⏸️ Burned out

I came to a realization…

I have a confession to make. After resisting my thoughts and ignoring my feelings, I concluded that I am tired and need to pause to recover and think about the future.

I’ve been writing, podcasting, and sharing content on topics around UX Career for several years now, getting a job as a UX designer, to be more precise.

This big theme has been my main interest and focus for a very long time because I went through this myself. I wanted to help younger designers by sharing my lessons and advice from more experienced design leaders.

For the last few months, I’ve been pondering this question -

If I truly believe, that for many people (including myself) the best professional long-term goal is to be not dependent on the employer, why do I keep focusing on helping designers get hired at a company?

I’ve been a strong advocate of becoming independent, financially and geographically. With the recent AI developments, this belief has grown only stronger.

So, why do I keep creating content that’s not aligned with my personal core beliefs?

Inertia? Habit? Prior commitments?

What’s next?

Frankly, I don’t know yet. But I am certain I need a break.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about themes and activities that excite me and that I feel passionate about.

UX Career and getting hired as a UX designer are not on the list…

While I have some ideas for what I will be doing next, I want to think more about what I envision for the next 5-10 years of my life.

Most likely, I will focus on building side projects and mini-startups and documenting my process, results, and lessons learned. But there is still a bit more clarity and internal alignment I need to work on.

What I have decided for sure, is that I am stopping creating content for UX designers who want to get a job. I think I’m past this phase.

So, if you are interested only in such content, you might want to consider unsubscribing.

There are still 2 more UX Career podcast episodes scheduled to be published in August, and that’s it.

I am taking a few weeks to restore my mental state and to outline the steps for my next phase.

Enjoy the summer!