Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Kieran Parker

I’m Choosing a path, sticking to it, and hoping it’s right. 🤞

The other week, I spoke about where I am in life, how I am happy with how it is going, but don’t want to lose the momentum of growth I have had since leaving school.

I found myself in a unique position, with job security, work happiness and plenty of free-time to continue to express and explore my creativity.

But, overtime, I realised I have been making excuses that were stopping me from using my spare time wisely, I would work a few hours a day with the awesome team that is Kuvio, then…. nothing.

I got into this in more detail in my previous post, which you can read here;

Enough Excuses, It’s Time To Take Action

The final outcome was, I needed be more productive with my spare time, create things like I used to and not let the comfort of my position be my excuse.

“Comfort is the enemy of progress” — P.T. Barnum

Two weeks later & Two days late

I finally have a decision. But, before I reveal what path I came to, let me explain how I got there.

168 Hours In A Week…

Visualising and understand just how much time I have acted as a motivator for me. So, let’s break down and find out how much time I am “wasting”. (Although, whilst I believe in “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted” let’s just roll with it.)

Sleep — Pretty self explanatory.
56 Hours per week. (8 Hours of “recommended” sleep a night)
Kuvio — My “Fulltime” job.
30 Hours per week.
Downtime — Relaxation time. Playing Games, Watching Netflix, Hanging with my Girlfriend, etc.
18 Hours per week. (Average 2 Hours per day)
Social Time — Hanging with my Girlfriend, Friends, Family, Eating Out, etc
18 Hours per week. (Another average of 2 hours per day)
“Other Stuff” — Anything else that may pop up.
4 Hours per week.

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With all of that time accounted for, I am still left with 42 hours of “free” time. Some may argue I need more than 2 hours a day to relax, or, I will use more than 2 hours on a weekend, I consider learning new things, being creative etc relaxing, it is my hobby and with that, I enjoy it and could even consider it as going towards my relax/chill out time.

42 Hours.
I have been “wasting” 42 Hours per week.

Talking It Out

I spoke to many different people about my dilemma, and I mainly got three different answers. As you can probably guess, it was A, B or “I don’t know/Either”. But, whilst they couldn’t help with an answer, they did give some good opinions/advice.

“You Should Learn More Than Design, Learn To Build Products!”

“If you were a chef, would you really want to cook all day in your restaurant then come home and cook a 3 course meal for your family every night?!”

“You know design, you live design. Why not learn something new and branch out into something design is part of, instead of the whole thing.”

“Raise Funds By Doing What You Do Best, Then Pay Others To Help”

“If I wanted to build a house, I could A: learn every skill I need and eventually build it myself, but it wouldn’t be perfect. Or, B: Do what I already know and do best to raise funds to pay others to do what they do best and build me a better house, faster, and possibly cheaper.”

“Your time is valuable, it is more efficient to build with what you know, and get others to help you when you need it. Either way, you experience the journey, make the plans and live the product, you just get there faster and with a better final product.”

Great advice, but not extremely helpful in making a decision, if anything, it made it harder!

Crunch Time

Either Way, I Won’t Know Until I’m In It.

The fact is, until I am knee deep, I won’t know what the right choice is.
I am sure, whatever choice I made, there will be a feeling of doubt and a looming feeling that I made the wrong choice.
Either way, my choice is a guess based upon how I feel, going in blind with only advice to guide the way.

The important thing is to commit to it and, if such a time comes I feel in my heart it was the wrong choice, really truly know it was the wrong choice and not just self-doubt, then I can turn around and go the other way, there is no harm in starting again.

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My Decision Is…

I‘m going to dip my toes into the world of development.

I know it is the bigger challenge, I know it is going to be full of struggle, self doubt and a feeling of being in over my head. It will be a long, slow path that hopefully, will be the right one.

Why Development Instead Of More Design?

Well, as a friend said, “I design all day”. Whilst I enjoy design and love what I do, somedays I do need a break from it, let my brain cool down and refresh. The worst thing for me, would be to burn out and get sick of design. I love it so much, I don’t want to stop doing it because I grew sick and tired of it.

Also, as I was creating some posts for Dribbble, lining up a months worth of posts, I realised… This is what going down the “design route” will consist of. Creating and posting designs that didn’t tell much of a story. A few screens and that’s it, never to be brought to life or, if so, never by me.

The whole reason I stopped doing the UI 100 day challenge, was because it all felt hollow, I wanted a big project that I could get engrossed in and lose myself in, I just don’t think I can do that with just my design knowledge. I want to hold my creation from concept, through designs & development, then release it into the world and continue to grow it as it evolves in the real world.

So… What Now?

So, that’s it. I am going to dive into the world of development and expand my design skills. It comes with many benefits to my work life as well as my “after work” hobby.

Now, I needed to decide what side of development I want to start with. As I mentioned before, I dipped my toes into Swift a while back and loved how it. Maybe I take the Swift path and focus solely on IOS Apps to keep things simple (assuming it is more simple than learning Web, Android and IOS at the same time?).

I will have to look into it more, I may even try out few tutorials to see what feels right. However, I am open to any suggestions as to what I should look into, tutorials to watch or things to try.

You can follow my journey as I progress by following me on Medium.
Or, follow me on Twitter!

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If you enjoyed this article, please 👏 and share it to help others find it!
Also, if you have time, stop by Kuvio. We are always looking for passionate and talented people to join our 100% remote digital team. ✌️

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

Cool stuff, every week

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