Table of Contents
- Your mental health matters
- 5 ways poor mental health ruins your work
- 1. Creative malfunction
- 2. Decision fatigue
- 3. Productivity black hole
- 4. Imposter syndrome
- 5. Career burnout
- 4 warning signs of mental health issues
- 1. Thought patterns
- 🔻 Black and white thinking
- 🔻 Creative blocks
- 🔻 Focus difficulties
- 2. Physical symptoms
- 🔻 Sleep disruption
- 🔻 Energy levels
- 🔻 Physical tension
- 3. Behavioral changes
- 🔻 Isolation tendencies
- 🔻 Procrastination patterns
- 🔻 Escape behaviors
- 4. Emotional signs
- 🔻 Emotional numbness
- 🔻 Irritability
- 🔻 Dread & anxiety
- Mental health self-assessment test
- 7 practical strategies to protect your mental health as a UX designer
- 1. Create your "this is how I work" manifesto
- 2. Build time blocks that actually work
- 3. Master the art of the positive “NO”
- 4. Create your personal design feedback shield
- 5. Build your own “win folder”
- 6. Schedule non-negotiable screen breaks
- 7. Build your support system
- Good design starts with a well-designed you
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Your mental health matters
You wouldn’t try to run Figma on a 10-year-old laptop with 2GB of RAM, would you? (If you would, we need to talk). Yet, that’s exactly what you’re doing when you ignore your mental health.
A burned-out brain can’t produce brilliant designs. Ignoring your mental health doesn’t just make you feel bad, it makes everything you do at work harder.
Today, let’s talk about how to hit reset on your mental health, and why it’s just as important as that 8-hour sleep or a fresh cup of coffee (okay, maybe a little more).
5 ways poor mental health ruins your work
We all know that mental health is important, but most don’t know how directly poor mental health is tied to performance at work. Spoiler: It’s not pretty.
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1. Creative malfunction
When your mental health tanks, so does your creativity.
Suddenly, every wireframe looks the same, and the only “innovation” you’re bringing to the table is changing the CTA from blue to… a slightly different blue.
How to overcome designers’ blocks:
2. Decision fatigue
What used to be a 30-second decision: Helvetica or Inter? Now feels like a life-altering crisis.
You’ll spend hours agonizing over the tiniest details while missing the bigger picture entirely.
3. Productivity black hole
Tasks that once took 15 minutes now drag on for hours.
You keep rereading the same brief, tweaking designs endlessly, and somehow, by the end of the day, nothing actually gets done.
4. Imposter syndrome
Without mental clarity, every piece of feedback feels like an attack.
Every meeting is a potential exposure of your “fraudulence.” You’ll second-guess yourself into oblivion.
5. Career burnout
If you keep running on empty, your career won’t just stall, it’ll crash.
Passion fades. Motivation disappears. And before you know it, you’re contemplating a radical career change (chicken farming, anyone?)
4 warning signs of mental health issues
Your mind is sending you notifications constantly, just like the apps you design. But unlike those perfectly crafted UX alerts, your brain's warnings are easier to ignore or misread.
Let's debug these mental alerts so you can catch problems before they crash you:
1. Thought patterns
🔻 Black and white thinking
- Viewing your design work as either perfect or worthless
- Categorizing feedback as either all positive or all negative
- Thinking in terms of "always" or "never" about your capabilities
- Seeing yourself as either highly successful or a complete failure
- Believing projects will either be complete successes or total disasters
🔻 Creative blocks
- Recycling old ideas instead of generating new ones
- Experiencing paralysis when facing blank design files
- Excessively criticizing your ideas before developing them
- Comparing your work-in-progress to others' finished products
🔻 Focus difficulties
- Forgetting what you were doing mid-task
- Jumping between tasks without completing any
- Finding it difficult to focus during design critiques
- Taking significantly longer to make simple design decisions
- Reading the same design brief multiple times without retention
2. Physical symptoms
🔻 Sleep disruption
- Feeling unrested even after a full night's sleep
- Waking up multiple times throughout the night
- Sleeping much longer on weekends to "catch up"
- Taking longer than usual to fall asleep despite feeling tired
- Having design problems invade your thoughts when trying to sleep
🔻 Energy levels
- Needing more caffeine than usual to function
- Feeling physically exhausted but mentally wired
- Experiencing sudden energy crashes during the day
- Feeling drained after tasks that used to be energizing
- Finding it difficult to maintain energy for a full workday
🔻 Physical tension
- Persistent tension headaches during or after work
- Digestive issues that come with every project deadline
- Shallow breathing or holding your breath while working
- Jaw clenching or teeth grinding (sore jaw in the morning)
- Shoulder and neck pain that worsens during focused work
3. Behavioral changes
🔻 Isolation tendencies
- Turning off your camera in meetings more often
- Making excuses to avoid team events or lunches
