself and you give your brain what it needs and stop comparing yourself to others, which we will get more into later on.

But, yes, everything is changing so much. So, it’s okay. It’s okay to rely on what you have around you to keep yourself entertained. And it’s okay that you’re changing, even though, you know, the world is chaos. It’s okay if you’re thriving in little ways, even though the world is chaos. It’s okay. And what I’m really enjoying right now is that I’m adopting all these new things into my daily routine, into my life, into my career. I’m adopting these new things that are helping me fight for myself because right now when client work is low, and opportunities are low, I have myself still. I still have this skill set, and I don’t need to wait on brands’ or clients’ validation in order for myself to succeed. So, I’m taking this as a really fun opportunity to utilize myself, my own skill set, all of the things that I have at my disposal as a designer, as a creative, in creating things that I don’t need anybody else for. I’m using the tools on my computer. I’m using social media to put these things out there, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, all of these places, I’m utilizing all the skills I have and my personality in order to create things for the world that help lift other people up, help them shine, and also helped me to set a really exciting foundation for myself. So that way, once the world opens back up and clients start wanting to pay me again, then I have a great foundation so that whenever these things happen, and people will, you know, pay me to do stuff, I can really soar, and I can really move fast because I’ve set this foundation for myself. And if you follow me online, you probably are noticing that happening. I’m doing a lot of weird stuff. I’m doing all kinds of stuff I always wanted to do, but never really found the time to do before. I’m utilizing this additional free time I have, I’m using the fact that I’m stuck inside with less money, as a way to finally create these things that I always wanted to make for myself. And it’s actually creating a career for me that’s so much more fulfilling than clients before were ever able to give me because I’m doing stuff that’s truer to myself.

So, this is a lot, I feel like it’s been a therapy session for me because I’m just dumping my feelings at you. But I’m doing that because I’m hoping that you can relate, and that you can look internally and maybe these are some prompts for you to take for yourself to look internally and apply some of these things to your life and your career. Because you know, everything is changing so quickly. It’s only been a couple of months. But that’s a really big deal inside of our heads because our brains are all chaos right now. And it’s the Wild West out there inside of our brains and outside in the real world, and it’s okay with however you’re feeling. So, hopefully my story has given you a little bit of encouragement to realize that you are not alone.

Alright, so a request that I’ve been getting a lot is the concept of imposter syndrome. And I think that we all deal with it in so many ways, and I think that this pandemic is causing everything to get so much worse and our brains are just losing control, actual losing of control is happening. So, what I want to say about impostor syndrome is a little bit about my own story because I have dealt with it my whole career. And sometimes looking at other creatives, you’re like, “How are they so confident? What’s going on in their brain? Why can’t I be like that?” And I just want you to know that everybody feels this, everybody has struggled with feeling like an imposter or feeling like they’re not good enough, like they don’t belong, like they can’t, they’re not a part of the identity they want to be a part of.

And there’s so much similarity between identity and why we experience imposter syndrome, especially as creatives who our identity and who we are is so tied into the work that we do, right? And just like you, just like everyone, I experience this a lot. I compare myself to other creatives all the time, even though I am a teacher, I am a coach, I am a person who helps other people to get past this stuff, I still experience it constantly. I constantly feel jealous of other creatives that get opportunities that I wanted or that I want, or even the opportunities I don’t want, I still get jealous about. I still experience this thing where I feel like I call myself something that I don’t feel like I should be able to call myself. It’s all so complicated.

So, for me, the issues that I have with my identity, like for example, like you, I am not just one thing. You know, I’m not just a designer, there are so many other parts of me that make me amazing. So many other things I have to offer the world, whether it’s through my personality, or through my skill set, there’s so much that I can do that’s outside of design, right? But we’re taught so early on as children, that we’re supposed to fit inside of a box of the type of person that the world expects us to be. So when it comes to our identity of us as people, like, you know, if you’re a little girl, like I was, you were taught what a girl and what a woman is, and you’re just supposed to be that, right? And of course, that’s not who we are as humans. We’re so complex. We have different personalities that make us unlike anybody else in the world, especially combined with our skill set and a career aspect. So, how in the world are we supposed to fit into a box of what a label prescribes for us? Because we’re so much more than that, right?

