As designers we at times have trouble saying “no”. Amazing projects seem to drop in our laps all the time, and our natural inclination (at least mine) is to want to say yes to everything coming my way. I mean what designer doesn’t have a million things going on?

The problem with this method is obviously wrapped up in phrases like “burned out”, “stretched too thin”, “burning the candles at both ends and from the middle”, and the list goes on. At times, for our own sanity, we just have to say no. We might hate it, we might feel left behind, but as evolving design talents our focus should be on consistently increasing the quality of our work. That’s not something we can do if we’re too short on time to do things right or only give a half effort.

We might hate saying “no”, we might feel left behind, but as evolving design talents our focus should be on consistently increasing the quality of our work.

The next time you face that cool side project, but you know it would be more burden than fun, say “no”…right from the outset. Sitting on these decisions can often lead to talking yourself into saying, “yes” when it is really not in your best interest. We have to value our time to get good at what we do. We have to curate our career and part of that curation process is load balancing and knowing when enough is enough.