What advice would I give my 20 year old self?
As I approach a significant milestone birthday, I’ve found myself reflecting. Not necessarily good or bad, just reflection. As I approached 40, I wrote an article called the ‘F spot’ noting a point in my career trajectory that was worth reflecting on. It made me think a bit about what the next 10 years might look like and gave me some sense of direction I guess. Not that it cemented any plans or objectives, but helped me avoid that indeterminable drift that can so easily grab and sink us all if we get a bit complacent or too focussed on the daily grind.
So? What would I tell my 20 year old self to focus on and what to avoid?
What did I do well and what did I balls up?
Also, it’s important to say that it’s not advice. Advice is invariably patronising and this is meant to be anything but. This is a list of stuff I’ve been thinking about of late, mainly as a result of our family unit coming to the end of a particular chapter in our lives. Not a bad one, but a seminal one and one that changes the outlook of our lives as we move forward. And as we move forward and anticipate how we might approach this next chapter, I’ve pondered the chapters that have passed. Thought about whether I did what I expected to do. Saw what I wanted to see. Became who I wanted to become. Or none of the above…
So here are the things that swim around my noggin when I think about the last 30+ years. The years that were mine to craft and navigate as I saw fit. The 20 years prior to that were in the hands of my parents and my education to a major extent (I know this is not entirely true but I need to limit this somehow!) whereas the ‘career’ years are mine to decide and reflect on.
It was also nudged by a message I received from a design peer asking “Would you get into design as it is now?” Which made me think a bit more about how things have changed…or not as the case may be. I’m not sure I’ve done a particularly good job of answering this question in this article but it was a useful prompt to other things.
As always, I’ve written this as it pops into my head. I could probably rearrange the order based on relative importance but I’ll leave it like this for posterity. Much of this might seem predictable and akin to many other reflective posts. There’s a good reason for that…
1. Little kids are portable.
My wife and I were talking about this only the other day. Our regret that we didn’t travel more when the kids were little. We openly admit that it was our fears and concerns about schooling and ‘educational stability’ that kept us rooted in one place while the kids grew up. But having seen two kids go through the education system fully (well almost…at the time of writing my youngest daughter is in her final year of A-Levels), we’ve earned the insight to say that our fears were unfounded.
Kids are incredibly portable. Particularly when they are little. It is usually our own fears that prevent us from doing things, and we use our kids as excuses. We certainly did…albeit not consciously. We genuinely thought we were doing the right thing at the time.
Our eldest daughter was born in Australia where my wife and I were living at the time. We decided to have a bit of an adventure and leave our jobs to live in Sydney. Circumstances changed when we realised we were pregnant, but we continued and learned more about each other, more about our capacity for change and we grew closer as a ‘unit’. Admittedly this was a combination of both new parenthood and our ex-pat status, but I can still cite that time as one of the most formative in our relationship as a couple. We returned to the UK when she was 12 weeks old.
We’d love to have done more of this and regret it. I think our lives would have been richer for it, our kids lives would have been richer for it, and they would have grown up as more rounded globally aware citizens. We’ve tried to permeate this notion of global citizenship by travelling (on holidays) as much as possible within the constraints of school holidays and affordability, showing the kids places that are both extravagant and humbling in equal measure. Demonstrating that families are families all over the world, no matter where you live or who you are. Language or religion changes but family values are pretty consistent. Dads still love their daughters…wherever they are.
2. Network earlier.
This is something that has improved with the advent of social media platforms and more immediate ‘searchable’ visibility of people’s roles within industries, but I wish I’d started earlier with my networking. Like many, I shudder at the thought of ‘local networking events’ with clammy sandwiches and over-stewed coffee, hopping nervously from foot to foot whilst talking to someone who has zero interest in what you have to say (probably because they didn’t understand my woeful, overly wordy description of ‘product design’) and simultaneously being sold to whilst attempting to sell. I’ve done enough of them to know that they don’t work for what I do. Most of the time I end up having conversations with people about ‘designing a logo’ and spend far too long working out how to distance myself.
When LinkedIn first popped up, I used to think that I could only really connect with people I’d worked with directly and in person for a significant amount of time. It felt embarrassing to contemplate inviting someone to connect who I didn’t know properly.
