Designer Survival Skills, Ep. 4: You Are Not Your Layers

Every designer goes through it.

You spend hours on a piece of work.

You choose every pixel with care.

You feel good - maybe even proud.

Then someone suggests a change. Or worse, scraps the whole thing.

And it hurts.

Early in my career, I took it personally every time a design failed to reach the finish line.

Every tweak felt like a critique of me.

Every discarded wireframe felt like a little funeral.

But design isn’t self-expression. It’s communication.

It’s not about your taste, it’s about someone else’s experience.

I started treating designs like draft conversations, not finished portraits.

I stopped asking “Do they like my idea?”

And started asking, “Is this helping the user? Is it solving a problem?”

Letting go of ego didn’t just make me easier to work with - it made me faster, clearer, and honestly, a lot happier.

So now, if someone wants to change it, I still ask questions,

but I no longer guard it like it’s the One Ring and I’m Gollum whispering “my precious.”

Because that file? That artboard? That layered masterpiece?

It’s not me.

It’s just where I was… before the next version.

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Next: 🚨 creative overload, too many tabs, and the art of surviving when your to-do list has gained sentience.