- Taking longer than usual to respond to messages
- Declining collaborative sessions you'd normally enjoy
- Preferring to work alone when you typically enjoy collaboration
🔻 Procrastination patterns
- Starting projects much closer to deadlines than usual
- Taking frequent breaks that extend longer than intended
- Setting up your workspace repeatedly without beginning work
- Finding yourself on social media when you should be designing
- Getting lost in non-essential tasks (organizing files, tweaking colors)
🔻 Escape behaviors
- Sleeping more as a way to avoid work
- Using alcohol or substances to unwind after design sessions
- Constantly checking email/Slack as a distraction from deeper work
- Working excessive hours not from passion but to avoid something else
- Mindlessly scrolling through content instead of activities you used to enjoy
4. Emotional signs
🔻 Emotional numbness
- Experiencing a general flatness in your emotional responses
- Feeling indifferent about design work that used to excite you
- Feeling disconnected when viewing designs that once inspired you
- Finding it difficult to get excited about new projects or opportunities
- Having decreased emotional response to both successes and failures
🔻 Irritability
- Getting frustrated quickly with software or tools
- Responding defensively to constructive feedback
- Finding minor client changes unusually frustrating
- Feeling irritated by requests you'd normally handle easily
- Feeling disproportionately annoyed by team members' questions
🔻 Dread & anxiety
- Dreading opening your design tools or project files
- Feeling a sense of doom about upcoming deadlines
- Experiencing anxiety on Sunday evenings about the workweek
- Feeling physical symptoms (racing heart, tight chest) before meetings
- Worrying excessively about your performance despite positive feedback
Mental health self-assessment test
This quick 10-question test can help you gauge if mental health issues might be affecting your UX work.
How to do this?
Step 1 — Read each statement carefully and reflect on how often you've experienced these feelings or situations in the past two weeks.
Step 2 — Use the following scale to score your responses:
- 0 = Not at all
- 1 = Several days
- 2 = More than half the days
- 3 = Nearly every day
Step 3 — Calculate your score to find out where you land.
List of 10 questions
1. I find it difficult to feel excited about design challenges that used to energize me.
Score: ___
6. I avoid collaboration sessions or meetings when possible.
Score: ___
2. I struggle to focus during design sessions, with my mind frequently wandering or feeling foggy.
Score: ___
7. I feel overwhelmed by design decisions that I previously handled with confidence.
Score: ___
3. I find myself procrastinating on design tasks that require deep thinking or creativity.
Score: ___
8. I've noticed my quality of work decreasing, with mistakes I wouldn't normally make.
Score: ___
4. I feel irritable when receiving feedback on my work, even when it's constructive.
Score: ___
9. I feel physically tense or exhausted during or after work hours.
Score: ___
5. I've been having trouble sleeping (either falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling rested).
Score: ___
10. I've found myself thinking "What's the point?" about my work or career path.
Score: ___
The results
🟢 0-5: Low concern
Nice work! You seem to be taking good care of your mental well-being. Keep it up!
🟡 6-14: Moderate concern
You might be feeling drained, and it’s showing in your work. Try adding more self-care to your routine and stay mindful of how you feel.
🟠 15-22: High concern
Whoa there, your mental hard drive is almost full, and your creativity processor is overheating. Time to close a few life tabs and have that awkward-but-necessary chat with your manager about bandwidth.
🔴 23-30: Severe concern
Your internal battery is critically low, and caffeine won’t cut it this time. It’s time to check in with a mental health pro! Your brilliant designer brain deserves expert care. No shame in that game.
7 practical strategies to protect your mental health as a UX designer
Your brain is your moneymaker, and if it's not working right, neither are you.
Here are seven strategies that have saved my design career more than once. No generic advice here, just practical stuff you can apply right away.
1. Create your "this is how I work" manifesto
Fuzzy processes will mess with your head faster than a client who says "make it pop.”
What to do?
Create a one-page document that outlines exactly how you work. Mine includes:
- What I need before starting (complete content, stakeholder access, clear goals)
- How I handle feedback (consolidated in writing, 48-hour turnaround)
- What ‘final deliverable’ actually means (two revision rounds, anything extra requires a change order)
Personal example:
When a client recently tried to slip in ‘just one more small change’ after our agreed revision rounds, I simply pointed to our process doc:
“As we covered in the kickoff, we're now at the stage where additional changes require a change order. Happy to prepare one if you'd like to move forward!”
These document plays bad cop so you don't have to. Clients are more likely to push back on people than on policies.
