#101 Am I good enough?
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When you say you're not good enough, you're not good enough against what standards? What is the criteria you're judging yourself? You're judging yourself based on the perception of how good others are. So we kind of have an internal model of how others are doing or what others know or what they're capable of. And maybe there's an average of what a junior designer with two years of experience should be doing. And we have an internal model of that. And then we judge ourselves based on that.

And so most of the times it's a bad idea because here's the thing. You're going to be good at some things. You're not going to be very good at other things. And you have to perpetually seek the things that are very individually good for you and just you and then focus on bringing those forward and just noticing them, appreciating them. And then also map out the things that you're not very good at and then trying to make progress in that area. ♪

Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa and I'm joined today by my lovely co-host Ioana. And today we're going to tackle a very important topic for all of us throughout the whole career, no matter how many years of experience you have. And the topic is, am I good enough?

In other words, patent the imposter syndrome, especially knowing who is our listeners in the early stages of your career. But before diving into the topic and unpacking what you can do better, how you can learn about your progress and everything, let's do our traditional catch up. And yeah, with that being said, how are you doing, Ioana? Ioana Krivokuća

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our episode. Well, honestly, I'm a bit low on energy these days. I don't know if it has something to do with seasonal affect disorders, because the seasons are changing, the days are longer, which I love. I think I'm just a bit tired, balancing and juggling professional stuff with personal stuff. My daughter keeps bringing different diseases from kindergarten at home. So that's also like, what are we getting this week? Kind of a lifestyle. But

yeah, I think overall, I'm also quite excited that I get one week off. I'm already in a short holiday. We're celebrating Easter. There's also Labor Day. So I will have a couple of days to just sit and unwind and refresh. I think that's it. Nothing spectacular. Just life as usual. How about you?

Well, I think for me, it was a bit more spectacular in terms of new stage, not in life, but in general, because I got back to work part-time. So for those of you who started to listen to us just now, I was for one year on maternity leave. And four weeks ago, I have returned to my office job, but for a part-time work. So I'm working 20 hours per week, basically after the lunchtime. So from 1 to 5 p.m., I'm usually sitting and working with somebody who's taking care of my baby. Yeah.

Yes, it's a new stage. It's a new milestone in a way. And it's going pretty interesting. I think it's something you probably are familiar with because you also were in the maternity leave for a while. But it's a very interesting kind of situation because from one side, it's the same. There's the same company, same people. But from the other side, it's everything new, new people. So it's like literally the opposite at the same time. It's pretty interesting.

But I feel like things have moved a little bit. Things have improved. For example, our process became a little bit more smooth, at least reportedly. And we were recently in my design community talking about the design process and how it affects our productivity. So I was like talking about the shape up process

we're following and how it evolved in one year while I was away, which is a very interesting topic as well. So yeah, long story short, trying to kind of balance out right now my days because it's very diverse in terms of what happens in the morning. I'm typically sitting with the baby until 1 p.m. Then I'm having the work shift for four hours. I'm working my full time trying to make it as focused as possible. But as you know, typically there are a lot of meetings, so it's very hard to find time to actually work and not just sit on the meetings. And then

in the evening, I'm doing a lot of community events, a lot of stuff going on there. Some guests are joining, some new events that we're introducing. So before we had like a lot of recurring events, like whiteboarding challenge, design interviews, et cetera. And this time I'm adding a little bit more diversity and more topics such as let's break down great examples. We have book club and everything and everything. So

Yeah, it's a lot of fun stuff. It's definitely a journey. I'm still learning to adjust to just this lifestyle plus to community because it's still fresh and I'm trying to figure out the best way to make it engaging and save space for everyone and also at the same time satisfy the raising interests and demands of the community. It's a lot of things at the same time, but I'm kind of feeling good.

As of right now, one month doing all this stuff. I'm pretty good so far. We will see how it goes in a couple of months. Maybe I'll be burnt out or unhappy or whatever, but I hope not. And plus the upcoming summer weather is really helping and recharging me in most of the times. I'm very happy when I'm finishing all the community events, 8 p.m. And it's still light and I can still go out. And yeah, it's pretty nice in terms of coming closer to the summer.

let's wrap it up our catch-up part and actually talk about the topic of today's episode which is in a way a little bit depressing but at the same time a very very important part of our work because let's be honest generally as design industry we used to romanticize the career right the design is cool we have coffee we have macbooks we work on creative challenges it's collaborative it's exciting it's well paid everything is so beautiful so that's why we have created this huge demand for UX designers everybody wanted to transition to it but not

Not many people really talk about the fact that a huge part of your journey to really become a successful designer or feeling good about yourself as a designer is battling the imposter syndrome and trying to understand how do you make it work? How do you make your work noticeable, not just for others, but for yourself first of all, because our biggest enemy is always ourselves. And so here's one quick quote or question that was submitted by one of our listeners. By the way, thank you so much for submitting the topics. They're always so interesting and important.