So, I, like you are, am so much more than just a designer or an illustrator or whatever that box is that I’m supposed to be putting myself into. And for me in my career, whenever I think about that, it’s been so hard for me because I compare myself to other designers constantly, looking at other designers and saying, “Wow, they’re so great with their technical Photoshop skill set,” or like, “Wow, that designer is really great at hand lettering with their logos. I am so garbage at it, and it makes me feel bad about my work.” So, staring at other people’s work actually made me feel bad about myself, which sounds so silly, because why should somebody else thriving be a bad thing? Right? Of course, it shouldn’t be.

So, in thinking about my career, I’ve really struggled throughout the years at realizing that I was so interested in all of these things outside of design and doing a lot of things that were beyond design in many capacities. But it didn’t make any sense for me to do those things because I am a designer, designers don’t do those things. Like for me, I was really always interested in performing, I was really always interested in being funny and doing comedy stuff, you know, I was interested in writing in an informal way. And the critique I was getting from other designers was like, “I don’t know, I don’t really see that fitting into your design work,” or, “You write about your work too funny and to informally, you need to be a little bit more professional with you’re writing style, Meg, in order to be taken seriously.”

And so, every time I would try to bonk against the boundaries of what a designer meant, I would get a lot of pushback from people. And of course, whenever you’re getting advice from people you trust and love and that are successful, you listen to it, right? We’re told very early on that we’re supposed to study what other people are doing that are successful and just emulate what they do. That’s how you’d be successful, right? So of course, I was struggling a lot with that. And so as I got a little bit more comfortable with pushing outside of the, you know, the boundary of what a designer could mean and starting to incorporate new things that were just fun for me, and to my life, and to my career, it became instantly more fulfilling. I instantly had a career that was so much more fulfilling to me because I was getting out all of these amazing aspects of myself that make me who I am.

So, a lot of things like goofy dancing videos, just silly dumb videos of me doing silly dumb stuff all the time, that stuff was really fulfilling for me. Writing and being informal in my writing style and writing the way that I talk in my own voice was so fulfilling for me. And so, I started to realize, like, what is the point of being unfulfilled in my career. I kind of just want to do things the way I want to do them. And that means doing things in a way that nobody else is doing.

So, as I’ve gone on in my career, and I’ve started to incorporate a lot more of those things, it’s become vastly more fulfilling for me. And so, as I’ve learned to embrace all of these things about me that make me unique and different than other designers, it’s helped me to actually embrace those things a lot more. But what I think is really exciting is it’s helped me to embrace the qualities in other designers, other creatives that make them different and unique compared to me. So, now when I look at a designer who has a great hand lettering style, and they can make beautiful script logos, which I cannot, I don’t think, “Wow, I suck, I can’t do that.” I think, “Wow, that person can do something so unique to them, that only they can do so well. Good for them.” Because now I’m able to recognize and identify what I can do that’s unique to me, that makes me incredibly talented and amazing.

So, for me, I’ll tell you what those things are. I am great at very expressive typography, I’m great at expression in general in my work, I’m great at clean design, I’m great at color, very good at color. I’m great at showing personality and emotion, positive emotion in my work. And I know these things about my work. So now I can be very excited about the things I’m really good at and start shedding away all these little points of jealousy that I felt before because I was feeling guilty about, and shame about not being good at certain things. So now I’m just embracing what I’m good at. And that means stuff outside of design as well as inside of design.

So outside of design, I’m great at, I don’t know, I’m great at not taking things very seriously, which means that I can approach traditionally boring, mundane topics, and make them really light-hearted and fun. I’m great at taking risks, I’m great at adapting to change, I’m great at so many things. I’m great at writing informally, as we know, I keep saying that. There are so many things outside of design that I’m great at. And so, breaking those things into my work has been very important for me. But when I do that, when I’m pushing past the boundary of what being a designer traditionally means, it means that I have to call myself other things that aren’t just a designer. So now, I call myself a designer, a comedian, performer, an educator, all of these words that are beyond the label that was prescribed to me when I was in school, I now have to call myself. Because it’s true. I’m doing things that are in those spaces. I’m doing comedy, I’m doing performance, I’m teaching people.

So now I’m calling myself all these words, and they’re just words. They’re just terms, right? But I struggle with that so much to this day. I struggle with the fact that I’m calling myself a comedian as of lately, because I see a comedian as someone who’s like, on stage doing stand-up, someone who’s on SNL. We have a definition in our head of what a comedian is, and that’s exactly that same problem I was discussing before, we have that pre-determined box of what that label means and it’s just not true. People can exist outside of that box and still fit under that label, right? If I can do that as a designer, I can sure as heck do that as a comedian or as a performer or as an educator.

