Redesigning Yourself After 2025

There is a definite importance of planning and reflection. I believe that most of us don’t spend enough time working on contextualizing our experiences. We should all be doing more journaling to organize our thoughts, not just on the big things like core values and life or career goals, but on the little things that happen every day.

A lack of reflection feels like learning lost. Hell, that might have been the whole point of homework back in our school days. Forcing us to re-examine the work of the day and creating some much-needed reflection.

But this article is not about that, honestly, it’s about the other thing that people are afraid of doing. DOING. Taking action. So I had to start with the acknowledgment that there are a few steps in this path. Rarely are things black and white. this or that, binary. (More on that later)

——————————

As for doing… I think about it as ACTION. I have been using the term “action” as a term in action mapping. There has been the gravitational force guiding me and my teams of designers for the last 5 years, potentially longer. I have been asking the questions of who does what for so long, across so many domains, that it starts to feel like I actually did something. It was mostly intellectual and strategic, but it was not making. (The life of a consultant)

The moment that sparked me to sit down and write this article of reflection, is decades in the making. I have been a professional designer for almost 20 years. During which I have been dreaming up projects that I would like to work on when I have some downtime. (WHEN?) Downtime is something that happens in a different dimension to other people. During my time, and I suspect yours too, we are filled to the brim with work, career, existential worry, family, health, finances, weather, AI, self-improvement, travel, WAR, doom-scrolling, rinse and repeat. Now, with that looming uncertainty, which was always there, it feels turned up to 11.

As I reflect on my career, my 1-pager, resume, and cover letters, and more so for my team’s futures. I’m on calls trying to strategize the way through for all of us. I spin it for the unique differences of each individual, but I’m thinking through what I know I need to do. And it starts with something that I should have been doing, should never have stopped doing.

1. We let our resumes gather dust; shame on us.

2. Designers need portfolios, but we let them languish

3. We focused on tools, not stories (Adobe vs Figma, HA!!!!)

4. We often don’t design for ourselves.

5. Our hope and dreams are on the back burner, which is off. :(

My advice for designers who find themselves looking for work post-2025 is to redo everything, especially how you think things work. Your resume and portfolio will not look the same as they did in the past. In the past, you had 1 resume. Not anymore. You could also just gather up the last 10 years’ worth of work, and it would show progression over a career. That is no longer going to speak to the monumental shift in the market that requires new speed and problem-solving that can only be achieved with AI tools. Your previous wasn’t just old, it was prehistoric.

Now you will make a new resume for each job you apply to. A customized cover letter and portfolio will be expected to be perfectly aligned with the job requirements. “Taking a chance on someone” might still be the saying, but the chance gap a company is willing to take is so much smaller.

So we have to paint a HUGE target on ourselves. Gather all the things that we are doing and package them differently. My first question for my team is around idea formation. A blog, podcast, or video channel is a great way to show a lot of deep thinking that can help people in a hiring position learn more about how you work, your methods, and how you deal with complex situations. If you don’t have one, Substack is awesome.

Second, build your understanding of AI. Know more than just the names of the different models, but really start to use it as an assistant in writing, life planning, image creation, anything really. Rebuild your resume with AI and pay attention to its limitations. When you submit your resume going forward, it will be prescreened by an AI to get on to the recruiter phone call. This recruiter will likely not really know what the best qualities for the position are, but will be confirming the key phrases that the hiring managers specified.

The third and perhaps the most important part of this post is the portfolio/gallery.

I always said that there should be at least 20 items in someone’s portfolio. Many people only show me 4-6. WTF???? So most people are coming into this process at a deficit. It would be a great disservice to say that this will be easy or fun. This is going to feel harder than work, but it will be worse. Your best hours will usually be spent on work. So you will have to gather yourself in the off hours when you are tired, or bored, or in need of entertainment.

It takes incredible self-control to turn off chill and turn on ACTION. You know it will be worth it. You also know that it is what HAS to be done. BUT, you are feeling the feels and earned that show, or that scroll, or game time to make yourself feel better about the impending or current situation.

I’m not building a portfolio,
I’m not giving away free work.
I’m too old for this.
My old work is fine.
Hell, it should be enough. RIGHT?!
Wrong.

All things we might say, but wrong. Your work, although valuable, critical, thoughtful, good, even award-winning, is good, maybe ok, but it doesn’t have context for the recent technology revolution, so it’s no longer correct. It should be smart, clever, funny, but more than ever, it needs to reflect the moment.

Your old portfolio is not completely garbage just yet! It is going to need a facelift and a shot in the arm to get it back in the game. The reason I know this is because my old work from 6 months ago looks old. We’re in the same boat, partner.

It’s not just because it’s AI or a chat interface, it’s not. It’s because technology this time around has changed the way we solve problems. The burden on the system interfaces has eased and moved to the middle layers and reasoning engines. That creates a lot of pressure on our interfaces to shift from an elegant organization of a growing number of things to an interface focused on fewer UI elements that require more sustained interaction from users to interact with an AI waiting for a task or an input field to gather the intent of the user.

Let’s not despair! This is a designer’s dream scenario. Now we have more white space, less clutter, and clear focus on the highest value interactions. Now we have to bring our full design understanding to design more value with fewer elements. Ideal, no, but we must strike while the iron is hot and get to work.

Considering the field and the oncoming wave of job replacement by AI, I encourage you to SPRING into action. Let’s go! If your brain hasn’t started firing yet, blend a health smoothie or crack a glass/can/bottle of sparkling water. I would implore you to get that butt moving. Start small and build on a sustained consistency plan for the next few weeks.. Sometimes you only have enough energy once a week. But I tell you, there is a lot of research coming out about the impact of walking, walking after a meal, 3 min intense walking, 3 min slow walking. If you want more of that, just “Google it”. If that is true for longevity, health, and wellness. Why wouldn’t a slow and steady pace be in all aspects of our lives? It allows you as a person to start considering your next move like a journey map for one of those personas we always talk about..

Watch some informational videos and read, The Geek Way. Even better, sign up for ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Ask it to help write a product description for that thing you always thought was a good idea, ask for a market analysis, ask for a business plan. And then ask the AI to help you get started. What steps need to happen for me to see progress on my life’s ambitions? Then ask it to create daily actions for you to move it forward. Heck, you can even ask it to create those as calendar invites and reminders. Either way, you need to start small, take a bite of self-improvement. It’s the best.