A question that somebody just submitted recently was from a girl. So she just graduated the bootcamp where she was one of the best students. However, she doesn't feel confident. She doesn't feel that she's good enough. And the quote is, however, the pause I made made me think I'm not good enough. I won't be able to find a job, even though I was the best student throughout the bootcamp. So how can I overcome this stage? And if you have any good advice, please share it.

That's the topic for today. And I think we can always get started from just trying to unpack our own experiences. I believe we talked about imposter syndrome in the past, but let's talk about the feeling, specific feeling of, am I good enough? How it went for us in the beginning, especially because our listener is just graduated from the bootcamp. And then we can actually unpack a couple of aspects that impact us.

or influence this feeling of being an imposter. So how about you, Ioana? What was your experience if you're looking back and thinking, am I good enough? Thank you for submitting this very interesting topic. As some of you know, I'm very keen on psychology things and just the mental health

of the design job and sometimes the lack of it. If I reflect back on the early days of my journey, I remember feeling most of the times overwhelmed. So it wasn't so much about am I good enough or experiencing imposter syndrome. I didn't have that in my early days, but everything felt so overwhelming. And the question, am I good enough? For me, it sounded like what is going on? And

And am I doing things that make sense? My decisions and my process. In a way, I wasn't so worried about being good enough because I kind of had a lot of forgiveness towards myself that I'm just in my early days. So I can't possibly be good enough. I'm getting there. And then I also thought that the people around me, the team I was working on at that point, they would also have the understanding that, hey, this person has just transitioned. I mean, I was pretty comfortable with knowing that

the expectations for me weren't so high. So the feeling that am I not good enough was more like, probably I'm not good enough. I mean, it's okay to not be good enough because I just started out and I'm learning. And so I was very comfortable with that feeling back then. I think it becomes harder once you're exposed

expected to be good. This feeling never left me. And I think if you talk to senior designers who have been in the industry 20, 30 years, they're going to say the same thing. Imposter syndrome is still there, probably milder because you learn how to live with it. Not feeling good enough is also something that you continue to experience throughout your career. But in the early days for me, I think in a way counterintuitively, it wasn't that bad because I knew that people understand the

that I'm not good enough and they're fine with it. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I will extract this wisdom. Like it's just accidental wisdom. I wasn't wise at that point, but I think I was right in feeling that it's absolutely the right time to not be good enough. It's absolutely the right time to make mistakes and to fail and to not know how to do things and ask how to do things and just...

be comfortable with the ambiguity of it all. Yeah, so that was my early experience. But then, like, I think after two years in my design career, I really started feeling that I'm not good enough. When it kicked in, it was really bad because now people had expectations and I was starting my content creation journey. And this brought me some sort of, let's say, persona or an image that I felt that I have to live up to that.

now I'm this person who talks about design. I'm supposed to be very good at it, right? And that put extra pressure on my shoulders, the fact that I was perceived as more senior than I was. And the takeaway here, and I'm going to invite you to share your own early story. The takeaway is that if there's a good relationship between the expectations or how you perceive the expectations of the people around you and what you're able to deliver, I think you can absolutely be comfortable with not feeling good enough, or you can just

feel good enough because you're in the right context, in the right frame of expectations. If a junior designer goes to be the chief design officer at some company, they're probably not going to be good enough. But if your junior designer goes and takes an internship, you're probably good enough. So if there's a good match between what's expected of you and what you can deliver, but then that becomes very complicated as careers progress, because there's

rarely this ideal match. Most of the times you're either enrolled in are either beneath you are either above you. So growth happens when you go for roles that are above you. So for a while, you remain in the not good enough zone until you become better at it. So it's a perpetual lack of balance if you want. But yeah, I think you should strive for just making sure that everybody around you has the right expectations from how much you can do.

And then you're going to be more comfortable with delivering or not delivering on those expectations. I just jumped into advices from my personal story. Sorry, Anfi, what was your journey in the book? No worries, I'm sure we'll still get to it and unpack it further.

First of all, I can't help but always keep admiring how well you are with just like self-awareness. Even though it was already 10 years ago, it goes to show how important it is to always look internally and try to reflect on what's expected from you. Because yeah, I don't think many people really understand that nobody's expecting them to be the smartest people in the world when you're starting out. I think I was one of those people who actually expected I need to know everything. I need to be the

professional and I don't know anything. Oh my God. And stuff like that. And what I'm hearing from you, maybe this is like a little kind of insight or maybe I'm assuming so, but what I'm hearing from you is maybe one part that affects this recognition is in which environment you are as you graduate or finish a program and start looking for a job specifically.

