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I remember that everybody was so smart, looking so good, talking such advanced English, and I'm barely able to say something. And, you know, when you are not confident in yourself, you're not sure what you can say, what's your voice worth of. And you're sitting like really calmly, you're not able to say anything, you're not able to speak up. And there are all those ambitious people who are striving to speak up, who are, I don't know, raising hands and trying to talk and contribute to the project. And you're like, oh my God, I didn't,
Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of the Honest UX Talks with Fisa and Ioana.
I'm really happy you're tuning into this episode. This is going to be a very exciting episode for us because it's a topic that concerns all the designers out there. We're going to be talking about the imposter syndrome, what it is and how we can overcome it or maybe even embrace it. But before we move on into discussing this really...
interesting and valuable subject, I would love to hear how Anfisa's week went. Hello, hello. How are you doing, guys? First of all, welcome on the next episode. And second of all,
Yeah, let's talk about the past week. So today is the middle of February, and by the time this episode will be live, it will probably already be March. I don't know. But basically, right now in the middle of February, I think that it's still the same topic as we discussed last week. So the clubhouse is probably the stop-mind, most buzzword thing right now that everybody is...
discussing, using, jumping in. So my last week went really clubhouse-ish, I guess. And I already started feeling a little bit overwhelmed and even tired from it, especially the last two days. Because I think like for the last two weeks, I was on the clubhouse talking every single evening. And that also affects my sleeping a little bit because
I'm getting too excited and maybe too emotional so that when I go to sleep, I really cannot fall asleep for like three hours. I'm thinking about all those different things, information, opinions and thoughts, and I just can't fall asleep really. And for the first time in my life, I started drinking those sleeping pills, the melatonin. So it's crazy to see how technology can really affect you emotionally.
But other than that, I think I'm really happy that I'm still not posting on Instagram. I'm almost thinking or asking myself, do I want to come back? Because I was planning to be back in February, but we are still working on the strategy and like posting content sort of
pipeline with the social media manager. And I'm really asking myself, okay, it's so good without it. It's so good to not have this noise right now in my routine. So do I really want to come back on Instagram? So basically I'm at this point right now. I'm not sure what do I want to do with all the social media presence.
Do maybe I want to take more time off to maybe reflect and learn something new and, I don't know, get better? Again, maybe fight the imposter syndrome that is kind of present with me for the last year. And it's like been for the first time, I guess, in the last 10 years. Not 10 years, okay. Maybe five years. So it's this new imposter syndrome that I'm experiencing right now. And I'm not sure I want to...
talk and being present online when I'm not confident in myself very much. And I feel like it even sometimes affects this podcast as we are talking. I feel like sometimes I'm not sure what I want to say and stuff like this. So yeah, it's been an interesting week, as you can see here. I wonder how was your week, Ioana?
Thank you so much for opening up like this. It's actually, it felt very powerful to see you in a vulnerable light because somehow you always seem like this superwoman that does all these things and has this course and does mentoring sessions with people on weekends and juggling between a full-time job and all these things in your life. And yeah, I can totally relate to the vulnerable side of doing
doing so many things because as we will be discussing later, being successful is actually a huge trigger for the imposter syndrome. So I can totally, I mean, I don't feel successful myself lately because I've been focusing on raising my wonderful baby.
But I can relate to feeling like an imposter when you're very much exposed out there. So my week, yeah, getting back to my week, I think it was, yeah, very much around Clubhouse as well. It's taking up a lot of my time. Actually, just last night, I went to bed listening to a conversation. So it was like this, instead of putting on meditation music or some sleep song, I was actually sleeping to a conversation on UX Design.
So it felt a bit, it felt exciting, but also a bit weird and unhealthy. And it also raises my anxiety levels because it's actually built around the fear of missing out and it's tapping on this vulnerable spot in our psyche. And so, yeah, I feel a lot of anxiety because of Clubhouse. But at the same time, it's really exciting and I made a lot of new connections and I'm spending a lot of time on it.
And yeah, that was pretty much my last week as well. Also had some interesting calls, conversations with some startups. I've noticed that a lot of small companies, big companies, they started recruiting efforts. So there's a lot of demand for designers. Everybody's asking me for recommendations and I'm happy to see the market pick up.
And the last thing that I want to mention is that I was invited to host an event in which I will be interviewing Alan Cooper, which is it also triggers my imposter syndrome big time. Like, who am I to interview Alan Cooper? But at the same time, I'm like totally in because this is so exciting and it's going to be happening on 8th March.
