‘When in doubt, keep going’ has been the methodology that’s helped me stumble through a career in all things design related. 

The mental state - of being quite often utterly uncertain - is perhaps the best place to guess where path to progress might be found.

It must have been inculcated in the whole art-school thing (well, my art schools anyway. Hat-tip to the staff of unsung heroes there…) of learning to celebrate accidental outcomes over the awkward effortfullness of appearing certain, of who’s outcomes often smelt as forced as they looked. 

But mistaking doubt for insincerity or insecurity would be to make a grave mistake.

As annoyingly, infuriating, it can be for everyone wanting the answer Right Now, doubt needs its space. And to ignore it is the bigger failing.

Sometimes instinctive, lightening-flash inspiration can strike. 

But those flashes can also leave everyone blinking while their imaginations adjust to accommodate the enlightenment. 

Rightly so. 

Doubt at work, right there, doing its suspicious best to help you stress-text the new angle on things.

So how to deal with (and in) a profession (lol. Line of work) where the ‘hmm, not sure’-ness is about as fashionable as last weeks trendjack?

The answer’s easy.

To the certainty, doggedly, resolutely, determinedly fix-minded, the simplest question in the world often suffices… 

‘Are you sure?’

And ‘why’?

Doubt that work every time. But I doubt it’ll hurt to ask (and to ask of yourself as well :)

Sorry, that’s two questions (see what happens when you get all certain on things?)