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Comment by helloimben | Hacker News Reader

Reading this brings up a lot of uneasy feelings for me. I am a designer, and recent graduate with a job right out of school. I love what I do, and wouldn't want to be doing anything different, but recently I've been hearing more and more stories like this. It generally goes: the young, inspired designer/hacker works his/her ass off for 3-4 years, then (poof!) "burns out."

I can't help but feel worried for myself. On average I happily work around 60 hours/week, and would probably do more if I didn't stop myself (I do need some sleep, after all). Am I in that "3-4 years" stage? I want to do design the rest of my life, but maybe I'm just shooting myself in the foot.

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You'll be fine. You may find out that after a while you hate the type of design you do but you'll probably still love designing - it's why we got into it.

I graduated 6 years ago back when they hardly taught any web/UI work. I started out in print and at first loved it, but quickly grew to hate it. I learned enough about myself that it was clear that it was time to move on. Then I finally accidentally landed a job at a startup and found what I really loved - UX/UI. Then did that really well, and now I'm on to product design and business.

Long story short, you're pretty likely to have an evolving set of interests and that will allow you to get really good at a number of facets. You should still be doing 60 hours a week or more if you want to be making big leaps forward. Once you get burnt out on working your ass off doing that one thing, you'll find something else really interesting and inspiring. Then go chase that.

There are always new things to learn, so make sure you've got supporting network to chat about your challenges with so that you know you're not alone. A lot of times, there are little things you can do to keep your zeal for life even though what you're hammering on may not be as interesting as it used to be. But when it becomes downright depressing to go to work every day for 1-2 weeks, you better quit.

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