Don’t Be Scared and 4 Other Lessons from Design School | by Karen McClellan | RE: Write | Medium (1)

I’ve learned more than just these 5 things, I promise, but here are the global takeaways — the big picture concepts — that have kept me going during late nights, helped me stay focused through rough project cycles, and given me the courage to trash what’s not working.

Sketching is more important than software.

Which is another way of saying that your thought process is more important than your tools. It’s easy to get hung up in the learning curve for whatever tool you’re using. But putting all your focus there in the doing, rather than on the making, might lead you to get stuck in a limiting design process that tethers your thinking to your tools. Better to learn how to think big and let your technical skills catch up over time. Start on paper. Get comfortable sketching, doodling, thinking in visuals. That’s where the gritty design starts.

On a related note, stay agnostic about your tools.

Everyone plays favorites, but when it comes to workflow tools and software, be open-minded. When you’re open to different options (and know their strengths and weaknesses), you can choose the one that best fits the task and collaborators. This versatility will serve you well — and learning how to learn new workflows and UIs is important. You’ll be doing it the rest of your career.

There’s no savior framework or process. You just have to do the work.

A wise professor (ahem, Jesse Weaver) told me last week that one of the joys of this work is that there are no answers waiting for you out there. You have to go dig in and do the research and come up with your own answer. And a lot of times it’ll fail. Or it’ll suck. And that’s part of it.

But the more you go through that process and come out the other side, the better you’ll be. Ira Glass explains it best:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. …And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. ... It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

Turn fear into curiosity and figure out how to ask the right questions.

Just like Ira Glass was getting at, every creative is afraid. Afraid we won’t live up to our own standards (or someone elses’). Afraid we don’t have it in us. Afraid our inspiration will run out. What you should be afraid of, though, is that recurring fear. It’s preventing you from plunging ahead so you can keep getting better and learning and growing.

For me, a first step in this direction was to start figuring out how to ask questions. Digging into something new means learning a whole new vocabulary and way of thinking. Stepping into this and mapping enough of the terrain so that you’re not in the dark? It takes time. But the more you read, the more you ask, the more you just try shit for yourself — the faster you’ll get your bearings.

A second step was to acknowledge when I started to feel that fear and ask myself why. Sometimes I need to break a big scary thing down into little, doable steps. Sometimes I need a little momentum. Sometimes I need a pep talk. Sometimes I need a tequila and a nap. But the fear starts to dissipate and you can move on to make something new.

Keep the big picture in mind.

Last lesson. It’s way too easy to get lost in the details before the big picture is fleshed out. If you do this, guaranteed you’ll spend 70% more time on the project, which is 100% more likely to be an unfocused mess. The big picture — in other words, the core problem you’re trying to solve — provides the guardrails for all the tactical decisions you have to make along the way. If there’s no guiding light for these decisions, it takes more brain power, more time, and more revisions to make a less cohesive and impactful product.

So, 5 lessons: learn how to think, learn how to learn, do the work, stay curious (don’t be scared), and understand the problem.