Horrible. [Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian] is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic Cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.
—Nicholas Sparks, in this USAToday interview

I wish people used better language to describe things they don’t understand, or things that are simply not to their taste. Especially in public.

Write whatever you want (and by all means be wildly successful at it!) but when you earn your paycheck penning love stories for the masses it rings a little desperate and hollow to talk smack about authors outside your genre—especially a widely critically acclaimed author like McCarthy.

It’s borderline criminal that this only has ~5000 views. More obscenely awesome cello work here.

A poor craftsman blames his tools.
—Unknown

Stings, doesn’t it? But there’s no nice way to say it. You can’t sugarcoat it.

When we fail, our pride prevents us from coming to terms with our own abilities. Then we go scapegoat hunting. Tools are typically the most present, easy targets—after all, they got us into this mess, right? You can’t take good photos? It’s because of your crappy camera. You can’t play that riff? You need better gear. You can’t squash that programming bug? It’s because [insert programming language of choice here] sucks. Surely the problem isn’t you.

Rarely do we have the guts to admit we are inept (however temporarily) for the task at hand. Our default posture is to fling blame anywhere it might stick. Blameshifting masks our own shortcomings. It’s the only logical place for insecurity to go. Shift, shift, shift, like a game of hot potato—do anything to make sure the blame potato doesn’t land in your lap. But if you shift for long enough, you start to think nothing is your fault, that nothing should be demanded of you, and that the tools should do the work for you.

You are the only one who’s ultimately responsible for shaping your skills or ideology. Good tools can help, certainly, but they can’t be the source—they’re inanimate objects. They do very little without human direction and action. Don’t blame your tools for your apathy or your lack. It’s your lack. A better craftsman would work wonders with the tools you despise. “The tone is in the touch” seasoned musicians often (rightly) say. It’s always about the craftsman.

So what’s wrong with your tools? It doesn’t matter. How about what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you execute? Why can’t you get traction? Why aren’t you improving? What do you need to learn? Get comfortable with self-critique. If it’s difficult for you to be objective, ask for help and seek wisdom outside of yourself.

Worry more about using the tools than the nature of the tools. Take responsibility for your own shortcomings and fix them (or re-calibrate into a different field). Fancy tools will always be a smokescreen unless you’re using them to do actual work.

Freelancing is only suited to seasoned professionals. Pursuing a freelance career as your first step in the profession is almost always a foolish move. Professionalism is maintained by habit. If your first step is a misstep, you’ve set a poor tone for the work ahead. Unless you immediately correct your mistakes, the habits you’ll develop will be clumsy and unprofessional.

…The design professional’s job is to show confidence when dealing with clients. No one else can communicate your value or win trust for you. The reason clients distrust those who do not communicate with confidence is because this trait signals other incompetencies.
—Andy Rutledge, Common Questions About Design Professionalism

Rutledge is all up in my business, tapping me on the shoulder and reading my mail. This is an excellent article, full of advice I wish someone would have told me when I was 3 years into being a designer and I thought I knew everything. I’m going on 7 years now, and I realize how little I know. Go get some wisdom.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence & having it last in your absence.
—Frances Frei

I’ve been (back) in my role as Design Director at NewSpring Church for 2 years now. From a purely practial standpoint, the team I serve with has produced some great work in that span—a revitalized brand identity, a new website (a newer one is on deck), and better overall visuals, public spaces, interiors, processes and systems. I think it’s the best job ever.

What we haven’t done well is replicate ourselves and train up people within our community to be better than we are at what we do. We run a lean team; everyone on board is extremely high-capacity and more than capable at doing their jobs. But when it comes to specialized roles, work, and projects, we suck at raising up people. None of us would argue that.

In the marketplace, there’s no competitive advantage for me (individually) to mentor others. Mentorship and investing in the next generation can help the bottomline for the company or organization, but unless I’m a partner or shareholder (or just a wildly generous nice guy) there’s no reason for me to take away from my work to help others become better at theirs. In fact, there’s the possibility that by doing so I’ll mentor myself out the door by giving my coworkers the tools they need to take my job. This is scarcity mentality at the core. Survival mode.

But I don’t work in the marketplace. I love working in the church, and we play by different rules. If I “aspire to oversee” an area of our church, I’m supposed to be able to teach. And if I’m a teacher, I have a very specific task:

And [Jesus] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…
—Ephesians 4:11–12

Equip. Work. Build. Equip to act, not to sit and watch. Equip the saints, not fill the seats. Help others grow in their gifting, not hoard my own. If leadership is about making others better, permanently, then I have some work to do. And it has absolutely nothing to do with design.