And I'm already starting to build my interview guide and thinking about what can I ask such a huge personality in the design industry. Yeah, this is really exciting and also like nerve wracking, I think. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Okay. So yeah, we have built up, I guess, this topic was talking about anxiety and our imposter syndrome notes. So let's maybe get into this topic.
Yeah, totally. And I was thinking that we open this conversation by first of all, defining what the imposter syndrome concept is all about. So I think that everyone has maybe a personal definition and there's this global definition. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are around what actually is the imposter syndrome.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, well, I don't know really what's the book definition of the imposter syndrome, but I think like we all experience it even from the word like imposter. You feel like you pretend that you know something, whereas you're not confident. You're not sure you know something. You basically maybe sometimes even sell design, but you're not sure, can you really deliver on this? And there's this feeling that really affects
maybe even productivity of yours and your work in general. So for me personally, imposter syndrome is lack of confidence in myself and in what I'm saying and what I'm doing, which could affect the way I work, taking risks, making smart decisions and stuff like that. And I do think this is very, very common and big topic for anybody who's starting out in UX design because
A UX design in general is very responsible thing because you're affecting people, lives of people. Like I was just saying that Clubhouse right now affects my mental health and I cannot fall asleep for some time. So like when we as UX designers work, we do need to make those big decisions, important decisions for people and shape the behavior in a certain way. And sometimes if I'm not confident, I might have,
Um, I might be even not sure if I'm doing the right thing. So it's again, not this well thought decisions that I might do sometimes. So for any beginners who's just starting out, I feel you, we are all going through this. We have all been there in the beginning. You're not sure who you are even, and how can you make those decisions? How can you build the products? Mm.
So it's this topic that I think we do really need to discuss in terms of how do we overcome it? How do we build the confidence? How do we really, from theory, jump to being confident and become like these almighty designers that might not have enough experience, but still know what they're doing?
Because let's face it, after you took the course, it's almost impossible that you will feel confident and you know what you're doing. You still have a lot of gaps in your knowledge and lack of hands-on experience where you know how to deliver, let's say.
Yeah, great points you've made. And I think that you did a great job on grasping this concept. If I am to share my own definition, I'd say that it's quite similar to yours, of course. And it's something around the feeling that you're a fraud and that anytime now people will expose you as a fraud. So I think that it's this feeling of in, you
inadequacy that you're not actually as good as others perceive you to be. And so, yeah, there's an it's basically for me, the imposter syndrome is an internal conflict between how you are perceived outside of yourself and how you feel on the inside. And it all comes down to feeling fraudulent in a way. So
yeah, these could be the definitions on which we build this conversation. And I would love to ask you whether you see some common symptoms or general symptoms that you or other people around you have experienced when they were talking about imposter syndrome. How does it manifest? I do think like it's, maybe we can start even from a more sort of deeper roots because honestly speaking, I think like it's,
It's in the way we are brought up. Like, for example, when we are children and we are constantly surrounded by parents or somebody who is raising us and we are taking a lot of, I guess, example from our parents. So we are learned to be always surrounded by somebody higher, somebody smarter, somebody more experienced who leads us, who gives us validation, who gives us feedback, right?
So this is like a pattern that we are taking literally from our childhood. And when we, let's say, step in outside, we are not under our parents, I guess. And we kind of are alone in this journey of, I don't know, entering, stepping up in the new market. We don't have usually, and this is, I think, one of the biggest points that I really want to make, but usually we don't have the parents, right? We don't have the mentor who takes us by hand and tells us what's right, what's not right.
We're basically surrounded, we're thrown in this ocean with
many other designers who you think know everything and you don't know anything. Because I think most of all, the biggest problem is that you don't have validation. You don't have this confidence yet because nobody really told you or gave you a feedback on what's right, what's wrong. What are you doing right? What are you not doing right? My biggest pattern that I've noticed is that we as humans, we're used to having expectations
Any certain level of feedback that we always seek when we start in a new job or any new thing that we're doing. So when we don't have this feedback, we start boiling in our own, I guess, juices and overthinking stuff and thinking that we are not good enough or stuff like this. And I do think like this is very fundamental for us to have a feedback, to have somebody directing you and giving you feedback.
