You Can’t Be Good At Everything

You can’t be good at everything. Seriously. Sit in the thought. Linger with it and relish in the idea of you being absolutely rubbish at something. Whether it’s making tea, playing tennis, social media or maximalist design, it is oh-so-very okay to be totally shit at some of the tasks that lie in front of you. 

Illustration: @gemmacorrell

Getting Used To Mediocrity… And Greatness 

When I was young, dumb, and fresh out of uni, I had big aspirations of being a master of all trades. I thought I should work with every design style across every medium in every category... until I realised it’d make me miserable.

Designing for a tampon brand that believes women pee blue and devote their days to tennis is entirely different from working with cutting-edge tech companies or a swanky conceptual restaurant.

You don’t become great at anything when you are spending all of your energy trying to be good enough at everything. What’s most important is that you enjoy what you’re great at. You don’t want to be slogging over something that doesn’t tickle your fancy.

At Design-Hungry, we don’t try to sell burgers out of our sushi kitchen. Minimalistic clever aesthetic is at the heart of everything we do, because we bloody love it. When brands are looking for fluff and butterflies, we leave it to the fluff and butterfly experts… and that’s not us. 

Embrace Your Strengths 

We’ve been lucky to have so many clients come to us after seeing our flat graphic work and minimalist branding. They dig the style and envision something similar for themselves. 

Getting our kudos has pushed our team to know, embrace, and be damn proud of our strengths. We know what we’re good at and we don’t worry too much about the rest. 

They’re All Doing It And So Should You 

Think about the biggest brands that you know. They’ve all got their niche and you go to them knowing exactly what to expect. You know RyanAir will get you where you want to go on the cheap, but you wouldn’t go there expecting complimentary caviar. Shopping Chanel? Probably not worth searching for coupons. 

If you’ve got a brand, embrace what you’re good at. Then people know what to expect. It’s not just good for business, it’s good for your brain.

Climb Out Of The Intermediate Pile

When nobody is paying for your work, being so-so is not a bad thing. In fact, most of us are pretty average. It’s been calculated that around 7,199,999,000 aren’t worth writing home about. We’re average people with average lives, and that’s just the way that it should be. 

Stop for coffee on the first k of your 5k. Make that 200th terrible painting. If you love the process, the results don’t matter... Until someone is waving a wad of cash. 

Moral Of The Story? 

At the risk of sounding more like a motivational poster that has been hanging over a cubicle farm since the 90s, teamwork is actually pretty great. If you’re not experienced at something or are just plain bad at it, you’re going to work your arse off trying to make anything decent.

It’s all too easy to jump to give clients whatever they ask for but the bottom line is, if you’re not good at what you need to do, own your shortcomings, whether it’s not your style, your strength, or it just bores you rigid. Get a team that will cover all of the bases. The most successful people in business embrace their strengths and leave the rest to someone else. 

You can’t be good at everything and that’s okay.