Navigating a job transition using a design thinking mindset
A reflection on how I navigated a job transition by embracing the unknown, staying user-first, biasing towards action, and holding discomfort for growth
As a designer by training, the design mindset has become a pretty natural framework for how I approach problems and situations in my daily life. I used it to plan the seating arrangement at my aunt’s wedding. I used it to think about how I might approach a tough conversation with a friend. I don’t have wallpaper or pictures on my bedroom walls; rather, a plethora of colorful post-it notes from these personal design thinking sessions.
When I chose to quit my previous job a year ago, a slew of questions and feelings and uncertainty arose that I also navigated using this mindset. At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about it as using “the design mindset”; I was just solving another real problem in my life in the way that design taught me best.
Looking back though, I realized it’s the biggest reason that I got to where I am now. It’s the reason I know I’ll be okay if a slew of similar questions and feelings and uncertainties were to come up again in my life, which I’m sure is inevitable.
So, here’s a quick reflection on what happened last year.
On embracing the unknown
In May 2018, I quit my job. I left an office environment and work-life situation that wasn’t healthy for me. I knew the best thing I wanted to do for my future self was to be very intentional about my next move. It required a clear mind. Space for self-reflection. And a lot of rest. It ultimately was the right decision to leave, but I didn’t have another job officially lined up.
It all sounds quite valiant and it’s easy to write about now, but giving myself space for those things came with fear and mild anxiety over the complete uncertainty of what would happen next. I thought, “When would I land a job offer? How many interviews until that offer? Would it be weeks? Months? Would I end up taking a job in a different city? Would I have to pack my bags soon? Pay a lease break fine? How long until I needed to pick up shifts at the local coffee shop or take on freelance work to pay the bills?”
The creeping ambiguity started to feel familiar and I remember at one point, there was a shift towards comfort and positive energy. My “what would happen?” mindset turned into a “what could happen?” mindset.
It felt like the beginning of any design project where I find myself saying, “I don’t have any solutions or answers yet, but that’s okay. I don’t know what this product is going to look like or how it’s going to work in the end, but that’s okay. I do have the right tools. I have optimism and a willingness to embrace the unknown as a world of possibilities that I can create and live into. And right now, that’s all I need.”
On being user-first (or in this very rare case, myself as my user)
The Monday after I left my job, I walked to the dollar store next to my apartment and purchased two things: a pack of post-it notes and a sharpie.
I got home, ripped open the pack of beautiful, tiny sheets of paper and wrote down the questions swirling around in my head:
- Who am I?
- What are the things I care about?
- What are my strengths?
- What are my areas of continuous improvement?
- What do I want to grow in?
- Who do I work well with?
On different colored sheets, I wrote out the answers.
Those post-its (which are still on my bedroom walls today) grounded me as I searched for, applied to, and interviewed with different companies in the following weeks. They centered the design of that chapter of my life in, well, me.
On being vulnerable
Part of being a designer requires being vulnerable and receptive to feedback about your work from PMs, internal stakeholders, engineers, users, and other designers. While my post-it notes were great company during that trying time, I knew I couldn’t possibly rely solely on inanimate objects for support. I had to let others in on the process, and lean on and trust their insights.
As an example, I re-connected with a friend/another design fellow who was in my cohort at Experience Institute who also happened to be navigating a job transition of his own: he was hoping to land a gig at a large, established company in NYC. If he landed the gig, he would have to pack up, move across the country and adjust to a very different role than the one he was currently in at a small startup in Seattle. We giddily reveled in the fear and excitement of the unknown future for each of us. This was a gentle reminder of the Ei community, a network of people constantly living life pursuing their curiosities in the face of their own fears. It was a small nudge I needed to keep going.
Eager to find an online community also interested in the concepts of “work life balance” and “burnout,” I landed on the research and work of Ariana Huffington, Adam Grant, and the guys over at Basecamp. Their podcast episodes, blog posts, and overall insights about how work works these days helped me realize that I wasn’t alone in this process. They served (and continue to serve!) as a set of helpful resources on how to recover from and prevent burnout at work.
On being biased towards action
I know that fear and anxiety can be paralyzing, but once I became willing to embrace the unknown, it was easy to take action. I scribbled on post-it notes and called up friends. I even set up a Trello board that looked a heck-of-a-lot like a JIRA Kanban board: it contained the names of dozens of companies I was interested in based on the insights from my post-it notes. It had different “swim lanes” that I would use to move cards along as I progressed throughout interview processes with different companies.
I researched and applied to a lot of places. I had lots of great phone conversations. Lots of emails back-and-forth. Lots of new professional connections. Lots of sending my resume copy and thoughtful cover letters into an abyss with no reply back whatsoever. Lots of rejections.
Looking back, it would have been easy for me to get emotionally hung up on each unanswered email or immediate rejection, but persisting and continuing to take action reminded me to have fun and trust in the process. Each rejection and lack of response made me feel closer to where I was supposed to be.
(Eventually, I landed a couple of awesome offers and accepted one 🎉!)
On holding the uncomfortable for learning and growth
Truly, the whole process was uncomfortable. Going from working 60+ hours/week at a job to sitting in coffee shops with my own thoughts endlessly filling out applications was uncomfortable. Not knowing where I would land next was uncomfortable. Not having a steady source of income for a few weeks was uncomfortable. But I knew the uncomfortable feeling only meant one thing: I was living outside of my comfort zone. There would be something to learn and grow from in the end since learning and growth happens outside of our comfort zones.
What I learned first-hand through this experience is that the design mindset is truly that: a mindset. It can be taken anywhere. Anyone can use it. It can be trusted to navigate the ambiguous, not just when solving complex business problems, but when problem-solving and finding your way in everyday life too.