Either it is a criticism or opposite the encouragement and the good positive feedback. So I do think like it's one of the biggest problem right now that there are people with experience that are in high demand. And there are many, many more people who are just entering the profession. And I guess the balance ratio professionals versus newcomers is not equal. And all of those experienced people are not always available to take new mentors, mentees.
And so there are much more people who are entering the field, but don't have those mentors. So they are basically, most of us are sort of destined to not have enough mentors or not have enough people who would help us to guide us, to give us the feedback and build this confidence by validating what we are doing or giving us really like a feedback on our mistakes.
So, yeah, I don't know if that's enough of the manifesto. That's what I thought about when we decided to pick up this topic. Yeah, it's totally a way in which it expresses itself. And I think that you touched on some extremely interesting points around the causes of the imposter syndrome. So what's causing it? Yeah.
Yeah, I would like to maybe dive deeper into this universe of what drives us into experiencing the imposter syndrome, what other causes there are to the problem. But before that, I would also like to share some symptoms that I observed in others and in myself as well. So I think that imposter syndrome often manifests itself in...
in the form of anxiety. So there's a lot of anxiety around maybe showing your work, talking to others, going to events, even networking, because you're in a constant state that people are going to discover that you're not as good as they think, that your work is not as...
experienced as you feel like they perceive and so you're in a constant state where people are trying maybe to compliment you or encourage you and that makes you feel even more inadequate so it's a feedback loop it's a constant circle of go it's a spiral down if you want and oftentimes some designers can even go into a state of depression which is I guess the worst way in which
the impostors you know can manifest itself but um i think more interesting conversation is indeed around causes and you mentioned something super interesting about the childhood and getting used to having someone that's always shadowing us and taking care that we're doing the right steps and validating us um
what other causes do you think there are to this problem? Maybe social media or, uh, the design work being out there. I'm curious to hear what do you think is triggering so many of us to have these feelings? Yeah, I do think that what you just started saying, it actually really affects, um,
As you said, if we just go for events or a conference, it's this one small cause. You put yourself out there, you talk to a couple of people, so you're being vulnerable in front of those people for one evening.
Right now in the social media, especially right now in this pandemic lockdown period when you are constantly sitting at home, all you have is this phone and social media and you're being constantly, because again, we know that social media is this psychological trigger for us to look for some endorphins online for likes or whatever, for content. And so
You're going online because it's very, very addictive and we want to come back to social media. But once we were exposed to social media, we can see that there are so many people that are doing all these great things, the content, the podcast, the clubhouses, the YouTube videos, et cetera. And they all seem confident and they all seem to be like constantly on the wave and being, I don't know, in a good mood, full of energy. And you start feeling like,
am I doing what's wrong with me, right? You're constantly being exposed to those people and you're not sure if you're good enough to be like them. So this creates this feeling of anxiety. And trust me, we with you, Ervana, we are doing a lot of things out there, right? We don't want to cause this anxiety for other people.
But we are also not confident. And we sometimes even might do things to prove ourselves that we are not that bad. When we speak up, maybe we're bottling in a way our own inconfidence. Maybe we're trying to get rid of it by talking, by putting ourselves out there. So yeah, when you start talking about things, you're almost like discussing if you're knowing it's right or you don't know it. Maybe you're even looking for validation through those conversations sometimes.
So I do think social media definitely extremely affects us emotionally for those people who are starting out, for those people who are already in the industry. And as we discussed in the beginning of this call, yeah, like right now, if you're being exposed a lot, you start feeling maybe you're not good enough because look at all those people, they're talking such great things, such smart things. And you're thinking, do I know even these things? Like I've never heard of those interesting terms or tools or whatever.
So it's been surrounding us for the whole last year and I'm sure it also affected us mentally and helped us be more anxious in general as we constantly are exposed to social media. The other factors, well, I don't know if that's a factor, but I've heard somewhere that women are more inclined to suffer from imposter syndrome.
There were some studies online that proved that, yeah, women have more of this sort of symptom happening in their work. And that's also sometimes affecting their kind of confidence on raising up the questions like salaries and ability to speak up for themselves and say like, hey, I'm worth better. And that is like a very...
very big topic, I guess, also as to why sometimes we women being suffered from imposter syndrome as well. But yeah, what do you think? Is there something else you would like to add here?
