22 Things A Product Designer Should Do Before Getting Bored

When you don’t know what to do. Make a list.

1. Open Notion. Find something you can document.
2. Check courses on Coursera. Highly recommends to up your data skills.
3. Scroll through Dribbble. Get your dopamine shot.
4. Review portfolios on Behance. Your anxiety should go up.
5. Iterate or break everything and restart on your portfolio. I’ve made mine using Notion; you should consider it too.
6. Find new design tools. Or plugins.
7. Interview teammates. Get inspired by their insights.
8. Call your power users too.
9. Read research papers on HCI. ArXiv is your weapon of choice.
10. Update your design system with new components you’ve previously used on mockups. Or up your nested symbol game.
11. Clean your desk.
12. Clean your design files with a coherent naming convention.
13. Don’t you have a naming convention? And that’s a workshop with a dev that you have to organize.
14. Make some coffee for your team. But do it the ZEN WAY.
15. Ask sales if they don’t need a little design work. Maybe a deck redesign?
16. No matter on which team you are. Tweet on how the design tool you use is superior, and be biased like everyone else. Welcome to Design Twitter.
17. Browse design books on Amazon, design-related movies on Netflix.
18. Configure a max-out +$50k Mac Pro or a Cybertruck. To get the feeling. Then, screenshot and post it on your socials.
19. Prepare a workshop with your teammates to get the creative juice back.
20. But you will need more sharpies and post-its. Order them now.
21. While waiting for your design care package to arrive, tell your story in your journal or on a blog post. It depends on how thick is your skin.
22. Even, write down a list of what you could do, instead of procrastinating. Like me. Right now.

Have I forgotten something?