So, you can call yourself whatever the heck you want. People care a heck of a lot less than you do, right? It’s important for you to just first identify what you’re good at, because it’s going to look a lot different than the prescribed notion of what that label means in your head. None of us fit inside of a box. We’re all extremely complex humans that are good at so many things outside of the labels that have been prescribed to us. Of course, we are. So, you are very much allowed to call yourself whatever you want to call yourself if you work inside those areas. And you can redefine any label that you want to redefine, you can make up your own label for yourself if you want to, you could be doing something unlike what anybody else is doing, because you are unlike anybody else in the world. That’s so exciting to me.

And again, once you’re able to identify what these things are about yourself, create a career and a life that’s a true reflection, a true offering of every single skill that you have every single, weird, unique part of your personality, if you can create a career that’s a reflection of that, you are not going to fit in any kind of box that already exists. And that’s very exciting. But what I find really, really exciting about that is once you’re able to embrace yourself for everything that you can do and start creating a career for yourself unlike anybody that exists, the really cool thing is that you start to feel less jealous. You start to compare yourself to other people a heck of a lot less because there’s no comparison anymore. You’re doing something unlike what anybody else can do. And you’re able to see in other people, that they also have the makings for a career that’s unlike anybody else for offerings, for services that are unlike what anybody else can do. Job descriptions that are unlike what you can do, unlike what anyone can do, because it’s unique to their personality and skill set.

So, we think finally embracing what makes you absolutely unique, amazing and original, and utilizing those things to create a fulfilling life or career for yourself, is what you need to do first to internally feel so great about yourself and what makes you different from others, because it naturally allows you to see what’s unique and amazing about other people, which just sheds away the comparison trap. It just melts away any kind of jealousy because you start to embrace humans for what makes them different from you, which I think is a really beautiful thing.

So, yes, that is my take on imposter syndrome. That is my take on comparison, on identity, on jealousy. You are a complex individual with a bunch of personality traits, a bunch of skills, that combined make you a human that’s unlike anyone else that exists. So, how in the world would you ever fit into a pre-determined box of what an identity should be? So, go out there, create your own identity for yourself, redefine what labels mean, and just make something that’s incredibly fulfilling and that’s a reflection of what makes you, you.

I would love to end this episode with a call from our hotline because it’s been a little while, and this caller has a very important question.

Caller: Hey Meg, quick question: how would you describe the job of a graphic designer to a kindergartener?

Meg: Oh, this is so, so fun. And I feel like I could see design Twitter having a little argument about this question. So, my answer might be different from your answer, and that’s okay. I would advise that the kindergarteners ask multiple designers the same question to see what different answers they get. And I would imagine everyone’s answers would be very long and convoluted and confusing.

So, if I were sitting down with a kid, I think that it immediately channels my kind of childlike sense of wonder when it comes to the work that we get to do. So, I think I’d use a lot of words like “We get to,” “We have the fortune to,” “We have the privilege to do this.” I think I would say something like, “Well, my job, I get to use my computer and use photography and typography, and colors, and shapes, and I get to communicate extremely complex notions, simplistically and visually, for audiences all over the world to gather their own meaning from, depending on their unique point of view and the way that they see the world.”

And now, I know that definition is different from how a lot of you would explain what graphic design is to a kindergartener, so I would love to know what your thoughts are on it. I think whenever, I don’t know, it kind of seems like a pretty empathetic exercise for me to go through and makes me feel pretty warm and gushy about being a designer in this regard, because explaining it to a kindergartner helps you to see, I think helps me to see at least, the magic and the wonder in the work that we get to do. It’s pretty great.

And that’s it for this beautiful, lovely, wonderful episode of Overtime. Of course, we are still taking voicemail calls so if you want to call our hotline, the phone number is 1-833-DEZIGNZ. That’s 1-833-DEZIGNZ spelled with some “Z’s” in a super weird way. 1-833-DEZIGNZ. I will not answer, no one will answer, it goes straight to a voicemail. You just leave your little voicemail, tell me how you’re feeling. Do you have questions? Do you have thoughts? And your voicemail plus my response might be featured on a future episode of Overtime. Very exciting. So of course, if you want to continue the conversation with us, use #DribbbleOvertime, or tweet me, tag me, call me, beep me, whatever you want. My handle is @YourBuddyMeg. Okay, bye-bye now, hear me next week!