I would like to add on the last point you made about being a woman in the design industry. I think that maybe we should dedicate an entire episode to this conversation because it's really interesting and there are a lot of aspects to it that I'd love to touch on. Continuing on the idea of what causes imposter syndrome, I'm totally convinced that social media is harming us a lot. And I do agree that we maybe contribute to this harm, but at the same time, it's part of the world we live in and maybe we should rethink things and not
run away from them. Getting back to the causes, some other things that I would like to add are that not having a design background might contribute to this feeling that you're an imposter in this industry.
Another point is that the industry is fairly new, so there are no clear standards or if you want, nobody knows what it means to be a good designer yet. So there's a lot of newness and it's pretty confusing for everyone to be able to evaluate themselves in relation to the industry and where others in the industry are. And I think that two major things
The last point that I want to mention that can cause imposter syndrome, I briefly touched upon earlier, are the fact that you might have an accelerated career, which might propel you in senior roles or even leadership roles that you don't feel ready for. But that's because the entire industry is accelerating, is growing at a really fast pace. So nobody is actually a designer for 25 years like you would assume that good designers are. So being in a
very accelerated position is something that can definitely cause a lot of anxiety and another thing because it is actually in a paradoxical way being successful so if people are looking up to you or if you have success of any sorts with the design you've created the product you've created the content that you put out there this also will actually
not make you feel better or more. It might have the opposite effect and it often does.
Before this call, I've looked up quickly on the internet about some facts on the imposter syndrome. And I also found that mainly high achievers are suffering from imposter syndrome. So if you're ambitious, if you want to achieve something in your life, you most likely will be suffering from imposter syndrome. And again, we don't want to say we're hard achievers, but the fact that you are ambitious might affect because you feel like, oh my God, everybody already achieved something and I'm not.
So you're most likely going to beat yourself for not achieving it yet. And that's another symptom maybe to look out for. If you know that you're ambitious, it's all right. You probably need to understand it and embrace it and just go through this. It's normal. As I said, we're all going through this. But I think we'll discuss in a second how
more of a, yeah, how do we want to go about it? What are the tips? How do we want to maybe overcome it in a more effective way, I guess. Yeah. But before we move on to discussing how to overcome the imposter syndrome, if there's a need for overcoming it and why the imposter syndrome might not be that bad, I would love to hear your personal experience with the imposter syndrome. So I'm really curious to see how it affected you throughout your career. Yeah. Okay.
So I feel like coming back to this story over and over again, but I'll try to kind of talk about my story, but from like, again, angle of the being under imposter syndrome again. So in the last, maybe last or one of the previous episodes, I've mentioned that my journey has been sort of before and after being confident. So like there was those two stages before,
before it was theory and me drifting around not being sure what I'm doing and then confidence after I've been after I took the internship and then I was teaching in the event courses. So those are two different stories and I hardly suffered from imposter syndrome before this breakthrough line, I guess. My imposter syndrome story starts from the fact that I'm coming from Ukraine where, for example,
English is not a very well-developed thing. So we don't really study English very well, even though I was studying in a specialized English school. But I still felt like I don't know English. I couldn't express myself well in English. And I remember I was traveling with some friends. They were so well-spoken. They could, I don't know, joke around. And I was barely able to express myself. And so I moved to Estonia. I think I was around 21 or 22 years.
And it's Nordic European country where people speak in English really, really well.
So I sit in my first classes on this. I told already in the past that I took a master's degree in Estonia. So I was sitting in those first classes and I remember that everybody was so smart, looking so good, talking such advanced English and I'm barely able to say something. And I even remember like, you know, when you are not confident in yourself, you're not sure what you can say, what's your voice worth of.
And you're sitting like really calmly. You're not able to say anything. You're not able to speak up. And there are all those ambitious people who are striving to speak up, who are, I don't know, raising hands and trying to talk and contribute to the project. And you're like, oh my God, I don't understand what's going on. I cannot say anything. So this is like the first way when I really realized maybe I'm not so worthy. Maybe I'm not so good. Maybe I really need to work on myself.
For the first year, I was hardly, hardly suffering from being a person who does not contribute to the team.
was not being useful. I even remember the moments when somebody was trying to talk to me and I'm sitting and looking at them and feeling like, what are they saying? And I'm trying to reply something and they don't understand me. And we are sitting like we're talking different languages. And then my mentor, well, actually the tutor of that class looks at us and saying like, oh, welcome to the new world, Lawson Translations. And I felt like, oh my God, he's referring to me that I don't speak well on English. So I feel so bad after that. And
And there were a lot of those moments in the first year of my study where I felt like, oh my god, I'm so bad. I can't help, I can't talk, and people around me know English so well and they are also experienced, so I'll rather sit here calmly and not express myself at all. That was like the first year.