Because I feel like there are two sides of the coin. One is from your story, because obviously you didn't search for a job. You were transitioning internally. We already unpacked it in other episodes, but it was also very challenging as we know. But at the same time, you were transitioning internally. So you had those relationships and you could build the case within those relationships, right? So in a way, you said you were overwhelmed. You were busy with trying to make it work for you. I think...

What happens to many people who finish graduate programs, they don't transition internally. Basically, they're sitting in the vacuum without understanding what's happening. And am I good enough? And this is my story as well. Like this other side of a coin is not when you're busy, hence you might be more overwhelmed. It's when you have a space.

too much space sometimes and you need to fill it out. Like you don't know what's happening. You don't have an adequate pulse check and you start occupying that space with all your worries, with all your self-worth questions, right? Basically, it's just imposter syndrome. So basically, that was my story, right? When I was like also in the vacuum, not knowing what's happening, how good am I and stuff like that. And I like that our stories are in a way like, you know, balanced out because we have both different stories, different angles to look at.

What happened in my case was that I finished my master's degree and I was looking for an internship and that internship didn't work out, which we just recorded an episode about. And then I felt myself like, am I good enough? I didn't get a job in this company. What do I even know? I don't know anything. I could never find a job. And I was a foreigner in a European country. And so for me, it was also a challenge. The pressure was overwhelming.

not only on, you know, succeeding in a career and finding the right place for myself, but at the same time to really get the visa so I'm not getting kicked out of the country. I know that story is a very actual one for many people these days with the layoffs as well. Anyways, it didn't help me mentally at all because definitely I was struggling with understanding how good am I and then

When you're alone, when you don't have a team to work with, when you don't have that little environment to compare yourself to, that leads to a lot of self-reflection. How good am I? And you're comparing yourself to nothing because there's nothing to rely on. There is nothing you can measure yourself upon.

Essentially, you're like a fish in the sea, in the ocean, actually. You need to know. That's a feeling I was feeling for a while. And maybe because I felt so insecure after my internship, moving on, I basically spent about five, six years freelancing, doing my own startups, building my own team. I felt like I probably am not good enough just yet to join the team, to contribute as the teammate. So I'm going to just do my own thing. I'm going to, you know, work

solo or work with my own team, building my own startup from hackathons and stuff like that. That was a story for a while. And I feel like looking back now, it's easy for me to say, but back then I definitely was very insecure about looking for a job. And I was not sure that I can, was the imposter syndrome I had, which was very strong. I could not feel like I'm a

good contributor. I'm confident. I know what I'm doing. I know I have words. And it only took me basically from 2012 to 2019 to find my first design job where I became a part of the full-time role, you know, when we had a team and the rituals and everything. So it's been a while for real.

Honestly, looking back, this is where we kind of enter the space of maybe some tips and advices. I'll kick it off and then I'll definitely pass it to you. Looking back those seven years, six years that I was not in the full-time job, I think what I was really missing is some sort of

a sense of belonging and community where somebody could help me out supporting and helping me overcome my inner demons and fears. You know, again, I was like PTSD, didn't get the internship, so I'm not good enough as an individual contributor. And I would rather do my own thing and figure it out on my own safe space, my own safe bubble, right? So...

My reflection and realization today is that I think I needed a place where maybe I don't work with the same people. We don't have the same manager or something, but at least I have other designers in my network that could help me understand and validate and how good am I? What are my strong sides?

and stuff like that. Because I just felt like I'm not worth it at all. Until TLDR, I finished my startup. We failed to raise another round of investments. We were working on the startup for two and a half years. And then suddenly I realized it's very empty and I'm confident and I know I'm worth it. After working with the team that supported me in my founder journey, which was very empowering, I felt very almighty. And that's when I started looking for ideas

I didn't even start looking for a job, but I was stumbled upon an opportunity which I couldn't say no to. And that's how it all moved to the actual full-time work. But again, zooming out, there was a huge gap when I felt like I'm not worthy and I could not contribute as a team member. And if I were to be smarter, I would either get myself a mentor who supports me or I will get myself a community who could also cheer for my little steps towards the goal and understanding that I'm not...

that bad. Like everybody has some great stuff to contribute and bring. We just need to, I guess, not be afraid to start noticing those things. But yeah, I'll stop here. I want to hear your tips. Right. Well, I think I have some other tips. I'm going to just sprinkle them in random order. One of them is more, let's say, personal side and less on the professional side. And it has to do with understanding where the negative self-talk comes from.

