130 - Comfort

What this episode covers

Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Comfort. It's comfortable. And deadly. Music and links from this episode Mystery Mammal from their great new album, Risk Society I featured the tracks: Ruin, Greenhorn, and All Your Organs Get a Laugh Line-by-line notes Today's episode was going to be an extended one But at the last minute I changed my mind Something has been nagging at me the last few days About comfort zones And how nobody likes to step out of them But really, the only way we get better as humans Is to step outside our comfort zones This is AADA, and I'm Craig Burgess MUSIC Design and the creative industries require very specific things from you that lots of other careers dont You have to adaptable, changing to variables that can appear at the drop of the hat You have to be consistently improving, because things move so fast  And that is something that gets harder as time goes on When you first start in any career, everything is new Anything at all that you learn is an improvement  Every small increment is an improvement But when you've been doing the design game for a while You feel like you've seen it all Or done everything  Worst of all, lots of people feel like they know it all That there's nothing left to learn That's comfort And it's deadly in a fast moving industry  You can't ever get comfortable  Comfort breeds arrogsnce And cockiness And not only are those traits not nice to see in somebody They're self limiting When you think you know everything, you stop learning everything  Ive spoken lots about lifting weights on this podcast  And i don't just do it keep fit and get stronger I do it for the mental strength that it gives me Lifting heavy weights pushes you far out of your comfort zone When you've got a massive weight crushing your whole body and the only way to escape is to push it away You find mental strength you didn't know you possessed And finding that mental strength breeds more mental strength This is exactly the same reason why pushing yourself out of a realm of comfort is so important Progression isn't made by doing the same thing over and over The only way to progress with anything is to increase the chsllenge And as a designer, as you get better and better, that challenge needs to get bigger and bigger When you get past all the initial book learning  And reading the magazines  And doing all the design work over the years  Then you have to start working really hard to get outside of your comfort zone I'm lucky in some ways I've always thought like this And I know that the only way to get better is through insane amounts of hard work I don't always do the hard work Sometimes I'm lazy And sometimes for a long time I'm lazy But I know, and I've proved it to myself over the years  That when you put in the work to push yourself far outside of comfort You make huge improvements  The clue is in the title Comfort is... Comfortable  Comfort is nice feeling But comfort over a long period has diminishing returns We should all strive to be comfortable  But the only way to be permanently comfortable  Is to keep getting better and better  And the only way to do thst Is to stop being comfortable  MUSIC This was AADA and I'm Craig Burgess  Music featured in this episode was by Mystery Mammal from their great new album, Risk Society I featured the tracks: Ruin, Greenhorn, and All Your Organs Get a Laugh For a line by line rundown... /ep130 If you want more updates about my podcast, follow me on Twitter at craigburgess I'm back tomorrow  Support Ask a Designer Anything Ask a Designer Anything Website Twitter (@craigburgess) Ask a Designer Anything on Facebook Leave me a review on iTunes