85 Making It Work
You avoid calling yourself a consultant or freelancer.
This one was surprising because freelancers, in general,
report high happiness (Freelance Confidential, Rockable
Press 2011). However, unhappy web designers were much
more likely to be working as a consultant or freelancer.
“Web Developer” was also a title that displayed lower levels
of happiness.
Increasing Happiness & Work
Satisfaction
Some indicators, like gender and age, you can do little to change,
but let’s focus on steps to increase your chance for finding fulfill-
ment in a web design career.
Find ways to relate skills.
As indicated above, respondents who found their education rel-
evant to their work were distinctly more likely to be happy than
their counterparts. It’s not simply a matter of what degree you
got—sometimes it’s your perspective. Some of the most interesting
designers I know come from unconventional backgrounds: illustra-
tors, engineers, event poets. A different perspective doesn’t make
you handicapped, in fact, it can lead to surprising designs and
solutions. Web design is such a multifaceted field, you’ll often find
ways to apply knowledge that you didn’t expect would be relevant.
Value seemingly unrelated experiences and education, and find a
way to apply them.
Just stick with it.
No, really. While happiness seemed to reach a pretty good peak
in the first decade of web design careers, there was a larger spike
further down the road after 16-20 years of tenure.
You might think this is due to an incredibly narrow margin of
responses—after all, web design is a young field, and if only