So I feel that this feeling that you're not good enough sometimes is just a natural phenomenon of being on a new job or being in a new profession. And it's absolutely embraceable and natural. But other times it's natural.

sign of something deeper or more personal like you have a voice in your head that talks not so nice things about you perpetually and that creates this feeling of the lack of self-worth and this is something that just

propagates in your professional life from this internal way of having conversations with yourself and the conversations you have with yourself for me it was just laughable for many years talk nicely to yourself say nice things it was like come on just give me a break it's

so irrelevant. It's okay if I have an inner critic. I can live that inner critic makes me progress and makes me be better. And so it's okay to not feel good about yourself and feel content with what you have done up to that point and always want more and always feel like you're not doing enough. And so I was very comfortable with this inner critic and with the dialogue that was mostly negative. But after a while, I realized that

Whatever I did on the outside, the dialogue was always bad. So it had nothing to do with external progress or success or being better. I became increasingly better at everything and I achieved most of the things I wanted to achieve. And then the negative talk was still there. So it wasn't about something healthy that pushes you forward.

It helps you understand that you need to do more and try more. And it's a motivator. It was a detractor most of the times because I could have done the same things without having to suffer through all this internal bad talk. Yeah. Understand where that negative voice comes from. I know I'm a good, strong voice for therapy. I don't know. Now in the last couple of months, just a short sidetrack.

I'm starting to doubt the value of therapy so much. Like I feel it's valuable for one year, two years. I've been in therapy for 10 years. And at this point, I feel like I'm not really surfacing anything new. There's no surprise there. All the conversations I have with my therapists are predictable. So I'm not saying just go into 20 years of therapy and you'll be better at the end. I'm saying maybe experiment with self-reflection, self-learning, self-awareness, different types of

exercises and mediums and therapy is one of them in which you could understand and challenge this inner critic the bad voice and once you do that I think my second piece of advice is to reframe it into something that's more self-compassionate I guess it's just having patience with yourself and just being nice to yourself and okay you made a mistake that's fine that's an opportunity for learning

I have a daughter now. She's three and a half. So I have to talk to her in a way that's completely different from how I talk to myself. This really helps me see in a tangible way how eff up the way it is we talk to ourselves as adults and even between ourselves as adults is.

Because with her, I'm like, she's feeling bad. It's okay. Let's embrace this. Let's accept it. Let's accept that feeling. It's not like, stop feeling bad. Or it's never, there's nothing mean about how I talk to her. But there's a lot of mean in how I talk to myself. And so I'm just trying to move the way I talk to her.

into the way I talk to myself. So it's an interesting self-compassion exercise. And I think, yeah, just mostly be kind to yourself. And then there's also the aspect, one of the things that I think make people not feel good enough is the comparison. Oh my God, look at that other designer. They're so good at stigma or look at that other designer. They have such an interesting process. I could never come up with such an interesting...

process or whatever. And they present their work so nicely and they're so good at crit and they're so creative. And comparison is something that definitely like when you say you're not good enough, you're not good enough against what standards? Like what is the criteria you're judging yourself and saying I'm not good enough or I am good enough? You're judging yourself based on the perception of how good others are or

Most like that, I think. I'm not sure there's much more to that. So we kind of have an internal model of how others are doing or what others know or what they're capable of. And maybe there's an average of what a junior designer with two years of experience should be doing. And we have an internal model of that. And then we judge ourselves based on that.

comparison. And so most of the times it's a bad idea because here's the thing. You're going to be good at some things. You're not going to be very good at other things. And you have to perpetually seek the things that are very individually good for you and just you, and then focus on bringing those forward and

just noticing them, appreciating them, and then also map out the things that you're not very good at and then trying to make progress in that area. But comparing yourself to others is definitely a source of negative self-talk. And I feel that the way to reframe it is to focus on, oh my God, how do I get as good as...

at Figma as that person is, instead of putting it like that, you should put it, how do I get better at Figma than I was two months ago? And so I think there's this aspect of the race is long, but in the end, it's always with yourself. I think we should really focus on that. Like if you're better now than you were six months ago, it's success. You should congratulate yourself.

You're closer to being good enough, right? If you compare yourself with whatever new person comes up in your environment and you want to be that, then you're never going to win. So you have to constantly focus on making progress instead of being I don't know whom or being perfect or making no mistakes and so on. Yeah, I think those are some of my points and maybe celebrating wins and journaling.

there's also the secondary question, how do I know if I made progress? How do I know if I'm better than six months ago? And a way to have that measure is to document your thinking, document your work. So if you're journaling, if you're at least keeping some sort of

documentation for your projects, then you can revisit that and see improvement. Sometimes it's very striking. For me, when I go back to my first, second, third portfolio, it's like, whoa, whoa, I made a lot of progress. I'm definitely much better now than I was then, right? So documenting your work means documenting your journey, and then you can evaluate the

how you move, I don't know, whatever progress means to you, right? And then my last point, building on top of whatever progress means to you, find your internal definition of what you want to be. Find your internal definition of what would make you good enough and then try to aspire to be that. Like maybe you just want to be a very vertical person. Maybe you want to be someone who has strong opinions loosely held.

