Today I’m sharing an article from a Q&A I did with Alex Chan-Perryman. I’ve known Alex for a long time and he was the first designer I ever spoke to in-depth to share our experiences of burning out.

After seeing the results of the poll Lenny’s Newsletter did a few weeks ago with designers being number one for burn out I wanted to dive deeper into this topic. It seemed to really stir up discussion in the community, which is great, as this is something that we need to speak about more.

Everything feels more frantic than ever. AI has levelled the playing field, everyone is looking to make a big win. Design is more in-demand than ever, so there is a lot of pressure and demand for designers.

So we NEED to look after ourselves. We need to protect that special creative energy.

Alex is a design system lead based in Amsterdam. He started his career in graphic design agencies in London and moved into web, UX and product in 2015. He also co-run a meet-up for people that work in product design in Amsterdam called ‘Product Design Collective’ which is about getting people to learn and grow together in the modern age.

In a world of AI, human interaction wins.

TL;DR:

Yes, I had it once in 2021, and again in 2023. The second burnout, was because I hadn’t fully recovered from the first burnout. I didn’t recover in 2021, because I was forced back to work after two weeks, as I didn’t know about the laws and protections I had (living in the Netherlands).

Since the covid pandemic, the merging of work and home was a huge factor. The boundaries got blurred and being at home meant being at work, so you’re constantly in the work headspace. It can be hard to shut-off, so your environment is a key factor. Especially if you’re living in small, inner city accommodation.

(There are parallels between both burnouts, but I’ll focus on second burnout as it was more recent.)

The company I worked for was a hyper-growth start-up. The company changed from a big start-up (1800 people), to a large scale up (+3000) in 18months. A lot of things changed, mainly the culture, which became more corporate, and the workload increased. I worked on design systems, so a big part of my role is to support our users (designers) and help them understand the tools we make. The design team tripled while I was there and I wasn’t working in a scalable way to help me adapt to the change. Also, I enjoyed talking through problems with people, but as we grew this was unrealistic. The standard became to document decisions and have less contact with people.

Another big factor was that as the company grew, the resources for our team stayed the same. We were using free or low-cost plans, when we should’ve been upgrading and adding tools and services to help us scale our service.

I was doing two jobs for a while when our PM left, which became the norm - the start-up adage of ‘wearing multiple hats’ - although another designer was hired later and he was a great help to me.

Looking back now, I can easily say that: environment, inflation (cost of living crisis), mis-management, intense work-load, not being unable to adapt to change were huge factors.

It was also remote work was isolating, I missed socialising and there were almost no off-sites for designers or planned social events.

Since leaving that role, I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. So all of the above, combined with undiagnosed ADHD is what led to my burnout. On the scale of burnout, I would say mine was quite bad. I was off for a year, although I’ve heard about people being off for two years.

Something I’ve noticed is that when I started to become burnt-out, it became harder to do things related to work, in my free time. For example, if there was a new tool or plug-in that was being hyped, or I wanted to really understand how to use AI, the thought of doing that, after finishing work, felt like a nightmare. I wanted to spend as much time ‘not’ working as I could, to help me manage when I was working. Ironically, learning these tools would’ve helped me manage at work.

I took a year out from work, the system here in the Netherlands is very supportive and fully recognises burnout as sick leave and it’s taken seriously by Doctors and the medical professions. By example, it’s common to get therapy on your insurance in this scenario.

Everyone’s burnout journey is different, I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution, although I do believe there is some overlap in the directions you can take. You kind of have to take your own path and find out by yourself, by doing when you’re ready.

When I started sick leave, I was going to the gym a lot and staying active. This helped relieve a lot of the physical stress I’d built up which helped, but for me, there was something deeper I had to address, which I was unknowingly postponing by exercising.

After signing off sick, I got advice from a GP and joined a waitlist for therapy, in the form of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). This was done in 20 courses over about 6months, with the aim of understanding the deeper, specific reasons as to why this happened and how I could build myself back up.

The therapy was really helpful and I would recommend to anyone experiencing something similar. It gave me a lot of insights I wouldn’t have got by myself and it was good to work with a therapist on mental recovery. I would add that it’s important you click, or feel a connection with a therapist, which can be difficult if you haven’t done it before, or you aren’t familiar with the language of therapy or what to expect from it.

Therapy got me about 80% of the way to recovery. When it ended, I had to adjust to no longer having that weekly support, and start taking steps by myself and managing setbacks. This took about an additional three months in my case. I’d add that I am lucky that I have a very supportive wife, and had been reading a lot of self-help books prior to burning out. I was familiar with the process and knew some of the language.

I also did a 10 day silent meditation Vipassana (like a retreat) in this time and did a lot of journalling over six months. Both I’d highly recommend.

