From a young age, I’ve been explosive whenever I touch, talk about, or listen to anything that interests me. My blood pressure rises, I get anxious in a positive way, and my ego rushes into action.

It’s a well-known feeling for extroverts. And it’s a feeling that, for most of my life, was tied to external stimuli.

This has helped me in my design career in a great way. I was quick to take action, and no challenge ever seemed too far out of reach.

As I grew older, I realized that this trait also brought many downsides in my career. To list a few: inability to focus on one thing, inability to sharpen my design eye and style to the point of easy recognition between the solutions I create. Everything started to become mellow. That’s where restraint needed to come in. In my personal life, I began to understand the concept of restraint and being selective about what I do and where, but in my design life — I was still just a small kid.

Today, I consciously set restraints on the things I work on. And even though I’m still the same person, that explosive feeling is now possible to control.

Here’s an amazing article that reminded me to write this blog post. It’s very much worth the read:

Restraint—a Key to Design Success

Enjoy the weekend!