Maybe you want to be someone who is respected, who is very much about promoting accessibility and ethical practices. And maybe just define your persona and then compare yourself to how you're getting closer to that. And so if you make everything less abstract, more concrete, then you have better chances at fighting this feeling of vulnerability.

not feeling good enough because otherwise it's just a random fuzzy feeling. You don't even know where is it coming from? How can I get rid of it? You don't know because everything is just an abstract random feeling. But if you put it on in structures like, wait, wait, wait, what does it mean that I'm not good enough? What do I want to be? Where do I want to get to? I want to get there. Okay, how far away am I from that?

What do I need to do to get there? What would be a step that I can take today to bring me closer to that? So then it becomes in a way measurable or yeah, just I wouldn't say objective because I don't believe in nothing is objective, but it's more tangible in a way. And it helps you with navigating that rough inner voice. That's it.

Anfi, I'm handing it over. Maybe I just took some of the best pieces of advice. Sorry about that. You absolutely did. But yes, it's good. It's great because I really love how you articulate them. And I always want to piggyback on some of them and add maybe extra points.

points to the same point. But I really loved how you went in different directions in terms of psychology, understanding how our past impacts our self-worth, as well as how we frame things, as well as how competition might feel a big part of it. Especially the point when you were talking about comparison, I felt it. You know, I also went through this very well because again, when I mentioned the stories

that I was alone for like six years when I was doing the freelancing stuff. I was comparing myself to other Instagram designers, Dribbble designers, and you constantly see, oh my God, these guys are so good with interaction design. I'd never be so good at this. Now piggybacking on your point about the comparison. The thing that

I realized back then. And it's part of my, again, identity and my personality character. And maybe this is also intuitive and natural things that came to me. But what happened to me was that, okay, I've compared myself to those amazing dribble designers. Oh my God, they are so good with interaction design. They're so good with animations, with visual details. I would never be so good at this. And what happened naturally to me is that I was like, okay, what am I good at actually? Let me actually double down on my strong sides. And I do remember that

A lot of people told me my past and whatever, when I was a student or when I was interacting with someone, people would say, you're a very analytical person, you're a very strategic person, et cetera, et cetera. So I knew that maybe my strong sides would be the opposite of UI and interaction, which happened to be research, understanding information. That's where I feel like a lot of people tell me also, like, you understand the big picture better. You really understand how to identify the good opportunities, challenge the status quo, ask the right questions and stuff like that.

And I remember that when I was like, okay, Dribbble is not the right place for me because everybody's so amazing there. I'm so bad at this. Let me double down on the opposite side of it, right? The research, the strategy, that's how the courses actually came to fruition that I'm running today. And these courses are now being taken by more than 2000 people.

I have this kind of weird pattern in my character that when I see something isn't working out, I'm kind of doubling down on the opposite direction. Maybe, I don't know if it could be a tip, but I think that brings me to the point that you also mentioned about trying to acknowledge the good things about your personality, understanding who you are. And instead of comparing the things you don't have or you don't feel you can do well, try to reflect on what is good for you right now. Like, remember, there is this

mindset of T-shaped person, generalist person. Different people are different. Some people are good at a bit of everything and some people are good at something one. So for me, what really helped me to strengthen my sales force in the beginning was to understand what I'm really good at, build a strong vertical in that, in my case, again, research and strategy, even build a course around that and post a lot of stuff around that in terms of the content. And then use that pillar, that vertical to

as your leading pitch, right? This is what I'm really good at. Anybody asks me, I can do amazing stuff around this. And here are a couple of the examples how I helped some businesses to succeed. And then as you are now standing on a strong foot, right? You have your self-worth, you know what things are strong about you, what people appreciate in you. You always lead with that. You always pitch it. You know what you're good on. But at the same time, with that not so shaky confidence anymore, because you know what you

can bring on the table, you can start building more skills around things, the areas where you're not so strong about. In my case, the UI design was always one of those weak parts. And then I started taking, I didn't take more courses, but I started taking all those, whatever it is called, 100 days UI challenges, doing more freelance work in UI space, trying to kind of do my own side project, some UI design, little games here and there. And now today,