It sounds wishy washy (or woo-woo), but in summary, I would say, after working so much for other people, I became numb, depressed and detached from myself. I no longer knew what I liked, or didn’t like. The sneaky thing about burnout, is you’re completely unaware of this, it creeps in the backdoor when you aren’t paying attention and sets to work on undoing your mind. The year off I had, allowed me to stop, reconnect with myself and think about all the things I was too busy to think about when I was working. Like ‘Dr Manhattan’ from Alan Moore’s graphic novel ‘The Watchman’, I had to slowly put myself back together, after being vaporised.

Have clearly defined work hours. Protect them and stick to them. Be kinder to yourself, take time to do the things you actually like. Plan it into your day, among the challenging things you have to do. If your favourite thing is to play video games, allow some time for that, instead of telling yourself you can’t then doing it anyway. Bullying yourself or being your own demanding boss, doesn’t help. Try to find a balance.

Eat fresh, healthy food if you can. Build a routine of self-care into your day and try to stick to it, but again don’t punish yourself if you miss a day, or really don’t feel like it. Some days I wanted to lie on the sofa and watch Netflix. It took me months before I ‘allowed’ myself to do this.

I also listened to a ton of self help podcasts, close to the subjects I was struggling with. Andrew Huberman’s podcast is great for ‘bio-hacks’ and small tricks you can learn to regulate yourself and take better care of yourself. This one about getting sunlight in the morning has helped:

And there’s a short video form Jordan Peterson about goal setting and planning the day ‘you’ want, which helped a lot. (See 1:50 in)

This tweet is also good reminder of the basics: “Sleep is the world’s best performance enhancing drug” -Brian Johnson

I think design is particularly vulnerable for a few reasons, while it doesn’t have to be, I think designers can (and should) learn to be tougher in business and work, it’s like sport in a way. Why I think designers are vulnerable to burnout is because of empathy. Empathetic people are more likely to burnout in demanding environments, the absorb the negative energy of others and often haven’t learned to protect themselves by enforcing boundaries. A large part of this is about how you were raised.

For me, the best designers are empathetic, that’s why they’re good at their jobs, because they have the ability to feel what someone else feels, and then design for that purpose or need. Product design has unapologetically shifted it’s focus away from user needs and has been reduced to a part of the hand-off process in the development sprint. In short, it’s become a function of business and delivery and less about ‘design’ which is what people signed up for. So often, designers aren’t doing the job they signed up for.

How to protect designers from this? A lot of people I know, could use a bit of time off. Whenever I was sick (with a cold), I would fight it, insisting that signing off sick was a sign of weakness and that I was okay to work. When a cold was so bad, that I was forced to sign-off for a day, I was always so relived that I could focus on being sick and recovering. I believe a lot of people operate like this, being sick is something to be ashamed of, whereas it should be embraced.

I think if design leaders could learn to spot this, by increasing their emotional intelligence and reading people’s cues, they could spot when someone wasn’t doing well and encourage them take a few days off. Good operational practices would ensure that work can be distributed with minimal friction.

Something I learned about burnout, is that it builds up over time. If you can incrementally reduce it, with recovery and down-time, you should be able to effectively prevent it from happening. You could also do a crash course in the signs of burnout. Becoming demotivated and disengaged from work is a big one.

It maybe a controversial point, but while I was off, I eventually found the headspace to start learning how could embrace AI in a way that I was comfortable with. Now I’m seeing new ways each day, AI can make life easier at work, because I didn’t have the pressure to do this.

If there was space in the week for people to actively learn new tools to help with creativity, workflows etc (on company dime) it would have a very positive impact on a lot of factors, like retention and happiness. Also you could have a ‘Show and Tell’ of what someone has learned or built, so that knowledge is distributed among the org. There’s no guarantee of gains, but it shows that a company cultivates this and allows time for it, which helps establish bonds and community with colleagues.

Google still has ‘20% time’ where employees developed passion projects during work time. This lead to the creation of Gmail, which currently has 30% of email marketshare and is a huge part of G suite. I’m generalising (and Google isn’t perfect) but this led to happier employee’s and new products that increased Googles value and services in the long run. An example of the culture, benefitting both employer and employee.

If you can get access to the company strategy or Roadmap early on and it isn’t hyper-fixated on growth, or getting to some crazy number in ARR (annual recurring revenue) - I would take that as a good sign. If you meet people in leadership positions while interviewing and you feel safe, relaxed and like they could support you, then that’s a good sign. Ability to read people and trust the gut is priceless.