But back in 2010, a friend and I decided to design and manufacture a mobile phone accessory (long story…it’s here if you are interested) and we were thrown into a world with less scruples and a tenuous relationship with truth or commitment. As much as it felt dirty, it taught me that I had to widen my network and reach out to people who didn’t necessarily know me, if I was going to help build the opportunity. I started sending connection requests to people who might be able to help or from whom I needed support…and it worked. People accepted and discussions were had. Things led to other things. It surprised me more than it should.
The product ultimately failed but it taught me about the value of networking. Not the sweaty, nervous, uncomfortable handshake networking of local groups, but the ‘awareness building’ virtual networking of places like LinkedIn. I now feel more comfortable connecting equally with people I’ve met and those I may not have… but serve my needs. Similarly I’m open to accepting connections with people I’ve not met or know about but who approach me in the same way.
But there’s a difference between ‘seeking connections’ for its own sake, purely to build a large network and building relevant and pertinent connections that feed your knowledge and worldly/industry outlook.
Anyway, my point is that if I were just starting again, I would start building my network in a way that supported my own visibility but similarly gave me a wider, more informed view of not only my own industry but other parallel and disconnected industries. It’s healthy and prevents that feeling of ‘living in a professional bubble’ which can so often happen. The curse of the echo chamber if you will. I think it would help me make more definitive career decisions and provide me with a sense of what I might need to develop skills in as I develop (in a balanced way…I am aware of the sensationalism, ‘knee-jerkery’ and ‘doom-mongering’ that often comes with professional social media platforms).
I have certainly benefitted from investing time in this form of networking during the back end of my current career span, but would urge young professionals to start earlier and maintain some level of momentum…don’t just pop up and say hi when you need something…most likely a new job!
3. Family time.
This isn’t something I’d change as I think I’ve got this pretty right throughout my career, but I’d go back and tell myself that it’s a good ‘hunch’ to abide by. Putting family right in the centre of EVERY. SINGLE. DECISION.
I know I’ve slightly unnerved people I’ve met before with my fervent belief in putting family first, but I make no apologies for it. I left an amazing job in London because in prevented me from spending time with my wife (then fiancée). I turned down hugely juicy jobs from previous employers (when we decided to return from Sydney) because I knew it would ultimately prevent me from spending valuable time with my new daughter. I compromised my work to be around my kids. My entire motivation around running a business was to ensure it earned enough to provide for my family. I used my daughters as a ‘visualisation’ tool when considering whether to part ways with employees (long story). I sold my business as I wanted to close a chapter and give myself greater freedom to change direction with my family in mind. I ultimately left my last employed role because my kids noticed I’d changed. My current business is entirely based around my family.
Some might say I’ve compromised my career journey for reasons many others might not place as much emphasis on. I cast no judgement. Everyone has their own reasons and their own journey. But mine pivots in every way on how each decision affects my family or my ability to be with or best serve them.
I’m happy (bar a few short bursts when I lost sight of these priorities for a blink of an eye) that I’ve done a decent enough job of this. I see plenty of peers with fancier jobs, more capitalised acronym’ed titles, shinier cars, bigger driveways, more impressive social lives and more airline loyalty club points, and at times – I’m not going to lie – feel a pang of jealousy.
But then I realise that I all the decisions I’ve made, have meant I have a relationship with my daughters that could not have been ‘slotted’ in between meetings. They talk to me about everything. I mean everything (I say this in the knowledge that they may immediately prove me wrong!).
I know this is a topic that no-one will disagree with and yet everyone treats differently. Much as no-one will admit to being a racist or a homophobe, so no-one will ever admit to being a bad parent. But there are scales of parenting, and the immutable fact is that time is the greatest thing you can provide them with. You can earn all the money in the world, but you can’t buy time. Time with you.
And you can’t make up for lost time.
Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
I am incredibly proud of this aspect of my career. I would definitely go back and tell the 20 year old me to do the same.
4. Diet and health.
Another no-brainer. As time marches on, my body makes me very aware of the things I’ve neglected, and the things that time and age doesn’t allow me to do as well as I did. Like most people, I wished I’d exercised more throughout my 30’s and 40’s and thought more about posture, diet and alcohol. I’m not advocating abstinence or evangelical belief, but a more considered, meaningful and balanced approach to it all. I’m not suggesting I’ve massively over consumed or sat around lifelessly, but there are certainly things I could have moderated or dealt with more healthily to the betterment of my future self.
