I spend quite a bit of time thinking about design. Sometimes I think that I'm pretty good at it. (Design, that is, not thinking about it.) Other times I think I'm not good at all, that any modest success I've had is down to my ability to pretend to be a good designer, and that one day people will discover my incompetence. But most of the time I think about the various ways in which design is difficult, and how I can figure things out and level up. On very rare occasions I feel like I do just that. I catch glimpses of what feels like the Truth.

The thing is, whenever I try to formulate the Truth (so that I can share it with the world and change the industry forever), I inevitably find caveats and circumstances that undermine or invalidate it. It deflates upon inspection. There's always some context or complexity I haven't fully appreciated, and by the time I put finger to keyboard the The Truth just doesn’t ring true anymore.

So I chicken out. I don’t finish the draft. I certainly don’t publish. I forget whatever eureka moment I had and move on, until the next one comes along and the whole agonising process starts again. This leaves me with a simple choice. Either I stop having thoughts about design, or start publishing them before doubt gets the better of me. And that's the Truth.

Illustration by Lulu