Burnout hits designers hard, but why it happens depends heavily on where you work. Freelancers and in-house designers experience creativity, pressure, and exhaustion in totally different ways — and understanding the differences helps us protect our energy, our craft, and our careers. Freelance Designers: Freelancers carry everything on their shoulders: design, marketing, client communication, billing, deadlines, revisions, and boundaries. The freedom is amazing, but the cost can be high. Irregular income creates pressure to say yes to everything. Clients bring unclear briefs, sudden direction changes, and scope creep. And since freelancers often work alone, there’s little feedback or collaboration to recharge inspiration. Burnout shows up as exhaustion, self-doubt, and feeling “on call” 24/7. Autonomy is high — but so is ambiguity. In-House Designers: Company designers have the opposite problem. Work is structured, deadlines are defined, and teams provide stability. But the pace and expectations can drain creative energy fast. Cross-functional pressure, shifting priorities, and the need to support product timelines often lead to overload. Creative direction is shaped by stakeholders, not always designers. Even though there’s more support, meetings, rigid processes, and limited autonomy can make designers feel boxed in. Burnout emerges from repetition, decision fatigue, and not having enough control over the work they’re responsible for. The Core Difference: Freelancers often burn out from too much freedom without structure, while in-house designers burn out from too much structure without freedom. One fights isolation and unpredictability. The other navigates politics and pressure. Burnout isn’t a personal failure — it’s a signal. And when we understand the environment we’re designing in, we can build better habits, boundaries, and systems that support our creativity instead of draining it. I have attached a checklist for you to review.

Yesterday’s Coffee Hour surfaced two big themes that I think many of us are feeling right now. 1. The rise of the “team of one”We spoke about how AI is accelerating the convergence of roles: UX, product, UI, even front-end dev. In smaller teams and startups, one person can now realistically take a product from idea → design → prototype → build → customer feedback with AI as a co-pilot. That’s exciting… but it also raises questions: - How do we position our value when we’re being asked to “do it all”? - What do we stop doing, so we don’t burn out trying to be designer, PM, dev and support at once? 2. Changing UX maturity without saying “UX maturity”We also dug into the reality of working in low-maturity environments where UX is still seen as “making things look nice”.A key insight: sometimes the most effective way to shift an organisation is to do the work under a language they already accept – things like: - “Let’s map the roles so we can write better user stories” (→ personas) - “Let’s walk through the end-to-end flow” (→ journey mapping) You don’t always have to fight for the label “UX” to start changing how people think and work. Showing the value first, naming it later, can be a powerful strategy. Over to you: - Where are you feeling the “team of one” pressure right now? - Have you ever smuggled good UX practice into a low-maturity environment under a different label? What worked (or didn’t)? - Drop your stories and reflections below – this is exactly why Lead by Design exists. 👇

Hi Lead by Design Community This year both Christmas Day and New Years Day fall on a Thursday - our usual Coffee Hour time slot. So we'll be taking a 2 week break at the end of 2025, and will resume our Coffee Hours again on Thursday 8 January 2026. Wishing you a blessed holiday season 🎅

There's been a lot of discussion on our Community Calls over the past few months about Vibecoding / AI development, and a frequent question or request is for sharing of resources around: 1. Getting started 2. Best practice guidelines Let's use this to share any learnings, useful guidelines or tips about specific tools / agents to use.