A weekly email on portfolios, job search strategy, confidence, and career growth. From a designer with 25+ years in the industry helping 500+ designers level up. Read past issues below. Get the next one in your inbox every Tuesday.
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You’re not behind. You’re just too close.
Published about 2 months ago • 3 min read
I see the same thing in almost every coaching session I have. A talented, experienced designer with real work and plenty of experience behind them who's convinced they're not good enough. They're not falling apart. They're showing up, applying, doing the work. But underneath it all there's this steady hum of doubt. A sense that everyone else has something figured out that they haven't. That the designers getting hired, getting promoted, getting recognized are somehow more ready than they are. I want to talk about that feeling today. Because it's costing designers more than they realize.
The comparison nobody admits to
A lot of designers won't say it out loud but most feel it: They're measuring themselves against other designers whose experience, or highlight reel they can see and then comparing it to their own behind-the-scenes. You see someone's finished portfolio and compare it to your work in progress. You see someone announce a new role on LinkedIn and compare it to your ongoing search. You see someone present confidently in a meeting and compare it to the uncertainty you felt before you walked in. What you don't see is that designer's rejected applications. The presentation they rehearsed twelve times before it looked effortless. Their own private doubts. You're comparing your interior to someone else's exterior. That's not a fair comparison. And it's distorting how you see yourself.
The underselling nobody notices
The second thing I see which shows up in portfolios, resumes, interviews, and salary negotiations is underselling. So many designer's I've worked with don't see the full picture of what they've contributed. They describe their role as "working on" a project when they led it. They say "we" when they made the call. They leave out the stakeholder presentation they drove, the direction they proposed, or the constraint they navigated. Why? Because it doesn't feel impressive enough to mention. But here's what I know from 25 years of hiring and coaching designers: the things that "don't feel impressive enough to mention" are often exactly what a hiring manager needed to hear. Trust me. When you're too close to your own work you lose the ability to see it clearly. The wins blur into the daily routine. The impact becomes invisible because you were inside it when it happened. It's a proximity problem.
What actually changes perspective
Here's how to start getting that distance on your own:
1. Write it all down
Take one role from your past and write down everything you did. Everything. The meetings you ran, the decisions you made, the problems you solved, the people you influenced, the fires you put out. Don't filter. Just get it onto a page. You'll be surprised by how much is there when they stop deciding what counts before you write it down.
2. Ask what would have been different without you
For each project or role ask: what would have happened if I hadn't been there? What wouldn't have shipped? What decision wouldn't have been made? What problem would have stayed unsolved? This is uncomfortable because it requires claiming credit. Do it anyway. The answer is your impact and it's always more significant than you've been giving yourself credit for.
3. Say it out loud to someone outside your head
Comparison and underselling both live in silence. The moment you say your experience out loud to another person - a mentor, a colleague, a friend - you start to hear it differently. What sounds ordinary inside your head sounds impressive to someone hearing it for the first time. That gap between how you see your work and how others see it is where your perspective problem lives. Clarity about your own value starts with being willing to look at what's actually there.
If you want someone to help you see it clearly, that’s exactly what a 1:1 strategy session is for. We spend fifty minutes on your specific situation, and you leave with a clear picture of where you actually are, what you actually bring, and what to do next.
A weekly email on portfolios, job search strategy, confidence, and career growth. From a designer with 25+ years in the industry helping 500+ designers level up. Read past issues below. Get the next one in your inbox every Tuesday.
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