And now if I look back on the assess I was writing, my English was indeed really, really bad. Even when I graduated three years later, my tutor told me that I badly, badly needed a copywriter or somebody who would check my text because it's unreadable. It's like my, so it became my trauma that I cannot talk in English really, really well. I even gave myself some
this manifesto that at some point I will become so good at English that I'll even write the book on this to prove everybody's wrong. This is like the first sign when I felt myself so bad, but I really wanted to overcome it. That's the first thing. I know it's not related to UX design in general, but that was really tightly connected because I think we work mainly in English. This industry is very English speaking and
Ability to express yourself, ability to present and argument your decisions is super important. And so for me, English was the first important part of becoming a confident. The second part was, of course, as I started working, as I started freelancing, I was still not sure what I'm doing. I'm drifting around. And I told you, I took this internship at the design agency.
And there everybody seemed to be so confident and smart. It was the best agency I could find. It took me a lot of energy to apply there. I went in and I felt like, oh my God, everybody's so cool here. What am I doing? I'm not able to do great things here.
here. So I kind of, I was almost sure that I'm bad here. I'm not good enough here. And then it also affected me. I've spent a lot of time. I almost burned out. I was doing a lot of different things, but I don't think I was doing them smartly. So in a way I was not helping myself to, to make a good reputation, that company. And I was constantly fighting inside of my head, like, am I good enough to be here among these people?
And luckily there were like two people there. One was really outspoken in easygoing and he would always approach me and he would always give me feedback, which really incredibly helped me to start building that confidence. And there was another guy who never talked to me. He was very calm, very Nordic, not emotional at all, and never would give me any feedback. I think in the whole, I guess, four months of internship, he told me like, I don't know, three phrases or one email or something like this. So it was very unapproachable person.
And I literally, I was grateful so much for this other person who would always approach me and give me the feedback, which I literally, I really realized how important it is to give people feedback and validation.
And also my tutor at the university, that one, that tutor who told that probably you guys are lost in translation. He was also very calm, very unapproachable and never really talking to us. So I felt like, oh my God, I'm being abandoned. I'm being a bad kid. Nobody cares about me and stuff like this. This is like the syndrome comes from the childhood. So at the end...
Those two mentors, I guess, one is a tutor at the university, another one is a column person at the internship agency I was taking, were affecting me badly. But then there was the other side of it. There were people who were helping me out, who were always kind of coming up to me and helping me to progress and giving me feedback. And it was just so valuable at that point that helped me to shape myself and really start building that confidence. And only, as I already said, like the last part of it was that
I went to a different country, to Georgia, and I badly needed it because in Estonia, people are very calm and reserved. It's very hard sometimes to get feedback from them. So I did like a very huge turn and went to Georgia, southern country, Caucasia, and I was teaching there UX design where people were open, warm, always giving you feedback, always helping you out, giving jokes and stuff like this. It was completely different experience. And only because the people were so open and heart-to-heart
hearty, I guess, also welcoming to me. It helped me to, it basically validated that I'm doing the right thing. So when I was given the lectures every second evening, they were giving me props and helping me validate that I'm not doing the bad thing here, that I'm not...
like a fraud here. So it's really, really helped me a lot to build the confidence. And after I finished that teaching experience, I finally felt like, wow, I'm a different person right now. I know what I'm doing. I know where I have gaps. And now I just want to put my hands onto something and bring value. So yeah, I know it's been a long story, but it's definitely this complex story that is not
you know, so linear and that you could say like, yes, you know, you go here, you go do this, and then you overcome this imposter syndrome. I think like it's a always personal complex and almost intimate story of everybody who's going through this. Tell me a little bit more about your story. I know you also have some struggles there in the beginning.
First of all, before I go into my own story, I just want to say that, wow, you had such a powerful experience in your early years. And I think that I want to thank you for sharing this story with me and with our audience. Because yeah, it's,
I don't know, in the last few months or maybe in the past year, especially after the pandemic started, I became a huge fan of showing vulnerability and showing the struggles you have and not polishing what we show out to the world. And that's how the Honest UX Talks came about. And well, actually, you were the one with the idea behind them, but I immediately clicked with it.