2. Build time blocks that actually work
Multitasking is a lie we tell ourselves while doing multiple things poorly.
Task-switching will drain your creative energy faster than running Figma, Photoshop, and Chrome with 37 tabs.
What to do?
Break your day into themed chunks instead of jumping between random tasks. Try this approach:
- Maker mornings (9AM — 12PM): Pure design work, no meetings, no Slack.
- Meeting middays (1PM — 3PM): Batch all client calls and team check-ins.
- Admin power hour (4PM — 5PM): Emails, invoicing, and other necessary evils.
Personal example:
I used to start my day checking email, jump into design work, take a meeting, then switch back to designing. By 3PM, I was mentally fried.
Now, I protect my mornings by focusing on one type of work at a time.
Your brain isn't built for multitasking. Batching similar tasks preserves creative energy like closing unused browser tabs.
3. Master the art of the positive “NO”
Most designers would rather eat glass than say no to clients. But your inability to say no is writing checks your mental health can't cash.
What to do?
Create templates for common scope creep situations so you’re not scrambling to craft a diplomatic response while panicking. Here’s my go-to:
“That’s an interesting direction! Adding this new feature would affect our timeline and resources. We have two options:"
- Include it by extending the deadline by [X days] and adjusting the budget by [Y amount].
- Swap it with [existing feature] to stay on schedule.
Which option works best for you?”
Personal example:
A client once asked me to add an entire user testing phase, just two days before the design deadline.
Instead of having a silent breakdown, I used my template, laid out clear options, and they chose to extend the timeline. Crisis averted, boundary maintained.
This transforms rejection into collaboration. Instead of being a gatekeeper saying no, you become a consultant offering solutions.
4. Create your personal design feedback shield
Unstructured feedback is the fast track to Anxiety Town, population: you.
What to do?
Create a feedback framework that protects your mental health while improving the quality of input. Before review sessions, I send a simple Google Form with these questions:
- What’s working well in this design?
- What specific problem needs solving (if any)?
- Is this issue about function or preference?
- On a scale of 1-5, how important is this change?
Personal example:
After implementing this system, my feedback sessions went from vague requests like ‘Can you make it more modern?’ to clear action items like ‘The checkout button doesn’t stand out enough against the background.’
My revision rounds dropped by 40%, and my stress levels by even more.
Vague feedback is a psychological horror for designers. This framework turns opinions into clear, actionable tasks.
5. Build your own “win folder”
Design work is like building sandcastles, often washed away before anyone appreciates your craft. This takes a serious toll over time.
What to do?
Start a brag sheet: a folder (physical or digital) where you keep:
- User compliments
- Positive client emails
- Before/after comparisons
- Metrics showing your impact
- Screenshots of completed work
Personal example:
After a brutal client meeting where every design decision was questioned, I spent 10 minutes reviewing my ‘win folder’. Inside was an email from a past client saying my redesign boosted their conversion rate by 40%.
My confidence snapped back, and I tackled the revisions with a clear head, without second-guessing myself.
Your brain always remembers criticism but forgets wins. This method helps fight imposter syndrome
6. Schedule non-negotiable screen breaks
Your eyes and brain need regular escapes from the blue light prison.
What to do?
Set specific times when screens are strictly off-limits. The key is making these breaks non-negotiable, like:
- Last hour before bed
- One weekend morning
- First 30 minutes after waking up
- At least 30 minutes of lunch break
Personal example:
I now keep my phone in a different room overnight and don't check it until after breakfast.
This simple change has dramatically improved my sleep and reduced morning anxiety. I start work with a clearer head.
Constant notifications create background anxiety. Taking screen breaks gives your creative neurons a chance to breathe.
7. Build your support system
No designer is an island—but many of us work like one until we're drowning.
What to do?
Intentionally cultivate three types of relationships:
- Design buddies: Peers who speak your language and get your day-to-day struggles
- Design mentors: Experienced folks who offer perspective when you're stuck
- Non-design friends: People who couldn’t care less about kerning and will snap you out of design thought-spirals
Personal example:
Every month, I schedule a call with two non-design friends—no wireframes, no UX jargon, just real conversations.
Neither of them knew a thing about UX, yet their insights sparked ideas I never would’ve considered.
Isolation is poison for creativity. Surround yourself with different friends—each one brings a unique cure.
Good design starts with a well-designed you
Your brain is the most important design tool you own, and it doesn't come with an extended warranty. These strategies aren't nice-to-haves, they're the maintenance manual for the equipment that runs your career.
Pick one strategy from this list and implement it this week. Your future self will thank you with better work, less anxiety, and a design career that's actually sustainable.
Trust me, I've tested this system with the most demanding user: myself.
Embrace your mind, be kind 🍀
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