Dealing with self-doubt and creative anxiety

As a creative, there’s a lot of pressure to deliver high, consistent results — yet sometimes this can be difficult and exhausting.

Or, sometimes we find ourselves in a plateau. A place where we feel lost, disconnected and uninspired. Maybe our old friend imposter syndrome comes back to visit.

We’ve all faced this kind of anxiety at some point in our careers. In fact, if you’re reading this… maybe you’re struggling with that anxiety right now. It’s a real problem that every designer, developer, consultant, speaker, manager and even CEO has faced: how can I consistently produce great work, when I don’t feel great 100% of the time?

The pressure to be multi-disciplinary

It’s easy to fall into a trap of feeling like you should constantly be doing and learning more. But you don’t have to be a genius, or a multi-disciplinary [insert profession here] to be successful or confident in your work.

For example, let’s say you’ve been told that you need to have brain surgery. Which doctor would you trust more to perform the procedure — a doctor specialised in neuroscience, or a doctor who considers themselves specialised in neuroscience, paediatrics and orthopaedics?

I’d go for the neuroscience skilled doctor immediately, and I bet you would too. We’d have far more trust in someone who’s spent 100% of their time in their medical career learning about the human brain, than someone who (while may have ‘more skills’) has only spent 33% of their time studying it, and the rest studying other disciplines.

Yet in the creative world we find ourselves in a place where we’re constantly moving goal posts for ‘success’. If you’re a developer, maybe you’re expected to learn React, SVG animation, vim or Ember to be considered ‘good.’

If you’re a designer maybe you feel pressure to be confident in flat and material design, 3D, shadow or other design trends that are ‘best’ right now. Not to mention the range of tools we feel we need to know — Photoshop, Sketch, InDesign, the list goes on.

In creeps the feeling of self-doubt

Frankly, it’s overwhelming and easy to get caught in a spiral of self-deprecation where you’re constantly thinking you’re not good enough or need to learn more because React is too confusing, or maybe you just don’t gel well with Sketch.

But it’s OK to not know everything, and perhaps it’s even a good thing — you’re still learning, and on your way to the next level; just don’t give up. It’s easy to feel like you’re not good enough in the moment of struggle, when in fact, you’re learning.

When faced with feeling inadequate it’s important to re-frame your state of mind to understand both why you feel this way, and to look at the bigger picture. If the thing you’re doing is worth doing, it’s probably going to be hard — there’s going to be a dip.

Once you hit that dip, it’s time to step back and get a little perspective, then make a structure for how to move forward.

First, you should look at the bigger picture. Are you chasing a stupid trend? There’s hundreds of these discussions on sites like Hacker News and Designer News every single damn day — React vs Ember, Sketch vs Adobe XD, Bootstrap vs Your Own Thing.

Trends are dangerous, because not only do they distract you from your ultimate goal of actually learning or doing a thing, they also can disappear in seconds… after you’ve spent all that time and energy on learning it.

Once you’ve examined whether or not you’re distracting yourself by a ‘shiny new thing’ it’s important to determine why you are feeling this way. Is this anxiety, or worry about your own confidence because you’re tackling a thing bigger or more complex than everything else you’ve attempted? Of course it’s going to take more effort — and you need to approach it with a plan.

How to move forward

If you’re learning React and find yourself overwhelmed or stuck, consider making a learning plan to help you move forward. Identify and work towards completing one small thing toward your goal, like buying a course to keep moving forward.

Breaking your goals or learning plans out into smaller, individual tasks and milestones before you start will help give yourself time to reward yourself as you make progress. Then when you feel like you’re going nowhere at all, you can look back at what you’ve achieved.

Most of all, it’s important to focus on your own happiness. Don’t stress about those strangers on the internet who know that thing better than you.

Focus on what you want to be good at, and nurture that skill. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by a ‘hot new thing’ every time something new is trotted out. Stick it out with what you’ve chosen until you feel confident, or you’re sure you’re ready to move on.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the demands of the creative industry that I’d hazard a guess the sheer majority of us feel awful most of the time — even those that you think are smashing it out of the park constantly.

One of the perils of being good at things is that you’re constantly worried that you’re not good enough.

Chin up — you’re doing better than you think. Hang in there, make a plan, and keep at it. There’s no such thing as ‘good enough’. There’s only your own personal journey to arriving at a place where you suddenly realize… hey, I kinda know what I’m talking about.