Design is a high-pressure occupation that demands creativity, vision, and the ability to thrive on criticism. Designers are constantly expected to deliver work on time while meeting all their clients’ needs. The likelihood of getting burned out or developing depression is higher in this profession than in any other.

So how do designers face depression and how can you avoid it? Let’s break it down…

The Problem

In a recent interview, Product Designer Marc Hemeon touched on the topic of depression. He explained that he was severely depressed and had a hard time finding a way out of it until he met a doctor who challenged him to “figure out how to be happy, not sad”.

Marc started working with his doctor on what it meant for him to create a life worth living. In the process, he learned that happiness is a choice and that his job as a designer didn’t have to define his entire existence.

As Marc explains it: “actual happiness is being able to define success for yourself, being able to define failure for yourself, being able to define what’s important for you. It’s, like, no one else’s definition of success is going to be as important as yours.”

One of Marc’s personal projects is the ThemeForest.com Design Movement (not an official initiative of the company). This movement provides design veterans and designers at-risk with a platform where they can express their ideas and work on projects side-by-side with designers who know what it feels like to be depressed.

Marc: “I think we don’t want to talk about depression, we don’t want to admit that this has been a problem for us from the beginning. We don’t want people to say that our work sucks because we’re depressed. We don’t want to admit that we’re just not doing what we know that we should be doing. We don’t want anyone to know about the problems because if they do… we're not gonna be able to hide it anymore.”

The Solution (in layman’s terms)

Designers who are self-employed or work for companies where there is no HR department can feel like they are at their own mercy. They feel like they’re locked in their office, working every single waking hour of the day. They also tend to take on too many projects (and too much stress) because they want to impress their clients and look good in front of them.

In their constant struggle to be creative and to provide value, they often forget to take care of themselves. In the intensity of the job, they lose sight of their goals and feel like they don’t have it in them anymore to keep going.

So these are a few possible solutions:

Solution №1

(Self) Care = (Self) Love

With this simple mantra, designers can tackle their issue head-on: take care of yourself. This means that you understand what you need in order to feel whole and happy. You don’t need money or success. You need something else entirely. This is a matter of self-love and a healthy dose of self-awareness.

In order for you to take that first step towards self-love, you must stop caring about their opinion. Don’t worry about impressing your clients or making them happy. They’re not going to pay your bills, so don’t let them distract you from the only thing that will: yourself.

Solution №2

Another possible solution has been suggested by Product Designer Marc Hemeon. He says: “I have a successful eight-year marriage and I have a kid… I have a successful career, but I am extremely happy right now, and it’s because if things aren’t going exactly my way today, they might tomorrow. So I’m always ready for the next change. If it becomes something I don’t like, I’ll make a choice to make it work if I want to keep working on it. But if it becomes a bad thing, I’m not going to stick with it.”

While many may think that the only way out is to leave their job and move on, this isn’t necessarily true. You can always find a way out of your situation — even if that means redesigning your entire life and accepting that you’re going to have a life entirely of your own design.

Solution №3

A healthy balance of the two(work and life) is key to happiness. Martin Seligman, PhD, says that “if you care more about what other people think than about your own well-being, you will likely be unhappy”. It is said that it takes 21 days before we realize something has affected us, but it’s hard to know how right this is without any research. Nonetheless, I read an article where this was stated before so I believe it. You can find it if you google 21 days rule depression. If you’d like to understand why it works for designers, be sure to read on…

The Theory of Psychic Drain

The Theory of Psychic Drain was developed by scientists at MIT in the 1970s to help tackle social problems. Its premise is simple: when we are with others, we are constantly taking on their energy. If we’re not careful, this can leave us depleted and unhappy. We must focus on only giving out loving energy to those around us, but also realizing that positive energy will flow back to us as well. As long as we’re doing things that make us feel good — things that are congruent with who we are — we’ll eventually attract the things that make us feel even better.

For the modern-day designer, there’s no need to worry about meeting a client or boss. We can focus on ourselves and let love and positivity flow outwards.

What this means for you is that we need to create projects that we would be proud to show to others and not just show our clients. It’s one thing to work on someone else’s project and another one entirely to share your passion with the world if you’re not happy with your work.

There is nothing wrong with leaving a job if it doesn’t make you happy; however, quitting completely isn’t always the best solution either. It can take months or even years for us to realize what we should be doing in our lives. By leaving in a fit of anger, we’re in a rush to solve a problem that could have been solved by making life adjustments.

Think about what is most important to you and start making changes accordingly. This doesn’t mean that you need to join a monastery or give up all your worldly possessions. In fact, these are things that may make us feel bad in the long run. A healthy balance of both — what makes us happy and what is most important to us — will help us see the world around us more clearly and provide a better attitude towards our work.

The Benefits

One of the biggest benefits of making changes to your life is not only helping you achieve happiness, but also an increase in productivity. The more time that you spend with the things that make you happy, the less time that you’ll spend on aspects that do not. You will be able to get more work done (and accomplish more) because you’re not obsessing over something that doesn’t matter.

As an added bonus, there are countless side-effects of change too. We start to feel better about ourselves and our lives because we take action instead of letting things go. We start to learn and develop skills and become more comfortable with who we are and what we like.

The best way to achieve change is by taking one small step at a time. As they say, we only live once; we should make the most of it by making changes that will guide us towards happiness.

Do you have any other suggestions on how designers can approach depression? Or maybe you’ve had experience with this personally? Let me know below!