Reminder: you grow with every single minute that you spend doing practitioner work. All the grind, all the heavy lifting means something: it's a UX gym to put UX muscles on you. No pain, no gain!

It really doesn't feel like gain at the time, when you've got your head down and a lot of data in front of you to analyse. Yes, it sucks and yes, it still sucks as a senior. 

The suck does not ease up, it just pivots...! 

Learning how to manage varying levels of suck is a core competency in UX, if you want to do more than just survive - if you want to thrive and grow then you need to keep reminding yourself that suck = growth = success

If you're not learning as a practitioner, how are you learning? 

How are you getting your UX chops?

How can you manage a UX function without those chops?

Quite simply, you can't....at least, not effectively...

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU:

Keep on at it. Embrace the grind. Remind yourself that pain is gain. The more pain you experience and learn to manage earlier in your UX career, the more it will pay you back as you become a true senior.

The senior UXer's biggest value is in their flexibility and adaptability to almost any project, service or product. To get there, you need exposure to lots of different diverse projects and different kinds of pain.

So, if it sucks now - GOOD - you're learning, even the hard way, but you're growing. When the learning plateaus and you're not learning anything new, just dealing with the same old pain, it's time to look for the door and look for new challenges.

Happy Thursday!! What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger 💪 👍 