The gap: Meet your inner critic

Let’s start developing our emotional capacities by facing our inner critics head on.

Ira Glass struck a chord in makers when he encouraged us to strengthen our skills so that our craft could match our taste. In response, we designers put in months, then years, to hone the skills we thought would narrow the difference between the product we dream of building and the product we actually build.

At first, building our skills and refining our taste feel great. The progress is clear and we see tangible differences in our output. Over time, the returns diminish. That gap between our dream product and the actual product has narrowed, but the last meter is stubborn. So, we fixate and sell our souls to our inner critics.

Our inner critics whisper to us about how we aren’t good enough, but really, this is a distraction. It’s a distraction from the fact that product is a team sport and that there will always be factors outside of our control, no matter how much we work on ourselves. Let’s start developing our emotional capacities by facing our inner critics head on.

Identify the pain points: Say hi to your inner critic

Listening to your inner critic is like doing user research by asking users what they want and stopping there. You might get a solution, but it lacks context and doesn’t work at scale.

Our inner critic leverages our insecurities to make extremely convincing arguments. Disguised as the voice of reason, it leads us towards half-baked solutions. Our inner critic deploys cognitive distortions, making us believe we “should have” acted differently or situations are “all-or-nothing,” leaving no room for alternatives.

We can disarm our inner critics by recognizing their speech patterns. Here are some examples of what your inner critic might sound like compared to your rational mind:

• “I should’ve presented more data to get my designs approved” → “This group values data-driven decision making. I’ll keep that in mind for next time”

• “I want to see polished designs in production, so my only option is to learn front-end skills and do it myself” → “Let me consult my team on what it’ll take to ship polished designs”

• “I need my team to take me seriously, so I should have all the answers” → “Even though I’ve put a lot of time and effort into my work, I have my team to work with me through the remaining unknowns”

Form habits: Check your evidence

Our designs constantly train people to form habits. Take notifications, for example. People are habituated to instantly tap red circles and consent to receiving pop-ups at random times throughout the day.

Once you can recognize your inner critic, you can apply this same concept to train yourself to outthink it. We can do this by checking our evidence before responding to our inner critics. Checking your evidence lets you recalibrate that skewed version of reality that your inner critic presents to you. Here are some ways to check your evidence:

• Your inner critic tells you that you’ve failed and have nothing to show for yourself → Make a list of everything you’ve launched, created, and learned in the past 3 months

• Your inner critic tells you that your teammates don’t trust or appreciate you → Understand how your teammates perceive you by conducting a mini performance review on what you’ve done well and what you can improve from the past 3 months

• Your inner critic tells you that you need to learn a brand new skill in order to be respected as a good designer → Ask yourself why five times to get to the root of what you actually need to do to be successful

Propose a solution that’s in scope: Know what’s in your control

Do you remember the ambitious solutions you proposed when you were a new designer? Your excitement and ambitions often led you to overhaul whole pages and propose lofty redesigns. In an ideal world, our proposals were great, but the reality of constraints and resource limitations quickly taught us to design solutions that are in scope.

Your inner critic thinks like your earlier self, urging you to pursue unrealistic plans that leave you exhausted. It convinces you that you’re responsible for bridging gaps outside of your control. Rather than overextending yourself, know what’s in your control so that you can pursue realistic solutions that are in scope. Here are examples of scaling down your inner critic’s plans into realistic ones:

• You get feedback on your designs and work extended hours to solve for every piece of negative feedback → You allocate one hour to address and review both the successful and less successful parts of your designs

• You work long hours and take on extra projects so that you can gain recognition from your team → You share your active accomplishments and progress with your team

• You schedule one-on-one meetings with everyone on your team and more to make sure that everyone feels included → Before team meetings, you consider how you want people to feel when they leave the room and strategize how you’ll show up during the meeting

This isn’t to say that we should stop trying to learn or grow, but we’ve constructed our careers out feeling dissatisfied and evaluating everything with a critical eye. Listening to our inner critic limits our true potential because we learn out of fear, when instead we can strengthen our emotional capacities and learn out of curiosity

We don’t have to give in to our inner critics. Instead, we can recognize the value we’re already bringing to our teams and products. Let’s cut ourselves some slack and learn how to be kinder to ourselves.