Ask for Help

I spent a lot of time in my teens, 20’s and 30’s very rarely asking for help. I took a lot of online classes and went to school to learn new skills, but I always felt scared to stand in front of someone else and say “hey, I don’t know how to do this and I’m having a hard time. Can you please teach me?” It wasn’t until I worked at Adobe and at Kabam, where there was so much that I didn’t know at all. That I had to be “vulnerageous”. A term my therapist coined meaning vulnerability and courageous.

There were moments when I asked for help and people took time out of their day to help me. There were times when I had no response or it was a “no” or no response at all. Reflecting back, even thought it felt scary when people said no and I showed my weakness, I would still ask for help. Now I actually know how to build systems in mobile game designs, how to open up work in Unity and the science behind gamer motivations. I also now know how to build a cross-platform service from start to finish at the top SaaS companies in the world.

Today, I ask for help - all the time. I remind myself to speak about what I know and what I don't know. I teach when others ask me questions. And in return, I ask for help. Life is so hard, it's complex and as a designer there are so many new skills we need to learn. I'm excited to learn how to conduct experiments at Mailchimp. Work is ramping back up again and feeling grateful for Liz and Tamlin who are teaching me how to do that.