So getting back to my story, I kind of resonate with your own. I feel there's a bit of overlapping there in the sense that I also worked in a team of very cool designers, bright people, some of them.
with experience working abroad, working in industrial design. I looked up at them like they were some sort of geniuses of design, which I was very far from being or perceived myself as being very far from being.
But so for the entire time I worked with the design team at ING Bank, I felt like a fraud and I felt like I was what am I doing among these people? Because these people actually some of them even have a design background, which was a rarity in Romania. And so I felt really inadequate. But what I can say now after all the struggles,
stress around that past and there are a couple of years ever since. I can say that that period was actually fundamental in shaping my design personality. So being surrounded by people who kind of make you feel okay, maybe like a fraud or inadequate is actually a fantastic way to grow and learn and advance your because
I remember something that Andy Budd once told me. He told me that I have to make sure that I'm never the smartest person in the room.
And so this is something that maybe it's not a bad thing to put up with the imposter syndrome because it means that you're surrounded by people that you can learn from or that you can look up to. So you're actually growing when you have this feeling. And another point that I want to make on my journey, my experience with imposter syndrome is that
Having the public validation or having the public success with UX goodies only made it worse. So it didn't help me feel like I'm a better designer, like I'm saying good things. So it made me feel more and more inadequate and asking myself on a daily basis, so absolutely daily basis questions.
Who am I to tell these people what they should be doing as designers? What gives me the authority to discuss these things in such a big platform online? And so, yeah, I have been feeling the imposter syndrome really bad ever since US Goodies became successful. But I'm learning to deal with it and maybe turn it into something good. And yeah, yeah.
the fact that it feels one-sided. I don't want to be the one that's teaching people. I want everybody to teach everybody and create a space for one-sidedness
Where I'm not feeling such an imposter myself. I just wanted to add a five cents here. I really love that you're, first of all, that you're saying we not necessarily need to frame what we're doing as teaching, but more of a sharing, sharing experiences, helping each other. And I also love that you said that, oh my God, I'm not feeling confident because I have this, you know, huge and successful page. It actually just make me question whether I'm good enough. That just says that,
I think it's a very, even though it sounds bad, but I think like it's a very right message that we need to share across that you need to embrace this. You need to challenge yourself. You need to put yourself in a situation when you're not sure if you're good enough, only this way you can grow. And if you shape your perspective, change your perspective, sort of turn this perspective 180 degrees, you can actually, once you overcome this fear of imposter or of
syndrome of imposter, you'll look back at what you have gone through and you'll most likely feel like, oh my God, this was the best experience ever. That taught me so, so much. Only with some time, when you look back at this, you'll understand the value of it. And that if you feel uncomfortable in the moment, probably it's the right thing to do. Probably you just need to go through this. You need to be
Maybe you need to reflect, maybe you need to, I don't know, talk to people to, to maybe to go like, like we're doing right now, like having those therapeutical conversations with the body, with UX body to reflect on your current state. But I think like to be uncomfortable at where you are is probably a sign that you're on a good, on a good road and you probably will learn a lot from it. So yeah, maybe just,
dropping it here to help people to shape their perspective and not thinking about it as a negative thing. Absolutely love the point. Yeah, that's exactly what you've managed to convey it way better than I could. I think your story is also powerful. Anyway, yes.
Yeah, so now I was thinking maybe we could discuss a little around how to overcome or deal with the imposter syndrome. What is your advice to our listeners? And then maybe I could share my little two cents. So yeah, I'm really curious to hear how to deal with it. I'm sure it's not going to be two cents, but all 10 cents or more. Anyways, yeah.
So for me, if I again look back into all this journey in your story and my story, I do think there is the pattern on still suffering and that the fact that, well, you want it or not, but if you want to grow, you need to put yourself into this uncomfortable situation and you need to go through
through maybe failing or maybe doing the wrong thing. But one advice, which I feel like I need to give here or a lesson I've made throughout this journey is to fail fast. So the faster you put yourself out there, the faster you get the feedback, the faster you get the validation, either it is our
good thing or bad thing, whatever it is, but you get the validation, you're getting the feedback. So if you kind of reserve yourself from doing this, the longer you sit here, you sit in the corner and not express yourself and not talk and kind of staying calm and like thinking that you're distant and you will overcome it at some point, the longer you make this journey for yourself. I think like the earlier you start to talk, to again, fail quick and to
Again, seek for this feedback. The faster you became more professional, more experienced, the faster you're being directed, the faster you know if you're doing the right thing. And I think for the people especially coming from creative backgrounds like arts or graphic design, it's a bit of a hard mental model to wear because
we will learn that. And again, I'm also coming from art background because I was painting from five to, I don't know, 25 something. And I was also going through those art schools and stuff, but ultimately we are taught to kind of, you know, to create the art and it's for the beauty and that it's not for criticism. And if you don't understand my art, you're probably bad. So this is the very, very wrong mindset to get into the UX design in general thing.