Some of this is improved awareness as science develops – things like gut or mental health are good examples – so there is some excuse for not knowing at the time, but some of it is simple pig-headedness or the impenetrability of youth speaking.
What has become ever clearer to me is that whilst science improves, there are simple things one can do to ensure that the kit you’ve been given is kept running relatively smoothly.
5. Be more honest.
This shouldn’t be a thing, but it is. I’ve always thought of myself as an ‘honest’ person, but there’s a danger of becoming ‘too honest’. Many polarising commentators cite their ‘honesty’ as something that got them ‘cancelled’. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking more about the ‘veneer’ that gets drawn over every day to day act when you run an ‘agency’.
Every client is ‘the most important’, every project gets the ‘best people working on it’, every brief is tackled ‘immediately’. It’s not necessarily lying but it’s effusive bluster to ingratiate yourself to people who you need to keep sweet. In many cases, you might actually mean what you are saying, but the very nature of the style of conversation or discussion opens itself up to a sliding honesty scale.
During my time in agency, I would never admit to going on holiday to a client. I would use my best catalogue of smoke and mirrors to cloak my travels in talk of ‘busy meetings’ or ‘pressing deadlines’. There was a fear that if you admitted to stopping work for a fortnight that the client would throw their toys out of their pram and withdraw the work. If a client dropped a project on you at stupidly busy times, I wouldn’t admit that I couldn’t fit it in…I would either cram it into my schedule my bending the laws of physics and marriage, or duck and weave to buy myself the time to complete it. Again, it wasn’t a deliberate effort to deceive, but a long ingrained habit to appear ‘available at all times’ and wanting to serve every client to the best of current abilities.
And I knew it was wrong…or at least counter productive to balance. But it’s only recently that I’ve decided to kick that habit to the kerb…or as much as my brain and programming can permit. Since 2020, I made a conscious decision to be entirely honest with my clients. If I had to sack off Thursday because my daughter needs driving to Uni, I’ll tell them. If I need to look after my Dad, I say I can’t have a call. If I’m going on holiday, I’ll be clear I won’t be doing anything for X weeks. If I think I’ll struggle to fit the project in, I’ll say so but look to have a conversation about how to find a suitable compromise.
I shouldn’t be so surprised that it works as well as it does, as most of the people I work with are lovely and understanding human beings, but it still shocks me. It’s that agency programming again…the curse of so many issues in our industry.
So if I had my time over again, I’d tell myself to be honest. Polite…obvs. But honest. About everything. Budgets. Holidays. Kids. Complexity. Resourcing. The lot.
Because it has a ripple effect.
Honesty breeds honesty.
And honesty breeds trust.
And trust breeds loyalty.
And loyalty breeds advocacy.
Boom.
6. Don’t chase accolades.
This is fairly simple. Don’t believe in the allure of awards. They are meaningless. I’ve written plenty on this topic so head over here to get a full dose of ‘award cynicism’.
I followed the ‘yellow brick road’ to awards in my early career years and soon realised the shallow vanity of it all. I’m almost embarrassed by the ones I’ve ‘won’, now that I know the motivations behind many of them.
It erodes the soul and is a firefly to nowhere.
It also amazes me that the award bandwagon still rumbles on, sucking up and spitting out husks of ambitious young things in their wake. It is what it is. Much like politics, it’s a vehicle for some to bathe in pronounced glory and some to believe it does something for their self worth.
7. Talk about man-feelings.
Men don’t talk much. At least not about stuff that matters. For sure there’s lots of talk, but it’s not particularly meaningful. Much of it is predictable machismo or societal expectations (I’m not talking about the vile, toxic spew of Andrew Tait, more the everyday stuff like pints and cars) but I’m pretty sure that most men if given the right environment and the opportunity would probably open up about all sorts of stuff you wouldn’t expect.
