How Motherhood Has Made Me a Better Designer
For all the ladies out there worried how you-as-a-mom might affect you-as-a-professional
This one is for my fellow career-driven ladies out there experiencing the same bleak apprehension I did: Will becoming a mom make me worse at my job? I was worried “mommy brain” would turn my mind to mush. I feared maternity leave would cause my skills to rust. I dreaded what sleep deprivation would do to my day-to-day. I wondered if additional stress and less “me time” would strip away my positivity and enthusiasm.
One year later since passing through the brutal portal to parenthood and bringing my cute little munchkin into the world, I look back with awe over how amazingly quickly and beautifully he’s grown from a tiny, helpless infant into a strong, ambitious and absolutely joyous toddler.
I also look back at how much I’ve grown as a person. Some kind and encouraging words shared by a fellow design teammate recently made me pause and appreciate the unexpected ways in which growing parentally has likewise helped me grow professionally.
A quick note to all the fellow working moms reading this who have been having a tough time with it. I see you! The nonstop demand of doing it all is challenging, draining and defeating. I’ve been blessed with an incredible support system at home, a supportive workplace, and a pretty easygoing baby — and it’s hard even with that fortune. I hope reading this helps remind you of the amazing grace and superpowers you inevitably practice all the time and probably rarely give yourself credit for.
I gained new-found empathy for people new to something — including users I design for.
I had zero experience with babies before giving birth. But I’m a preparer! I had read the books. I had asked the questions. I had bought the things. Yet, once I gave birth I suddenly felt completely unprepared to perpetually be entirely depended upon by this fragile, needy, heart-melting infant. Becoming a first-time mom forced me to experience that sensation of being entirely inexperienced, unknowledgeable and uncomfortable with doing something I absolutely had to do.
Those first few days in the hospital and first few weeks at home are when I held the highest amount of responsibility—and insecurity. I remember: feeling terrified that I’d break my baby when changing his clothes; doubting if I was adequately nourishing him; awkwardly learning how to change a diaper; panicking over every cry; not understanding how to translate his cries. I felt completely ill-equipped and under-qualified to be learning on the job.
I’ve realized that over time I’ve taken for granted how much competency and mastery I’ve gained in so many skills and disciplines—whether in work or life. This experience forced me to remember what it’s like to feel completely foreign to and hopeless about something you have to do. There was no mastery. There was not even familiarity.
Becoming a first-time mom forced me to experience that sensation of being entirely inexperienced, unknowledgeable and uncomfortable with doing something I absolutely had to do.
I’m using this with work to more deeply consider the feelings and needs of people entirely new to a situation — whether it’s a user I’m designing for who is suddenly embarking on a lifestyle change entirely different from their current knowledge and habits, or a coworker who suddenly has to use an interactive whiteboard tool over Zoom unlike anything they’ve used before… The scale of the job to be done may be smaller, but I’ve reconnected with those feelings of insecurity, hopelessness and desperation that can feel just as strong.
I’m LIVING the “permission to fail, obligation to learn” mantra.
While there’s no option to pause or quit the job of being a mom, there’s a guarantee to fail at aspects of it and learn from them. Learning to care for a baby—with his ever-changing requirements—has been nonstop practice at constantly embracing failure.
In those first few months of learning about my baby’s needs and how he communicates, everything was trial and error. He’s tired but won’t nap: Will he sleep if I nurse him here? Will he sleep if we lay over there? Will he sleep if I hold him in an arc? Will he sleep if I jiggle him standing in the dark? …Life starts to sound a lot like Green Eggs and Ham.
But, like Sam-I-Am, you persist and eventually succeed. The baby will not, will not stay awake forever. And just when you think you’re onto the right strategy for succeeding…NOPE: baby starts teething; or growing; or getting alert; or just getting smart; or just changing his mind.
It’s a constant intake of cues to understand his evolving preferences and needs and experiment with adjusting my approach accordingly—just like in product design: constantly learning about your users’ behaviors and needs, and solving for them in an experimental, agile, iterative way. I now live and breathe trying, failing, and trying again 24/7.
I prioritize and efficiently get stuff done like never before.
It was no surprise that becoming a mom would mean becoming a lot busier than before. What I did NOT expect was developing this new-found superpower of productivity. My multi-tasking and efficiency have leveled up to a new extreme thanks to motherhood. I can maximize my time like never before.
At work, I’m finding that I make decisions faster. I waste less time debating what to do and just start doing it. I spend less time on the extraneous things. I say no when it’s not relatively important enough. I can take those 26 free minutes between meetings to accomplish what might normally take an hour or two. It’s like tapping into this unnatural force of focus, concentration and productivity — probably thanks to all those tiny windows of time between unreliable naps to do basically everything you can’t do while holding and attending to a baby.
I constructively shake, shake, shake my sillies out.
In Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie—a former Creative genius at Hallmark who transformed corporate culture—he shares compelling stories of how helping workers in a corporate environment break away from their structured, logical thinking in brainstorms results in much more creative and effective ideation. (And yes, I still read books that you won’t find at Buy Buy Baby). And there’s a slew of psychological research supporting this notion that a playful mindset helps us flex that “what if?” way of thinking, opening our minds to more creative thinking.
As a designer and a mom, I’m finding all those improv moments of making up some ridiculous song or acting out some funny antics in order to amuse an on-edge baby have habitually kicked in at work, too. The silliness transforms ideation sessions from stale to innovative, presentations from dull to meaningful, and conversations from dry to engaging. If I’m feeling stuck on the same mediocre thought, I’ll more naturally make a moment of play to help unlock different thinking.
I’m more resilient — and more content going with the flow.
Motherhood has evolved my openness to change and non-ideal situations from something I can tolerate to something I’m truly content with.
Presenting important work on 4 hours of fragmented sleep? Been there, done that. Context switching from slacks every few minutes? So is life. New CEO is massively reorganizing the company? Embrace the good things. A new discovery throws a wrench in the direction you’ve been working on? Adapt the approach. Your team made the wrong decision? Live and let learn.
This resiliency is a muscle I’ve been working to strengthen in my career. And this one year of motherhood has produced the most progress in building it. Becoming 100% responsible for a tiny human who has unlocked love I never knew existed changed everything. I’m still showing up to work with the same dedication, passion, and quality — but I’m rolling with the challenges and setbacks with a practiced patience, stamina, agility, lightness and gratitude that makes it harder to knock me down.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you mamas! Embrace your superpowers.