As does UX designers, our goal is to seek for feedback as soon as possible, is to fail fast to then minimize the risks of putting the wrong product on the market. So you need to embrace the failure. You need to embrace the negative criticism. You need to seek for it in order to grow and in order to build the right things in general. So this needs to be the shift in your mindset in general.
And, and there is unfortunately no simple way that you know take the theory take the one course, and then tomorrow you become a confident person, you still need to go through this loop of, I don't know.
Taking the theory, putting yourself out there, seeking for the feedback and only with a lot of those feedback loops, growing your confidence and becoming good enough, smart enough person to share it with others. So I guess my biggest piece of advice would be to fail faster. I have a couple of tips that I want to share with our listeners. I'm going to try to keep them like a bullet point structure because they're
quite different and I want to make sure that I go through all of them. So the first point that I want to make is that maybe you don't have to overcome the imposter syndrome, but you just need to embrace it.
So I think that the imposter syndrome will probably be part of your journey as a designer for the rest of your career. So might as well stop fighting it and just understand that it's there and see how you can use it to your advantage or how you can live with it in a pleasant relationship. Another point that I want to make is that you should stop comparing yourself to others. I think that this is what causes or deepens the inadequacy feeling.
I also want to ask our listeners to always be mindful of the fact that they are not their work. So you are not your work. And we should stop linking our self-value to the results we get and to the feedback our work gets. So separate ourselves and our identity from the work we're doing.
Another important point. I love this one. I think that we should all accept that it's absolutely normal and healthy to not know things. So it's okay that you don't know everything. It's okay that you feel like, okay, I didn't know that. That's great. You're learning and nobody knows everything. So we should just be accepting of the fact that
We don't know things. That's fine. That's normal and it's absolutely healthy. Another point is that journaling might help us with the imposter syndrome. And the last point that I want to make is one that you made earlier. I just want to repeat. It is that a mentor could be of great help in terms of helping to overcome this feeling or making it something that's a bit more productive instead of toxic.
So with these advice, we've just shared pieces of advice that we've just shared. Maybe before we move on into our top three favorite ideas from this conversation, maybe just some ideas around why the imposter syndrome might not be that bad after all. I'm curious to know if you have some thoughts around this.
Yeah, but I think like we've already sort of emphasized on this idea throughout this whole conversation. And again, as you just pointed out, and I just said in the previous story that actually, if you are going through imposter syndrome, probably you're a hard achiever. So you will probably succeed at some point. And it's all right that you're not feeling confident just yet. You are in the moment when you are uncomfortable. And it only signifies that you are on the right track. You are learning from this experience. So yeah.
In general, again, it's all about, and this is something I wanted to bring in our top three points, but I may even start already. But I think like my biggest point or takeaway from our today's conversation is that perspective or framing is everything. So the way you look at things,
would really help you to progress. So let's say if you're uncomfortable, it's not a bad thing. You actually need to change the perspective and look at it like, well, actually I'm learning, just like you said. If I don't know this book or this resource, if this point, oh my God, I just learned something new. So it's again about being vulnerable, but being open, but also sharing what you know and experiencing
exchange the values it's not about being guru being professional know everything from the get-go as soon as you took one course it's really all about stating what you know what you can help contribute but if you don't know something wow that's great i've just learned something so really shaping the perspective in the positive way could really help a lot anyone who's starting out or even like we are already working and still learning every single day something new
Yeah, what would you add to this topic before we move on to the top three points?
