What keeps you up at night?

Joel Califa

Nov 25, 2015

For me it’s hiring. Hiring is really hard and that’s a big source of stress for me lately and is actually probably keeping me up some nights. But more than that, like big picture, I had a panic attack a while ago—not a real one, more like a mini “holy shit what am I doing?”—I had just finished reading Ready Player One. It’s a really cool book about the future and virtual reality, and it blew my mind. I was like “Oh yeah this is totally the next thing!” Facebook bought Oculus, everything’s happening. Then I thought “Oh shit! I’m a 2D designer. In 3 years I’m going to be obsolete.” I’m like someone who doesn’t do mobile or is still a Webmaster. 5 years from now I’ll be like “I don’t know how to do 3D UI, I’m sorry!” and they’ll say “You’re not hired, go away.” I thought, holy shit I need to buy and oculus. I need to do something.

I think this ties into all this stuff there is to learn these days. Do I learn Framer, do I learn React, do I learn better illustration skills, do I get better at UX methodologies? Especially if you do a bit of everything. I call it Full Stack Anxiety, because there is just so much to learn. That definitely keeps me up at night.

This quote was taken from epidsode 81 of the Design Details podcast.