Category: Blog

“I don’t get enough compliments”

A compliment for the looks, for a good idea, for the work we’ve done is a gift we like from time to time. It makes us “seen” by the people around us.

At the same time, if we base our lives on those compliments there’ll be days when we get none and days we get some of them. Not all days will be equal but on the days when the count stays on zero we might feel like trash.

That happens because we didn’t have a stable foundation, something that reminds us of the good things we are and represent.
A stable foundation can literally be anything, it could be shave in the morning to feel clean each day, dress up better, it could be a safe net of friends that will always support you, or a hobby that can make you feel proud and protected even when the world goes crazy.

A stable foundation is something you can depend on, is something that doesn’t change with time. Usually it’s more stable if it all comes from within you. The more it needs the outside world, the less table it’ll be, because the world can always change, but you are in control of what you preach and love.

So yeah, maybe there’ll be days when you don’t get enough compliments. But if you have a stable foundation, you won’t care.

The web and the social networks gave us so many things. One of them is allowing everyone to express an opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, I listen to different opinions all day and what makes a big difference is how they are exposed.

What bugs me instead is how, given a decent skill set, we find people who blame other’s work as if they did it all wrong.

It’s the case of the new google logos, but it’s also the case for some italian pasta repackaging. People disagree with the result, that’s fine.
But such rework, such design, isn’t by accident.

The redesign of google logos have surely underwent a lot of internal debate, many people inside the company have surely expressed their opinion and the result might have been a compromise between the voices inside the company.

Could it be improved? Yes, does it have some drawbacks or limits? Absolutely.

What the social networks “gurus” forget is that we work inside a system. They expect a perfect result each and every time, but there are trade-offs to be made, both technologically, in design, and as deals with company departments.

You need to make all those people “happy enough”, which means it’s hard. It reminds me of my old self that thought that “No limits” is a better way to express creativity.
But true creativity is expressed within a canvas.
It’s the limit that makes the creativity worthy, it’s the limit that makes it sparkling.

It’s easy to move forward, adjust your life to a new kind of work, a new style.

But what brought you there? It was the mix of competence, skills, passion, vision that you had. That ,is made it special. That mix made it worth it.

Moving on and thinking you can simply abandon it it’s crazy, because that is your best skill. Yes you can take new roles, new work, but instead of trashing all the old things that brought you there it’s way better to let them evolve with you.

That way, you’ll bring the most powerful thing you had: your mix

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of things to do. There’s only one way to handle them.
One at a time. No more, no less.

Step by step, you’ll eventually get to the last.

There are some things you don’t want to do because you don’t have enough skills.

So you postpone those things away from you, “I’ll do it later”.
That’s what I often do. I do it because I don’t feel like trying _and_ failing.

But failing is part of the game. The skills I have now are the result of me failing and learning, testing new things. Yes, some skills have less margin of error, but there’s no shortcut.

You learn by doing them.