I walked away from my design career…

A few years ago:

I got a pay rise that put me in the top 1% of earners in the UK, something I couldn’t have imagined just five years ago.

I reached a goal I had written in my planner 5 years ago. I had written it in pencil as it felt so unattainable.

I waited for the excitement to hit.

The joy.

Finally the sense of fulfillment.

Nothing came.

I'd spent years chasing what I thought success looked like:

- big tech companies,

- impressive titles,

- huge salaries.

And I had worked my ass off and was blessed to get all of it and more.

But I was miserable.

The work I was doing felt soul-sucking. It left me feeling mentally exhausted everyday.

I realised somewhere along the way, I’d stopped chasing my own dreams and starting chasing somebody else’s.

Early in my career, I looked for work I found exciting.

Later, I was chasing what looked good on my resume. And slowly over time I started to resent my career.

So I did something I never thought I would:

I walked away from my design career.

I wanted time to figure out what I actually wanted, to experiment, to try new things, to build my content business, to think. It’s been eight months, and I’ve learned more in that time than in the last eight years.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned along the way that might help you too:

1. Having a role where I'm making an impact matters more than prestige

Salary was my main metric for years. Then I hit six figures and discovered that money can't compensate for work that feels meaningless.

Don’t get me wrong, money is great. I think everyone should strive to earn huge amounts of money if that’s what they want. But once I hit a certain level, it stopped making a real difference to the joy I felt in life.

Working at big tech companies looked amazing on paper, the names, the salary, the titles, but day-to-day, it didn’t feel meaningful. I was solving tiny problems that felt so disconnected from anything real that it didn’t feel like my work mattered.

Compare that to working at a small startup nobody had heard of, or running my own content business. Suddenly, everything I did actually moved the needle. Every design, email, post I put out had a direct effect on what was being built.

There is something intensely rewarding about seeing something you’ve made, on your laptop or with your own hands, actually have an impact.

I’d trade some of my salary and a fancy title for the kind of work that actually means something to me.

2. Reaching my potential matters more than reaching a goal

When I was junior, I loved getting better every day. Weirdly, I actually enjoyed being bad at something and slowly improving.

But once I stopped being pushed or learning new things, it stopped feeling meaningful.

For me, it’s not about ticking off a goal. It’s about growing and doing things I couldn’t do last year. Take this newsletter, I was never good at writing (go read my first newsletters 🫣) but I’ve spent time learning and practising and it feels rewarding to see how far I’ve come.

There's no finish line for me. It's not about being the best, it's about putting everything I've got into something I care about and seeing how far I can go.

3. I was chasing other people’s goals

Looking back at my career, I realised I’d been following what the industry valued, not what I valued.

A simple question changed everything for me:

“If nobody knew what you were doing, would you still do it?”

That hit hard. I'd been chasing other people's idea of success without even being clear on my own.

Why is this a problem? Because when your work doesn’t line up with what matters to you, it’s almost impossible to give your best. You just find yourself doing things just to check them off.

However, when you are aligned, everything shifts.

You show up differently, you have more focus, you’re more engaged and the result is better outcomes.

That's why working on my content business felt so different. I was waking up at 6am genuinely excited, getting more done than I ever did in my corporate job.

Check if you’re in alignment

If this resonated with you, and you want to dig deeper into what’s right for you.

This was one of the tasks that helped me.

I made two lists:

1. One with moments I felt genuinely energized at work.

2. Another with achievements I was proud of.

Then I looked for what showed up in both.

This quick activity gave me more clarity than years of just trying to figure it out in my head.

Right now, I’m exploring what’s next based on the outputs of these 2 lists. I’m chatting with different companies, looking at a range of design roles. I don't have all the answers, but I'm not in a rush anymore. I'm just seeing what feels right.

Because here’s what I’ve learned:

Success that doesn’t align with what you actually want will never feel like success.

Many people would think I’m crazy for what I walked away from. But I’d rather bet on finding what’s rewarding for me, than keep chasing someone else's definition of winning.