Another potentially controversial point, but if a company is small and mostly meets in-person in office, that’s a good sign to me. Not to say it’ll be perfect, but a company that invests in bringing people together, post covid, I see as a good thing. It’s easy to hide malpractice, or promote a perfect facade in a remote-first company. When people get together to talk and vent, that’s when you really begin to learn about what’s going on in other departments. This is harder to do in remote-first companies. Not to say all remote is bad, just an observation.

ecommendations from friends go along way, if they’re there already and you know you are similar to them in some ways.

Again, I think it’s more of a gut feeling than anything. You get a feeling when something is wrong, often your mind tries to block it out to make you believe what you want, i.e. this job will be a great opportunity to learn, a pay increase or look great on a CV. So you block out that feeling, in pursuit of an advantage.

But if you have a feeling deep down that something is off, you’re probably right.

Unfortunately, for the last few years the power has been with the employer, so companies have the advantage of a saturated market for designers, so there’s really very little reason for companies to adopt these good or wholesome practices. If someone doesn’t want the role, they can easily find someone else who does.

GlassDoor can be great to help get a feel for what it’s like to work at a company, and more recently I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me research the background of companies and what they’re like to work for. In the age of the internet, this information is easy to find if your willing to spend 15minutes doing background research.

The biggest thing you can learn here is to really know and understand yourself. This sounds really easy to do in principle, but it can actually be very difficult, if you don’t know, that you don’t know yourself. A lot of people think they know themselves, but have no idea how lost they are. It’s made worse by the hustle and grind of the early years in any career, because typically you push yourself hard and drop boundaries to get through those.

You don’t like it, but you do it, and this can start a habit of detachment from yourself, that become routine and extends further into a career. I’m my experience some people have really good boundaries and understand themselves and others don’t. It’s something you learn from feeling safe in your childhood. The good news is if you don’t have it you can learn about and develop them (boundaries).

The counter argument to this, is if you’re starting out in a junior position you perhaps don’t have much leverage. Imagine getting an internship at Apple, if the work culture at a job is work until 9pm, most days of the a week, you won’t get far or last long if you routinely enforce a boundary of leaving ‘on time’. The people I’ve seen do this and pull it off are those who are excellent at their work. There’s a dedication there and a self belief which seems to transcend beyond the guardrails of office routines and politics.

It’s difficult, but I would say try to find your leverage, a skill or skills that you’re really excellent at that helps to put you in another league. Once you have this, you should be able to enforce boundaries to protect your time and do work more on your own terms.

That’s not to say you should be entitled, but just to understand when you may be being exploited and let that person know that’s not okay. Robert Greene is an excellent author who focuses a lot on this area. I’d highly recommend his youtube channel to try to tap into what makes you great.

Reduce workload and expectations. Try and get design back to more of a ‘Design thinking’ practice of exploration and understanding, instead of being a churn machine. I think these are good first steps, but can easily be unrealistic, depending on the culture and demand of a company. I believe companies would benefit greatly from having design leaders (or leaders that understand design) that feel secure enough to pushback on decisions they know will be unproductive or cause harm. Short-term thinking, is usually a good summary for this, where long-term thinking has become increasingly rare in todays, high-speed, high competitive marketplace.

I think the culture at the top of the industry has become quite broken and design has lost a lot of it’s position in the way product design is practiced at companies. I’ve often seen this debate online, but I’ve experienced it and can say it’s true from my experience. UX has gone from the golden ingredient, to an output function of an organisation.

To bring it back to culture, I think companies (leadership) either understand design, or they don’t. If they don’t, they might hire a design department, because it’s the thing to do, but when times get hard, leadership often tells this department how to do their job, or makes cuts.

On the flip side, if you look at the designer-led companies (Airbnb is top of the rankings here) they are less focused on telling people what to do and short-term value (usually financial), in favour longer term, strategic goals that maybe harder to measure (customer happiness, or brand trust). These things are fuzzy or unclear in business thinking, which tries to measure everything, but they pay off in the long run.

There’s a quote from Steve Jobs which perfectly sums up Apple’s approach to hiring experts: "

It doesn’t sound like much, but it captures the mindset and early culture of Apple, which led to iconic products and their unparalleled success. In order to learn from others, you must accept the fact, that your approach or way of doing something, may be wrong.

And I think that’s it. Many products have had a lot of success, so the leadership assume that their actions were correct and they know best. That empowers them to take control of other parts of their business and can in time create toxic work environments where people are under-valued and overridden. Which can very quickly lead to low motivation, poor performance, depression and burnout.

It’s all about having a purpose at work (that aligns with something you believe in), being empowered to make decisions, being trusted to take the lead, and having autonomy over how you do your work. i.e. not being micro-managed.

Thanks to Alex for being so open and honest. Please do share your thoughts and would love to hear if anyone else has tips on how to avoid burnout as a designer.