Take It One Day At a Time
Four pieces of advice for incoming CMCI Studio students
I fully planned on a relaxing evening the night before my last classes in graduate school. I am instead pulling an all-nighter — typical. How I started is how I’m ending. As I anxiously tie up loose ends, my advice is as much for the new students as it is for myself.
1. Sometimes, good enough is good enough.
It’s very tempting and easy to allow your perfectionist tendencies to control you as a designer. Your work feels as if it is never quite good enough and that you could always make it better. Unfortunately, you will realize you don’t have all the time in the world and that with several rigorous classes per semester, you will sometimes have to let good enough be good enough. That will not feel good and you may agonize over your decision hours and days after turning in an assignment. Your instructor may even call you out and ask that you do better next week.
Don’t let any of these outcomes prevent you from a) being proud of your effort and b) honoring that you are a human being, not a robot, and that sometimes what you create won’t feel like your 100% best effort. That’s okay. You have a whole life to live, not just the role of a student. To go along with this is one of my favorite phrases — #DoneIsFun. Repeat this to yourself often.
2. Stay in the present moment.
There are two books I wish I read before starting this graduate program, or at least during Winter Break. They are the subject of these two middle points. My mom suggested I read Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” just as I was entering the summer session. I was so overwhelmed and knew that a spiritual book was the exact thing I DID NOT need at that time. However, this book has brought me an immeasurable amount of peace and I’m only one-quarter of the way in.
I bring this concept and book up now because I wish I would have stayed in the present moment much more often than I did over the past year. I was extremely anxious and worried about my abilities throughout most of the program, a stereotypical first-born perfectionist with loving but critical parents. I never felt my work was good enough, which meant that I wasn’t good enough. I was a mess.
If I could have stepped back and examined my emotions, I would have seen that my mind was either in the past (“Why didn’t I just stay up longer to finish that Craigslist app? Mine looks so unfinished compared to the others”) or in the future (“I really hope I get a good job. I’ve spent so many nights doing schoolwork and spent so much money, what if this doesn’t end up working out?”). In reality, all I ever have is the present moment. Nothing else exists. When I come back to this present moment, and keep refocusing my mind whenever it wanders, I enjoy peace. I think I could’ve cut short many anxious nights had I understood this truth sooner.
3. Cut out distraction with a fierce vengeance.
The second book I wish I read sooner is “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. I read his book for college students years ago but hadn’t kept up with his writings since then. He was recently interviewed on this podcast and I was enraptured from the beginning. I think I went to Barnes & Noble the very next day (there were over 80 people on the combined wait lists for Denver and Boulder public libraries, goodness to gracious) and bought the book. This is another life-transforming book for me.
Newport’s thesis is that the ability to learn hard things quickly and excel at them, particularly as it applies to professional endeavors, is becoming increasingly rare as we lose the ability to focus and do “deep work.” Most compellingly for graduate students in my opinion, he posits that those who can do this will be highly valuable in the economic marketplace. Read that sentence again. Go get the book. And from the very first assignment, ruthlessly time-block your work hours to focus without distraction. It will pay off.
I knew there were times during the past year that I couldn’t stay focused on my work and felt that it was taking me way too long to complete certain assignments but wasn’t sure what to do about it. This struggle to focus became even more critical for me over the tough four weeks I spent rapidly learning (and failing at learning) JavaScript and how to use React/Gatsby. It has been one of the hardest things I’ve done this year because of the compressed timeline to learn a really difficult thing like computer programming. Reading this book has instilled in me a fierce resolve to give my work 100% of my attention and focus, ruthlessly culling distraction and quick dopamine hits (looking at you social media) in order to accomplish difficult tasks. Start doing this sooner than I did.
4. Take it one day at a time.
This is what I want to leave you with. If you’re like me at all, and can relate to point #2, then you are probably always somewhere in the future. You are imagining an ideal outcome (or maybe the worst, scariest one depending on your mood) and in some ways, holding your joy and contentment for when that outcome happens. You may feel that you have a plan all worked out and that things will just carry on as planned until the intended result occurs. That is not how grad school will go, I guarantee it.
Holding on tightly to a mental image of how things will go/should go/must go is an easy way to feel frustrated, upset, disillusioned, and anxious for most of the year. And when I write this, I don’t mean to stop envisioning positive outcomes or believing for the best. I am referring to that tight grip of control many of us try to exert on a future that hasn’t occurred yet. It’s impossible to control, yet we try — to our own detriment. Here’s a quote from a video I watched recently and is the inspiration for this piece of advice:
“Taking it day by day means reducing the degree of control we expect to be able to bring to bear on the uncertain future. It means recognizing we have no serious capacity to exercise our will on a span of years and should not therefore disdain a chance to secure one or two minor wins in the hours ahead of us.” — The School of Life
This ties in well with point #2 about staying in the present moment. Instead of looking so far ahead in the semester or year, and feeling frustrated when something seems to derail those daydreams — such as it taking longer to learn a design program than you thought or five failed app deployments in a row (my current sad state) — recognize the opportunity to find peace and fulfillment in the present moment by just taking the next right step. What is the very next thing you can do that moves you closer to that goal but is achievable in the short-term? What will be enough progress for just today? Answer that for yourself throughout this program and I think you’ll be the better for it.
I feel like a grandma reflecting back on her life with wistfulness and wisdom as I write this post. I guess that’s what a crazy year like this past one has done to me, turned me into a grandma! I am truly so grateful for this experience — filled with many moments of worry, doubt, elation, inspiration, anxiety, joy, camaraderie, growth, and finding my voice. To my cohort, I am so glad it was you. To the new cohort, bless your hearts — you’re gonna need all the blessings you can get ;)