again, back to your point about the progress and comparing yourself to your past, that really, really helps because when you take a moment and look back into the work you did in the past, I mean, it's very natural for us, right? You might see the work and do the huge, cringy face palm like, oh my God, did I do this work? It's horrible, right? Yeah, like you will notice the progress if you look back. But again, the key point here is that build that first strong pillar, understand what you can really nail, and then

start adding more layers and make yourself a more holistic, more wholesome sort of 360 designer that can do everything, right? Yeah. First of all, you need to start with understanding what's the foundation that you start your journey from. And then, well, back to this, comparing yourself to yourself in the past, I am currently redesigning my portfolio, actually building my portfolio because I didn't have a

fully kind of the correct way of doing the portfolio anyway. But I'm doing this portfolio and I'm looking back into the project I did four years ago during the COVID. And I'm so cringing already because I thought it's a good project. When I was looking for my last job, I pitched it. I did the case study presentation on that project. It helped me get in four offers. But now I'm looking back in this and I don't understand what people liked in this project. It's bad. It's like so many details that I pay attention to right now and I see how bad they are. And immediately my guy Instagram wants me like,

I need to redesign everything. I need to literally just scrap it and do it in a better way. It's so tempting, but I'm trying to not do this right now. At the same time, again, that is a good sign of the progress, right? The tip number two here, consequent from the tip number one, is to once you start building new layers, things that you improve, that's when you can obviously start trying to do those accountability check-ins and look back and see how you have improved in a way, right?

I guess that brings me to my third point is really trying to do those accountability checkpoints. This is something I feel like is a very good thing right now for me, especially if you are a person who loves routines, that is not like a messy, chaotic person, which is very creative, by the way, I'm that kind of person. But right now when I have a baby, my days changed and now I became more routine-based person, right? So I have to have some schedule in my time. And so accountability check-ins really work well for me and also tracking the time.

So this is something I'm talking about a lot right now on my Instagram, like how I manage my time as a baby with all the projects. We also have this in the community. In the community, we have Monday check-ins where I'm asking people, what did you plan to do? What did you manage to do? And let's reflect what didn't work out. What would work?

we do better next time. And that proved to be a really good thing. A lot of people engaged there, more than 100 comments per every week accountability check-ins, which seems like a very good thing for people to build a routine and really try to celebrate small wins, even if they're like small wins, even if it's landing one interview per week or talking to somebody from the companies you're interested in, building the relationships

with them, building your networking and maybe getting the portfolio review and understanding the weak sides and the strong sides you have. These are all small wins that you can start celebrating if you introduce those routine actions in your life, right? So accountability checking would be one of them. Tracking time and looking back how you spend this week. What did you achieve this week would also help. At least it helped me. Keeping record is something I would really recommend to the same point. I think you partly talked about it as well. Few things that I feel like we didn't talk enough about

was also setting up the realistic expectations. I think this is something when you're getting out of the bootcamp and you feel like, okay, now I'll find my job. And you then face with the reality because today, obviously, we all know about it. It's really not that easy on the market. It's not the best timing, even though it's possible. I see great stories in my community. We have a couple of people who found jobs in the last month, but at the same time, it's really hard. Even if you have a strong portfolio, it's really, really hard.

So setting the right expectations, having the community to rely on and see really what's happening, even with people who have fantastic portfolios and strong CVs, it's still not going to be easy. And it's not going to be the minute you've walked out of your bootcamp, you won't find the job unless you're super lucky.

For example, I was in the meetup last week and I've met this guy. You, Joana, must know him. George from Georgia. He mentioned he is also your mentee. We talked about like looking for a new job possibly. And we've talked about, you know, dating scene and how you never find your perfect match, your partner in the first date, right? So that's the same with the job hunting today. You won't find the right match from the first interview. You just have to set the right expectation.

It's going to be a while. It's going to be a journey. You'll have to try things out. You have to, I guess, build a mindset of this continuous search in a way until you really find it because you obviously didn't find your partner from the first day. So it's the same here. It was a job right now. And so setting up the right expectations is one of the ways also to help you out with that. And like I've already said, having the community, which obviously I'm pitching here, my community, if you're interested, but at the same time, having the community, having

could help you to have that sort of environment, safe space where not only you are able to compare yourself to other people and see that it's not only you who is the problem, but that's really the market today. At the same time, you can feel safe to practice different things. You can try to get the feedback that, again, you can fail here and nobody's going to judge you because you're not going to lose your job because everybody is in the same shoes and able to build that confidence all together with supporting each other while everybody is in the same boat.

So yeah, I think that setting the right expectations as well as having the supportive community, a group of people or a mentor, whoever could help you with that, whatever is your journey, it's one of the strongest tips that I want you to remember from this conversation.

