Years ago, when I was racing bicycles, I kept waiting for my body to finally get in good enough shape that the races didn’t hurt any more. I thought that eventually even the biggest mountains and fastest criteriums would hurt less, if only my legs and lungs were strong enough.<\/p>\n
Instead, I found that the fitter I was, the more racing hurt. My increased fitness pushed me into more competitive races, where experienced competitors used new tactics of twisting the screws on me. Worse, I found that the stronger my legs became, the longer they could endure painful situations before failing. So the pain was worse, and longer, than it was when I was weak.<\/p>\n
Of course, I responded the only sane way: I quit racing and now enjoy a painless life of leisure. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I found out that my career of design worked the same way.<\/p>\n
The design process is notable for its long periods of uncertainty, which you must tolerate in order to get to the “a-ha moment” that comes eventually. Good designers are famous for their ability to tolerate ambiguity, opposing concepts<\/a>, and the wait for the next big thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet I thought that with experience, this time of uncertainty would shrink significantly, if not disappear completely. After all, shouldn’t you get better at spotting the winners and skipping the losers? Shouldn’t your experience give you better ideas from the start?<\/p>\n Again, as with cycling, I found the opposite was true. Better design skills merely led to increased ambition, and I once again found myself struggling against problems that seemed bigger than my abilities. And like my legs’ ability to hold out for longer periods of pain, my design experience seems mostly to have given me the ability to tolerate–though unfortunately not enjoy–ever longer periods of ambiguity and uncertainty during the design process.<\/p>\n Looking back, I’m glad I pushed my cycling as far as I could; it’s one of the things I’m most proud of. And already it seems that the increased periods of discomfort caused by large design projects makes them more fulfilling in the end.<\/p>\n But I still wonder if perhaps I’m going about all this the wrong way–because shouldn’t<\/em> it be getting easier?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Years ago, when I was racing bicycles, I kept waiting for my body to finally get in good enough shape that the races didn’t hurt any more. I thought that eventually even the biggest mountains and fastest criteriums would hurt less, if only my legs and lungs were strong enough. Instead, I found that the…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-AR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6428,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}