Actually, I would love to continue with your next two points because you made a strong point and I'm really excited to hear the other two points that you want to the takeaways from our conversation from your perspective. And then I'm going to share my top three. Okay. Yeah, sure. So another thing is, I guess it's to the point that you brought up earlier as well. I think you mentioned it in the point when we were discussing the definition. I think like imposter syndrome, it's internal conflict, right?
when you sort of, you look inside and you compare yourself to outside. And we sometimes think that, let's say, let's imagine this big bubble and you think like you're this one drop in the ocean and your knowledge is so minor, so not important. But that is actually not true because in fact, if you look outside and if you're taking off this,
Vyazma Shukla: A vulnerable and not confident head, and if you look objectively everybody is the drop of. Vyazma Shukla: In the ocean and everybody have their own perspective, have their own experience and have something to bring on the table it's just that. Vyazma Shukla: We all have different perspectives and it's not like you are this minor drop in your knowledge is nothing but.
But everybody has a bit of knowledge and everybody can contribute. So if you zoom out and look at this ocean, everybody has something to bring. And you just need to trust in yourself, maybe. That would be my point. And yeah, the last point, I mean, maybe, well, I found some helpful
in an extra validation in a way even an Instagram for example one of the book that helped me a lot to start the Instagram was show your work by Austin Kleon I think I already maybe brought it up in the previous episodes it's the book that helped me to just say that you don't need to wait to the moment when you have this perfect portfolio with everything
uh proofed and everything figured out you need to contribute to to your learning journey every single day and just put bits of bits of bits of work every single day so it helped me a lot to put myself out there and start this um this account i'm running on instagram so maybe books like um
share your work and maybe other books on confidence and yeah, overcoming this syndrome could help you a lot reflecting. For me, Instagram was a place of reflection and it helped me a lot to emphasize or I guess strengthen my knowledge in what I thought I knew. Okay, that would be my three points. Tell me what are yours?
So I'm going to start with a point that you made quite early in the conversation. The fact that the imposter syndrome is kind of, it starts off in childhood. So you can trace it back to your childhood when we were, like you said, always surrounded by an authority in the shape of a parent or some other caregiver situation.
that could validate us and tell us that we're on the right track, that we're doing the right thing, that what we did has value, who we are has value. And then you, you, you, you lose that voice when you grow up because there is no parent or I don't know, boss that holds your hand and keeps telling you how wonderful you are and what a great job you're doing. But perhaps
The twist I want to give to this point is that maybe the external voice we were used to can become an internal voice and can be something that we learn to tell ourselves in a very loving and caring way, just as a good parent would talk to us. The second point is that the design industry kind of lacks this
or these standards by which to judge yourself. So everybody is, it's this ever-changing, it's a very dynamic system of comparison references, if you want. So now, I don't know, the new visual trend is doing neomorphism or glassmorphism or anything of this kind. I can't do that, so I'm not a good designer. So these external systems
Standards always change. It's not clear what it means to be a good designer. The definition is ever changing. So that's why we constantly feel like somebody else is doing a better job because things are changing at a very rapid pace. So I think that when the design industry will mature and become more stable, then it will become easier to understand where your place is, why you're valuable and define your own work better.
And the last point is that if you plan on overcoming the imposter syndrome by becoming more successful, I just want to restate the fact that being successful and more successful than you are can just add to the future.
feeling that you're a fraud. So it's not, uh, that by having, uh, I don't know, success or doing things that are, uh, appreciated or praised, uh, that's not the way by which you overcome the imposter syndrome, but the only way it's to actually embrace it, learn to live with it and, and actually make it a part of, uh, your, uh,
introspection efforts and a means by a mean by which you can shed light on what are the vulnerable parts or the things that you need to work on as a designer. So don't chase victory after victory, hoping that this will make you feel like you're not an imposter anymore because it won't work.
And with this last point, I just want to, before we wrap up, I just want to let our audience know that I recorded this video with the baby in my arms for the entire, for almost the entire conversation. So this is a victory in itself. I congratulate myself for it. I don't feel like an imposter mom. I'm a good mom. And yeah, so this is...
This is the last point I wanted to make. Any closing thoughts, Anfisa, or if you want to share anything else with us? I'm sure we covered a lot. So I think if needed, guys, let us know in the Instagram under Honest UX Talks. We are open to your feedback, to your topic. If you have any other topics to submit, please let us know. We would love to make those calls more productive, hopefully helping you out.
So yeah, if you have any subsequent topics on this matter, please let us know. We would love to cover it even further if needed. All right. Yeah, I guess that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And I really hope to see you on the next episode. Thank you, everyone. And bye. Bye-bye.