A couple of small more tips, but I'm not going to dive into them too much. One thing that really helps is asking for feedback or validation. So, for example, again, reaching out to mentors, peers, whoever who can look into your work that help you understand where you are right now. And then embracing the growth mindset is one of the big puzzles in this story. And we talk a lot about this, right?

Sort of embracing the beginner mindset when you're never going to be good enough, right? You want to set, even within years of your experience, it's never going to be that you figured it all. The stakes are only going to be higher. So you might actually feel more imposter syndrome in the future. So embracing this gross mindset will help you feeling safe.

in your beginner mindset right no matter how many years of experience you're still a beginner 10 years in well there are still plenty of things to learn from me I can still learn this improve this do better this etc etc right so there are always things you can do better but there are also great things that I can contribute already and this is the again this this pillar the foundation that you want to lead with starting in the beginning of your career

Okay, so one last question for you, Ioana, because I think like this is a big topic. We worked in a couple of companies now. You worked in three, if I'm not mistaken, environments and organizations. This is my third official full-time job, plus a couple of startups and internship. And I feel like one of the biggest factor today for us is also the organization in which you are in, right? Companies.

cultural organization factors impact our self-worth and confidence and also contribute to the imposter syndrome reaction. What do you think about this? How do you recognize that there are some places when don't help you to grow and make it nurturing environment for you? And then there are other factors like cultural, where you don't feel safe and people don't speak in the same culture way as you and stuff like that. So let's talk about also this factor. Is it important for you? What do you think?

I think it's essential. There's this aspect to the metaphor of dating. There's the aspect of chemistry in our professional life. So it has to be a match between what you can offer and the environment you're offering that in. And so the environment needs to need the skills and abilities that you can put to the process.

Of course, I'm not advocating job hopping until you find the ideal match. There's no ideal match, right? But like in dating as well, there's always going to be some level of compromise. But it's important to acknowledge that sometimes the environment you're in is the cause of your not feeling good enough to recognize that

I guess it helps to like building on your points, talk to a mentor, talk to someone from the outside, talk to maybe other designers, if you're lucky enough, other designers from the company and see if they experience the same level of internal negativity. Because sometimes it just might be that the system is broken and it's not you that is not good enough, but you are being set up for failure by not being compatible with what you need to achieve and the environment you're in. But maybe sometimes it's just a toxic environment that's

super possible as well. And you need to find ways by which you could tell, distinguish if that's the reality or that's just your perception of it, which in the end doesn't even matter because reality is what we perceive it to be. So yeah, I guess this is very philosophical, but you can also pay attention to the external factors that might trigger it.

Maybe you have a bad manager who keeps not supporting you. Maybe that's what's triggering you, right? You don't feel supported. You feel like whatever you do, they're doing the rework or they're like trashing your work. Maybe that's the case, right? Maybe you have just a team that's conflictual and productive. Maybe sometimes it's just the environment that's making you feel not good enough. And again, to recognize that, talk to someone from the outside. Try to be as non-biased as possible when you recount what's going on.

And then also talk to other people from the company to see if they're experiencing the same thing. And then maybe just do this internal self-reflection exercise. Do I like this industry? Do I like this product? Am I happy working on this problem space? Maybe it's just that sometimes, just incompatible wants. So yeah, what about your take on this?

Absolutely agree with the manager being one of the driver forces for your growth as well as comfort in the company. You need to have at least someone who you can trust and rely on and have open conversations, almost therapeutic conversations. I do remember...

Once I had this manager who didn't care about even like how I'm doing, he would just care about how I'm feeling in the company and would really help me to unpack the problems I'm having. And that helped me to become a better version of myself in the company. It helped me to, instead of building all the fears and worries, it helped me to feel comfortable and know what I can do better.

better, but it was, again, safe and nurturing space. So manager is one of the key roles, key figures in the organization as well. And for sure, if you don't feel like a safe space for you, if you constantly feel worried about, I don't know, targeting your back or something, if somebody's always questioning you, that's also a very destructive environment. As well as I feel sometimes the environment in which you work, how companies set up to work, their organizational structure could also impact a little bit the way you feel productive and could

become the best version of yourself in a way in the working space for example we talked a little bit about it long story short there are different ways of organizing the team work as design discipline is very team collaborative work and so there are like tribe models where you work in a small group of people right you have pm designer tech lead and then it's very like relationship based because you constantly are in sync with each other and you define the priorities but then there is like

agency model when you are being the shared dresser. So it's much harder to build the relationships, but at the same time, you see the full picture. And again, like, what is your strong side? Are you more of the relationship person? Or are you more of this like holistic perspective person that understands the systems, structures, everything? So again, sometimes this is a big factor on how you feel yourself and how you are able to achieve

the best at your work. And sometimes, you know, the environment is just not set up for you to be the best at your work. As well as I feel like another huge, huge factor, if not the biggest factor for me, because I'm a relationship type of person, was a cultural factor. So remember, like I said, I kind of failed in my internship when I was in Estonia 10 years ago. Looking back, I see that