I have to thank my daughters for making me open up more. As a teenager and young man I defaulted to ‘bottling’ – containing all my emotions inside until something triggers an explosion. I attribute this ‘syndrome’ to a single year where I had to go to boarding school – at age 11 – while my younger brothers continued to live with my parents in the UAE. I was forced at an emotionally formative time in my youth to close all those emotional doors and ‘contain’. It has resulted in a ‘volcanic’ version of dealing with emotions for me. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. Then Boom! Emotionally speaking.
My daughters have made me talk about stuff. Have made me understand the benefits of talking regularly and openly about anything and everything. Warts and all. I’m still not great at it, but seeing and supporting two girls grow up in this world has taught me so much about emotional stability, anxieties, hormones and harmony. I’ve still got shitloads to learn but they’ve helped me more than they will ever know.
I’ve seen this happen to a few of my peers and mates (predominantly those with daughters…coincidentally). As we all approach or pass the 50 mark, we’ve experienced the scars of dealing with and cradling our girls through thick and thin, and each of us has started to crack. In a good way. We are softer, squidgier, more open and less judgmental as a result. I’ve had brilliant chats with a few of these lovely fellas over the last few years. Talk of a need for adventure. Talk of feeling lonely. Talk of emptiness. Talk of love. Proper chats that we should have been comfortable having 20 years ago.
8. Less stuff, more memories.
This is pretty obvious, but worth stating for the record. As my kids have grown we’ve bought them some of the usual trappings of teenage want. Things like phones, headphones, ‘those’ trainers and other such necessities. But we’ve tried to avoid buying for buying’s sake and have preferred to opt for things they will remember or things they can do.
Like go-karting or climbing or theatre tickets or unexpected restaurants. We’ve always tried to ‘see’ stuff and ‘do’ stuff when we go on holiday. I stop short of camping as I see little point in making them suffer (IYKYK) but I’d rather we be able to talk about what we saw and how we felt than what we’ve got.
If I relate back to my first point, I’d like to have travelled more with the kids as part of ‘living’ rather than just on holiday, but I’m pretty happy with our approach to date on ‘stuff’. I still huff in an old-man kinda way when I see how much crap we have managed to accumulate each and every time I decided to have a ‘clear out’ but I think that’s just me and we’ve still done pretty well.
I still wish I’d been more organised with things like stage shows, music acts and more seasonal entertainments…I tend to realise what we should’ve done at the point just after all tickets have sold out. But the intention has always been there. We’ve always valued eating out as a family – whether it’s super posh (we’ve include our kids in most of these…) or take out. It’s about spending time together doing stuff and – most importantly – talking. The most important aspect is that we try and do everything together…as much as we can and as circumstances allow, particularly as the kids get older and more independent. But my hope is that the groundwork we’ve put in will stand us in good stead. Fingers crossed.
9. Foundation year.
One of my biggest regrets from an early career perspective is how little I explored my creativity throughout my degree. I went from being the guy at school ‘who could draw’ straight to University where I studied BSc Product Design (The ID version). It’s not that I didn’t know that it was the right choice…I was clear after picking up Dick Powell’s Rendering Techniques book at 13 that Product Design (as it was then) was what I wanted to do, but I now realise that school didn’t push me to explore my creativity at all. Because I was good at making stuff look good on paper and was probably better than my peers at ‘designing’ (whatever that meant at the time), I thought that I was suitably ‘creative’.
But throughout my 4 years at Uni, I never really gave myself the opportunity to stretch my imagination and become comfortable with failure. I tended to default to the first decent idea that came to me and then just realise it. I was never taught how to be creative nor given the framework to explore that creativity in a way that was safe and encouraging. By the time I got to Uni, it was about delivery and modelmaking and accuracy (more my own measures than anything).
I never did art at school because I already knew how to draw and I didn’t want to spend hours drawing still-lives of old boots or rotting fruit. It is one of the reasons I have a bee in my bonnet about current educational practices and the pursuit of grades over exploration. Nothing has changed and kids are still leaving school with top grades but not a Scooby of a clue about the creative process. It’s paint by numbers.
So my biggest regret is not taking a year out to do a foundation art year. Just to spend some time throwing pottery around, sculpting, photographing, drawing and building with no grades to attain and no targets to hit. Just freedom to express myself and understand how to tap into the bit of my brain that was keen to get out and run around naked and screaming without judgement. It took me well into my mid twenties before I started to feel comfortable taking risks with my design work and realising that I could experiment in a way that resulted in better outcomes than I would normally discover.
