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This year
Find yourself someone who looks at you the way Tibor Kalman looked at Emily Oberman or the Vignellis looked at Michael Bierut. That’s right, get a mentor, someone to encourage you, praise you, and help unleash your potential.
Find
Post on LinkedIn that you’re willing to chat with any new designer who wants to pick your brain.
Post
This month
Today
Check in with your existing network. Stop worrying about the contacts you wish you had, and appreciate and cultivate the ones you do have.
Check
Stand-up comedians don’t head right for an arena tour with their new material—they workshop it in smaller clubs for months. Make use of that rolodex of talented designers that you’ve built over the years, and you’ll ship better work.
This year
Ask for a raise. Even in a tough business climate, you’re worth it.
Ask
Start making contacts and designing your next role while you’re still growing in your current role.
Start
This month
Today
Refresh your resume(s): one text-reader-friendly, one “designed.”
Refresh
Go ahead and shake your money-maker. Being able to ask for a raise and/or make a little extra on a freelance project (ideally one that you love anyway) doesn’t have to be about greed, it can be about freedom and growth.
This year
Check your hustle culture at the door. Work is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s supposed to be fun. Tune in to your intuition and follow what’s important to you.
Check
Take steps to expand your mindset with a sustained 30-day regiment, whether it’s meditation or microdosing or brain games. Whatever works for you.
Take
This month
Today
Tonight’s the night. Get a full night of sleep. And spend tomorrow morning on something challenging. While you were sleeping, your brain got replenished with cortisol, making you hormonally prepared to get after it. Use it wisely.
Tonight's
Get the mind right, so you’re more highly attuned to your intuition and what works for you. If your brain is a home and ideas are guests you’d love to host, make them welcome by tidying up.
This year
Focus is a muscle, and muscles can be developed.
Commit to the pomodoro method.
Focus
Read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari.
Read
This month
Today
Put your phone in another room while you work today. Your precious tweets will still be there after dinnertime.
Put
Everybody loves that WFH allows for a grocery run or load of laundry during the day. That’s all well and good, but less oversight and more distractions might mean that you have to be more intentional about allotting time for deep work.
This year
Find a conference that’s more than a reunion of colleagues, but is filled with people and ideas that will challenge you and help you expand.
Find
Express creativity in mediums that are distinct from your work life: cooking, dance, textile design, whatever will recharge your inspiration.
express
This month
Today
Inspiration blossoms in a vacuum, but only if you give it space. Carve out 30 stimulus-free minutes a day to let the mind wander without distraction. (Menial tasks encouraged.)
Inspiration
You get out of something what you put into it. It’s still true. Now apply that to that lively, inventive mind of yours. Ask yourself: What are giving your eyes and ears and nose to feast on? What kind of fuel are you putting in your creative tank?
This year
Invest in creative partnerships. Foster relationships with people whose work you admire, have worked well with before and want to work with again.
Invest
Try whiteboarding when your team generates new ideas. Be sure to identify goals and create a design system to keep notes and ideas organized and actionable.
Try
This month
Today
Pick platform—Miro, Freehand, or MarkUp—and share it with a friend, colleague, or mentor.
Pick
We’re better together. Use one of the various teamwork tools available to you to get more done with other people in 2023.
This year
Submit yourself for awards. You’ve got plenty of options: there are the Daveys, the Webbys, even our own Inspired Content Awards.
Submit
Update that portfolio! It’s predictable advice, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. And when you’re finished, share it on your socials and send it to three other designers whose work intimidates you. Ask them what they think of it.
Update
This month
Today
Try your hand at TikTok. That’s right. We said it. Show off something you created and maybe even explain how you made it.
Try
Yes, there’s a ton of competition for everyone’s attention, so think smarter and be strategic about getting yourself out there.
This year
Embrace motion graphics and interactivity. The static days are over. Whatever you’re making, make it move.
Embrace
Sign up for a course of some sort, like a Masterclass, a workshop, or better, a UX bootcamp… We have a few.
Sign up
This month
Today
Education starts with intention. Get picky about the media you consume: Devote an hour to unfollow the sloppy, the subpar, and the unprincipled.
Education
Are you still a work in progress? Even if you feel secure in your own knowledge, how might changes to design affect you? Learning the Adobe tools is so first-year-out-of-college, but these steps could put you on a forward-thinking path.
This year
Use your new tools to create a side hustle: Choose something that flaunts your skills and that you love enough to do on nights and weekends.
Use
Get some freelance work. Reach out to contacts, get advice and intel from colleagues, put yourself out there. Just be like Rachel.
Get
This month
Today
Do a creative tool audit: what do you really need, and what can you drop / downgrade to the free version?
Do
Never before have there been more creative tools to empower and inspire you than there are right now. And the good news is many of them are free. Go ahead and see what you can do with them and what they can do for you.
tactics, and self-improvements you’ll want to ramp up this year. Here’s what you need to do and how to do it.
The 9 skills,
Jeffrey Kurtz
Ceros Originals
2023
2023
in
be A
Stolen Focus
Today.
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