Trust the Process

Last week I was in a group text with some people I used to work with.

We somehow got on the topic of all the new tools, AI stuff, and what everyone was using. They were throwing out names of things they loved, and I realized I had no idea what half of them were talking about.

For a second, I felt behind.

Then I laughed because it’s a feeling I’ve carried for most of my career.

For a long time, I thought I was behind. Mostly because I was always looking at people who seemed better at it than me. People who seemed more creative, more naturally talented, more confident in their work, or just further along.

I envied that.

After college, it felt like everyone around me was landing these really cool jobs at agencies, big brands, record labels, all the places I thought I was supposed to want to work.

It was frustrating. I felt like I was putting in the work too, so why did it seem like everyone else was getting the cool opportunities and I wasn’t?

My path looked a little different.

I was designing for political action campaigns, nonprofits, community organizations, and small businesses. At the time, it felt like I had somehow taken the less exciting path.

And honestly, I wouldn’t trade any of it.

Those jobs taught me how to work with all kinds of people. How to listen. How to understand what a business or organization was actually trying to do before I started making anything. How to work with small budgets, weird limitations, big personalities, and problems that didn’t come with a neat little brief.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning the exact things I would eventually build my career around.

Which is funny, because in college, we spent an incredible amount of time talking about process.

Not software. Not trends. Not whatever design style was cool at the time.

Process.

We were taught to ask questions before opening Illustrator. To research. To find the “golden nuggets” that made an idea meaningful. To explore a bunch of directions before committing to one.

At the time, it drove me nuts.

I just wanted to make things.

I wanted to get to the good part.

Turns out, I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to get to the good part.

The job I wanted. The confidence I thought I should have. The point in my career where everything clicked and I finally felt like I knew what I was doing.

But that’s not really how any of it works.

You don’t always know which job is going to teach you something you’ll need ten years later. You don’t know which person you’ll meet who changes the way you work. You don’t know which project will completely suck while you’re in it but make you better at something you didn’t even know mattered.

A lot of the time, you don’t know what any of it is building toward.

You just keep going.

At some point, I realized my career was working a lot like the design process I used to get so impatient with.

I kept wanting to skip ahead to the part where it all made sense.

But all the stuff in between was the point.

Over time, I started realizing people weren’t hiring me because I was the most creative person in the room.

They were hiring me because I could solve problems.

I could ask good questions.

I could connect ideas.

I could understand a business before jumping into deliverables.

I could help someone figure out not just what they needed to make, but why they were making it in the first place.

That realization gave me a confidence I didn’t have earlier in my career.

Not because I suddenly thought I was the best at everything.

I just finally understood what I was good at.

And maybe more importantly, I stopped thinking I needed to be good at everything else too.

The best projects I’ve worked on have happened because I brought in people who could do things better than I could. Better illustrators. Better developers. Better copywriters. Better motion designers.

For a long time, I think part of me saw that as proof that I wasn’t good enough.

Now I see it completely differently.

Knowing what you’re good at is valuable.

Knowing what you’re not good at is valuable too.

The same goes for all the new tools and platforms and whatever else pops up every five minutes.

I want to stay curious. I want to keep learning.

But I also know that trying to become an expert at every single thing takes me away from the things I’m actually good at.

So I find people who are great at those things.

And that has become a process too.

Figure out the problem. → Figure out what I bring to it. → Figure out who else needs to be in the room. → Build from there.

That’s really how CoLabs happened.

Jasmine and I couldn’t be more different. (Although somehow we still manage to show up to client meetings dressed alike more often than not.)

She’s incredible at building relationships and creating opportunities. I love meeting people and learning about their businesses, but promoting myself and talking about my own work has never come naturally.

For years, I probably would have looked at those differences and thought I needed to get better at the things she was good at.

Now I realize those differences are exactly why it works.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to become the creative I thought I was supposed to be.

I stopped trying to force my career to look like someone else’s.

And I started paying more attention to where my own path was actually taking me.

That doesn’t mean I suddenly have everything figured out.

I still have moments where I wonder if I should know more, be doing more, or be further along.

Apparently all it takes is one group chat to send me right back there.

But I’m getting better at recognizing it for what it is.

I’m not behind.

I’m just on a different path.

And some of the things that felt like detours at the time ended up being the exact things that got me here.

I’m not sure that’s exactly what my professors were trying to teach me, but somehow, it still applies.

Trust the process.

Not just the design process.

The messy, uncertain, comparison filled process of life. The part where you don’t totally know what you’re doing or where it’s all leading, but you keep going anyway. Because maybe the process isn’t just how you get to the good part. Maybe it is the good part.

And if you’ve made it this far into my self doubt spiral wondering what the hell this is all about, I guess it’s this:

Stop measuring yourself against someone else’s strengths.

Find your own.

Find your people.

Build around what makes you different.

And trust the fucking process.