But it shouldn’t have been this way. The education system should have helped me, not hindered me. I appreciate much of comes down to the individual endeavours of the student, but there’s also a responsibility of educational institutions to promote creativity and creative study if ‘creativity’ is a key asset in the armoury of their graduates or pupils. It is literally pot luck.
I think I would have made a better designer if I’d been given more space and encouragement to build my creative muscles and feel less pressure to ‘attain’. More disruption and less conformity please.
10. Trust your gut.
I appreciate this sounds a bit glib, but the more decisions I’ve made, the more I realise that my ‘gut’ invariably knows best. I can’t really quantify what ‘my gut’ is to be honest (cue muffled laughter), but I’ve come to regret not following it in many a past decision. Throughout my early twenties, I assumed logic or experience or the advice of my peers or bosses was enough to lean in to, in order to make a choice. But I tended to find that I often looked back on these choices and felt that something was amiss. A mistimed arrow flight.
I’ve come to recognise it as a nagging mental hum. A gentle sense of dread if you will. Like when you head off on a trip and about an hour into the journey you think you might have left the iron on. That. It’s not a conclusive feeling that you can hang your hat on and say ‘definitely not’. It’s allowing your ‘body vibe’ to step up and give your head a bit of a proverbial slap. The voice that tells you that 4 pints is probably enough. I’ve often described it as ‘Spidey sense’ for obvious reasons…and also because I’m a bit of a comic book nerd at heart.
For all of my attempts to describe it, all I know is that I think I would have made more and better decisions and been more courageous if I’d just let my instinctual gut lead the way. The less said about that the better I guess!
11. Don’t believe the bluster.
As a young designer, I was intimidated by design that I saw from ‘famous designers’. Notable consultancies were light years away from my achievability limit. There was a feeling of me in one place and ‘those guys’ in another. I never thought I had a cat’s hell in chance of getting anywhere near them, let alone alongside or in front.
But at each step of my career, I feel like I’ve just found a new, more impressive cleaning detergent that has allowed me to clean the mirror of deflection that sat in front of me. Like climbing a mountain and appearing through the fog, I’ve seen that the majority of what appears to be ‘amazing talent’ is often spin or shallowness masquerading as such. I’m not suggesting that all consultancy is filled with talentless hacks. Not at all. Some of the people I’ve worked with at various stages of my career have been astoundingly brilliant and talented. But the notion that I could not compete was something it took me some time to realise was utter balderdash.
It taught me that even brilliant agencies can hire abysmally average people who then pretend (or worse…genuinely believe) they are great. Business is business. Sometimes you just need bums on seats to get shit done. Been there…got the T-shirt.
But in the last 30 years, I would argue that some of the best people I’ve worked with have not fit the description you might assume of a ‘brilliant designer’. And those that exude the aura of ‘contented smugness’ are some of the worst. But the industry ‘pedestals’ the crushed linen, whitewashed walled and Helvetica loving clichés so the myth becomes a little self sustaining.
I would tell my younger self to ignore all the vacuous bullshit and just crack on. Do good work. Believe in yourself. Aim higher than you’ve ever thought possible because those upper bookshelves are lined with fairy dust, myth and empty promise. You don’t have to ‘look’ or ‘sound’ like a designer to be a designer. Wear nerdy sneakers, drive shit cars and work like stink. It’s all good.
It’s now part of the reason I try to provide an accurate impression of what it’s like to work in the design industry. Share some realities. Stop permeating this rock star myth crap we see constantly portrayed on design agency websites.
Now that I’ve written a small novel, I’ve realised that I haven’t really touched on any specifics relating to design skills or disciplines per se. Maybe that’s subconsciously deliberate – I don’t really know – but the topics I’ve covered tend to reflect how I feel right now and the priorities that are ever present in my life. Maybe if I spent more time thinking specifically about the act of design and the specifics of my career trajectory, I may have written a different set. Maybe I’ll do that for another time…
I guess right now, I’m sitting on the chapter turn as I suggested in my opening paragraphs. My youngest has just become an adult so I face an immediate future with my wife that allows us some choices again. A bit more freedom….hopefully.
It’s a useful point to reflect a little.
