I jumped from being a dentist to a UX/UI designer. The price I had to pay was consistency, focus and obsession!
I jumped from being a dentist to a UX/UI designer. The price I had to pay was consistency, focus and obsession!
It's amazing how much you could accomplish in just six months to a year of dedicated effort.
In early 2022, I was having a lot of anxiety. I understood it stemmed from work. I was not quite enjoying it as much as I was when I began. It was stressful and I was losing steam.
For context, I am a dentist (oral pathologist) by education and have run (still run) an online dental learning platform. I didn’t want to return to dentistry (practice or academics). Honestly, I had had enough of dentistry, and business was exhausting. At this point, I didn’t mind risking starting a new career. Fortunately, I had a good aptitude for tech. I decided to give it a shot. I had to.
Consistency
In late 2022, I decided to make the jump to UX and UI design (Product Design).
When trying to do something like this, you are all pumped to do the work and flirt with long-term goals and fantasies. That’s the easy part. Beginning to actually do it is hard. It's not fun.
You suddenly realise this is going to take longer than you thought. You underestimated the learning curve of the skill. There is information overwhelm. Where do you start?
Every morning when I sit down to read & then when I sit down to write, I say to myself, “Accept the initial agitation”.
The hardest part is the initial agitation. I understood the agitation was due to feeling overwhelmed and the stress of starting over.
So, I decided to keep it simple. I decided to show up every day for a minimum of 2 hours. Learn whatever I can in that given time. That’s it.
Tristan de Montebello went from near-zero speaking experience to a finalist for the World Championship of Public Speaking in seven months. How? By getting on stage and speaking constantly, sometimes as often as twice in a day.
I was basically trying to follow the “Goldilocks rule” of trying to maintain a habit - challenging, yet in a spectrum of being manageable.
Thankfully, the habit got easier. A few weeks in, I could spend more hours learning. Why? Because I was getting good at what I was learning/doing. Getting good at what you do makes you love what you do.
Passion Hypothesis, as per Cal Newport is the idea of finding or identifying something you think you are passionate about (a pre-existing passion) and trying to match it to what you want to do for a living. This is not a good heuristic for pursuing a career.
I didn’t know much about UX/UI to be passionate about it. I had a modicum of interest and some aptitude for it. I knew if I persisted long enough consistently, getting good was a matter of time.
Your job is to find something you're good at, and then spend the thousands of hours and apply the grit and the perseverance, and the sacrifice, and the willingness to break through hard things to become great at it.
Consistency is underrated. Consistency is key. Just show up.
Focus
For me, focus was not about concentration. That, I had in abundance. Focus was more about what “not” to pay attention to.
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way.
Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.
- Marcus Aurelius
I was running my business, trying to write and keep my blog afloat and doing YouTube videos for my channel when I had the time. This was getting me nowhere. Though I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly have it all.
To focus on learning Product Design, I had to make something else less important. Thankfully, my business was “passive-ish” at this point and bringing in manageable revenue.
Three to four months in, I decided to put everything on hold and go all in. Just learn and practice Product Design, day in and day out.
"Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point"
Obsession
“Regular exercise and consistent effort has zero net results on my overall strength”, writes author and entrepreneur Scott Young. “In order to make gains, I need to be temporarily obsessed with improving my fitness.”
There is rapid growth with immense focus (obsession). I decided to obsess over Product Design. Looking back, I realise how much one could accomplish in just six months to a year of dedicated effort.
Yes, this means work-life balance goes out the window. Screw that (for the short term). The price you pay for wanting to surpass that limit in your head and go the other side is obsession. I literally got up, practised Product Design, ate, studied Product Design, ate, slept and repeated the cycle every day.
There are two ways to achieve extraordinary outcomes: 1) Be lucky. 2) Be obsessed. Most people need some combination of both.
It’s been 9 months now since I started working as a Product Designer and looking back I realise the challenge of a goal like this is always mental.
The key to keeping all this sustainable was to fall in love with boredom. James Clear has this nice theory. He writes
If you want to fall in love with boredom, you have two options
Option 1: Increase your proficiency at the task.
Option 2: Fall in love with the result of the task rather than the task itself.
The consistency, focus and obsession got sustainable as I got better. The boredom was not a burden. It was not boring anymore. I was on autopilot.
And like option 2, I really loved and wanted the result badly - to become a Product Designer.
The 2 options ensured the fire inside was always lit.
Good job!