One of the huge problems that I experienced was that it was just really not my culture. Essentially, almost 90% of the team was from one culture, from one country. And so I felt myself like I'm always speaking in English. So I'm kind of distracting everyone from being productive in their own language. And then I'm just an intern. What do I even know? And also the culture just didn't fit my personality very well because I'm more outgoing, more extroverted, while Nordic culture is

tend to be more reserved and calm. And so I felt myself like I'm always out of place, always waving hands, being emotional, and maybe sometimes weirdly screaming and stuff. So it just didn't feel like a right place for me because I always felt like I'm humiliating people by just being too noisy or something. So yeah, I just feel like it was not the right place. But back then, I didn't have the self-awareness to recognize that it's not my culture, it's not just me, but also the environment in which you are trying to build your fundament.

I think that the best way for many designers, especially for inner designers, is to really look into how diverse is the culture in the company, how many people they hire from the different countries, how balanced out is the female to male ratio, right? Tech tend to be a little bit more male dominated. So it's another big factor sometimes.

Again, if you work with finally diverse company, right, do multiple, multiple team, people from different countries, then you need to start also learning to calibrate the feedback, tone of the voice. Some people are more direct. Some people are more like using different layers to communicate the point. So it becomes a little bit not productive when you're talking to

people. So there is always this culture factor that also helps you to either understand what's going on or start building all those worries in your head, feeling that, oh, something isn't working out. Maybe I'm not delivering enough or something. Right. And I do recommend to read the book called Culture Map because it really helped me to understand what's happening when you work with people from, I don't know, U.S., Israel, Russia, Germany, Japan,

People from different cultures will tell you things very differently. And that's another factor that could contribute to your self-worth or lack of understanding what's happening. But OK, I think that we have talked about so many different factors today and covered so many different layers of this topic. Any final notes that you want our listeners to remember taking away from this conversation before we wrap it up?

Well, I guess I would just be repeating myself. But mostly, yeah, the things I just went through in a nutshell, figuring out where the negative talk comes from. It could be from your internal model of the world, which perpetually tells you that your self-worth is debatable. And that's something that you need to figure out on your own. But sometimes it's

due to external factors? And how do you recognize the different triggers? Like sometimes it's just a toxic environment. Other times it's just what you will perpetually say to yourself unless you change something. And I just want to tell everyone that is at a, let's say, non-toxic level in the frame of normal. It's absolutely natural to doubt yourself

I don't want to say that you should never have internal self-talk or I think that it's healthy. It's necessary. It is a foundation for progress and a motivator. But I think that like with everything, there needs to be a balance. And if you find yourself just perpetually doubting yourself and saying bad things,

with your inner voice, then there's a problem that you need to address. But if you're just going through your career and at times you're not feeling good enough, maybe it's just a sign that you're healthy and you have self-awareness. So my last takeaway, my last point is that

Maybe you don't need to address everything and it's fine to feel that you're not good enough because sometimes for some parts we can get better and that's also a good thing. So try to reframe all this negative self-talk into, oh, so this is something that I need to get better at. Okay, so I keep trashing myself internally for not being good at Figma. Maybe I should just get better at Figma. You could listen to it.

as the guiding direction for what you need to work on next. But again, I think it all comes down to the balance between these voices, the compassionate one versus the inner critic and the external factors and what's going on there. So I hope that wasn't very fuzzy. No, that was amazing. I feel like you just nailed it.

I really love this little conclusion. I feel we can even imagine listening to this conversation. I even imagine that some listeners might want to say, oh, you need to write some guidebook, a lot of different cool stuff. Like there was a lot of structure in a way, but even though we talked about our experiences and it was not necessarily super structured.

But so yeah, I think we unpacked a lot of areas or levels of the problem of doubting yourself. And I hope it was useful. So if you felt that it was useful for you, please help us by submitting your rating in any podcast platform of your choice, be it Spotify or Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform. We really appreciate it. It makes our day better when we see the ratings. And yeah, that helps us to progress and create more episodes.

But also if you have questions or other challenges you're experiencing, please find in the show notes the link for anonymous submission form. And yeah, you can leave us any question that you want us to unpack in the next episodes. That being said, thank you, everyone. And we hope to see you on the past or the new episodes. See you. Bye-bye. Bye, everyone.