What does success mean to you?
The most important question of your design career.
I’ve just finished reading the new biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, and it got me thinking about success.
Elon Musk is, by many people’s measures, a very successful man. He runs six companies, creates world-changing innovations, and has at various times been the world’s wealthiest man.
I think the value of reading biographies like this is that you get to see these notable people more holistically and understand how their unique blend of personality traits, family history, financial circumstances, and the time they came of age combine to create a person that moves the world. You also get to see what kind of life their success enables them (or forces them) to live.
It reminds me of something I read once (though I can’t remember where) which stated that you can’t pick and choose which parts of people’s lives you want to emulate. You have to take all of it if you want the same outcomes.
So if you want to change the trajectory of humanity like Elon Musk has with SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and more, you probably can’t do it while working a steady 9-5 for a decent salary.
If you truly want to replicate Elon Musk’s success, you probably have to take the childhood trauma, an addiction to conflict and confrontation, the string of tumultuous relationships, an intense dedication to your work above everything (and everyone) else, and the other aspects of his life with it.
Elon Musk himself seems to be aware of this (or at least the people in the SNL writer’s room were). The book opens with a quote from a skit he appeared in in 2022:
“To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”
One of the great things about modern life is that you can generally choose your own definition of success. If you are reading this newsletter, you were likely not be born into some trade or set path that you have to follow.
As designers especially, we have very broad, applicable skills that can be parlayed into a varied spectrum of careers. We can also change course and apply our skills in a different dimension perhaps more easily than other professionals.
In this flexibility of choice, there lies an extremely important question: what does success really mean to you?
Do you want to be an Elon Musk-type that changes the world?
Do you want to run a big design team shipping products sold globally as a high-level executive?
Do you want an independent creative studio where you can work in your own areas of interest and at your own pace?
This actually wasn’t something I spent much time thinking about throughout my 20s. I was on a good track, having gotten my foot in the door in design consulting, after a few years becoming a Partner in a well-respected design firm. In that role, I had a clear mandate to grow the business.
Business growth is an easy metric for success. It’s a number that goes up or down. Up = good. Down = bad. By proxy it became my metric for success. I learned a ton and built a strong foundation for my career, but I do wish I had spent more time thinking about what success really meant to me.
At some point, I started to put more time and thought towards that question. And eventually I realized that while I really enjoyed the work that I did, the team that I did it with, and don’t regret a single moment I spent at the company, perhaps my definition of success no longer involved running a fast-paced Silicon Valley design studio, managing a team, working with a lot of high-profile clients, and everything that came with it.
Perhaps I wanted to devote my time to other things, work in other ways, while still exercising my creativity and love for design.
So I would encourage everyone to spend more time on these questions:
What is your definition of success?
What are the elements of a life that comes with that success?
Do you want all of it, or just the shiny parts?
Have you spent time thinking about these things lately?
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