Last Friday, we made the decision to finally share the truth (well, at least a version of it that’s more acceptable) about our situation with our parents. To the rest of our immediate family, they now know that we are without work/income, and that is the actual reality of our current circumstances. This truth also gives us a chance of coming back down to an actual, grounded reality. It’s always nice to be able to finally plant both our feet firmly on the ground. This is where we tend to be at our best because it is also a place/position where we feel most centred (regardless of what might be stirring up around us).
But, coming back down to a grounded reality isn’t as easy as it looks either. Right now, we are faced with a immediate future that feels almost uncertain. Thanks to our own “inner compass 🧭”, we do have a much clearer heading going into the future. But that clear direction (think of it like our “true north”) doesn’t necessarily translate into a clear path. While we can see multiple paths ahead of us (all eventually contributing in some ways towards our final mission objective), the actual path itself has “gaps” in it. It’s like, we can see parts of the path. We’ve plotted it on a map that we have, but our map is not complete. It never was. And those gaps, those unknowns up ahead, yeah, they do make us a little bit scared, and slightly anxious too.
The old me would’ve never been able to sit here and be so honest about that. Not to generalise most people, but we like to think that we’re not alone in what we’re about to describe. For most of our life, we have been surrounded by people, a culture and society that is encouraging and rewarding productivity. It rewards those with what some have come to call, “the hustle mentality”. It’s like they already know what they have to do, they have a clear roadmap with checkpoints 1 to 50, all written down, and they are in this narrow, tunnel-vision, going full-steam ahead towards their desired accomplishments.
And for years, growing up, we’ve always felt that pressure to do the same. Even if at times we feel genuine unsure — there were times that uncertainty lies in the road ahead, and other times, it was genuine self-doubts. But those were not seen as okay, or normal. And so, we had to hide it from public view. We had to force ourselves to perform this act like we know where we’re going, and what we’re doing.
Here’s the ugly truth about our own life experience — because we have been pretending with all that fake self-confidence for so long, it has only led us to taking so many wrong paths instead of the right ones. We were so busy acting like we knew where we were going, but in reality, we were just running around in circles. Sure, we did have some moments when we actually did make some meaningful progress. But in hindsight, they only felt like 20% of the time, out of two decades of constant motion.
It is because of that life experience and lesson, it has now given us a perspective that we’ve never had before — just because you’re constantly moving doesn’t necessarily mean that you are making meaningful progress. You can be moving, and still end up far off-course from where you truly wanted to go in life.
That is the reason why we’re no longer afraid to take short pauses now. It isn’t like a full-on stoppage. Like a car engine, we’re only stopping at the side of the road, taking out our map 🗺️and then making sure that we are still driving and heading in the right direction. The biggest mistake we can make today is to assume with fake confidence that we are on the right path, only to realise later that we had burn unneeded energy/fuel going the wrong way (or maybe we still reached our final destination, but we had taken the long-way around instead).
Taking “short pauses” in our journey doesn’t mean that we lack the confidence in our own abilities. It’s more like building confidence in where we’re going. With each short pause and knowing that we are on the right path, our confidence will continue to grow over time, and even if there was some slightly doubt at the beginning, it’ll eventually fade away.
So yeah, we are genuinely unsure about our immediate future right now. We won’t lie, we do feel some anxiety too. It’s hard not to. But we’re also not going to allow that anxiety to turn into something that it isn’t. That uncertainty about the near future isn’t a statement about who we are, or what we’re capable of. And because we are getting better at putting things into perspective, they no longer drive us into acting based just upon our emotions alone.
Debunking the Unspoken Assumptions that Seniors Know What’s Next.
Before we made the decision to leave LinkedIn for good, one thing we have been observing and noticing much more of, has been this unspoken, polished portrayal of certainty among many senior design and technical leaders in the industry. You know the type: “Five things every designer must do to survive the AI era.” It lists principles, but never shows a single decision, trade-off or mistake. In many case, you read a lot of articles/writings where leaders would try to project their own confidence online, but there is one thread that connects all of their writings — they often feel very shallow. It tends to read like this surface-level manifesto of what they think designers and devs should be doing to navigate the post-AI world, but could not go further into it by offering actual concrete steps/guidances, or offer up real examples.
Personally speaking, that pattern felt familiar because we have been there before. We recognise what it is like to want to project a self-confident front, when in reality, it’s just a mask for our own personal insecurity. We can’t know what sits behind anyone else’s writing. We only know what sat behind ours: a mask for our own insecurity. This is something that our former self used to do a lot.
There’s an unspoken assumption that the more senior you are, the more certain you are about what comes next. Our experience says the opposite. The longer you’ve watched this field change, the less you trust any roadmap, including your own. After two decades, and with AI moving the ground this fast, we trust ours less than ever.
Now that we’re no longer on LinkedIn, we felt like this is finally the right timing for us to finally speaking out about it, and to shed light upon that fake self-confidence. We want to be clear that our goal here isn’t to shame those design and technical leaders. We get it. Truly. We know how scary it can be to have to face our own uncertain future, and not be able to offer a complete answer/solution for what’s going to happen next. But we also believe that it is important to be honest about it so that other designers and devs coming up the pipeline won’t feel like they are being left behind, or left out simply because they are struggling with their own uncertainties. And also, they need to know, and understand that their uncertainties are normal. There’s nothing wrong with doubting what comes next.
And if you are reading this blog post now, and you’re experiencing that same feeling of uncertainty about your next steps, you are not alone. We — despite our two decade of experiences, insights and understanding of the industry — are still figuring out our next steps too. Always remember, your lack of confidence and certainty towards the future isn’t a reflection on who you are and what you’re capable of.
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