How isolation impacted my life as a Product Designer
Quick answer: shaken productivity, many anxiety attacks, and complete chaos in the planning of my life.
Now the slow answer.
2019 was my year. Still studying Design at UFRGS, I was selected to participate in the Apple Developer Academy as a student. It seemed like a dream come true. Being part of such an incredible class, for 2 years, with 49 more talented colleagues and internationally specialized mentors. As for each benefit, there is a cost, that was taking college and more Apple’s course at the same time.
I didn’t have time for anything anymore. Social life? Maybe so, but certainly not. Family? I already lived 200km away. Love life? Neither. I already knew that my next 2 years would be just working. And then in the first month of the course, a colleague invited me to be part of a startup. I swear I thought 5, 10 times, but I was excited by the idea of having this real work experience, with professional developers and clients in the region. Did everything work? Even if 2 months passed, it did.
In June, I started to have signs of Burnout. I just worked, even though I loved the course and working at the startup, I was exhausted. I thought “I will endure until the end of the year, in 2020 I see what I do”. But I was seeing that I couldn’t take it, so wanting to give me a gift I bought an air ticket for October, to San Francisco. A day later I called what I had done and I needed to define which hostel I would book, how much money I would have to take and which places I would visit. It would be too much, and it was.
It was the first time that I traveled outside Brazil, and to the United States. I went at a time that was not a vacation, but I gave myself this chance to get away from it all, for 7 days, and breathe, breathe in a place that I always wanted to visit, without a notebook, without being able to work, just walking, photographing, walking bike at the Golden Gate and get to know the most surreal places in my life. I was so tired, that this break could have made the trip so calm, and so unforgettable. Of the 7 days, 3 I went to Los Angeles, visited a friend who was virtual until then, went to Santa Monica, and was left with no signal to call an Uber at the Griffith Observatory.
And so December came. End of the semester, I visited my family and started preparing for 2020, the last year of the Apple Academy course, perhaps the last one in college. February came, and on the first day of school someone commented about an illness that appeared in China, but it seemed more like a coffee break conversation than something important. 5 days passed, and the Covid case was still being mentioned, and now it had videos on YouTube. Then the first case appeared in Brazil, then a lockdown, and the university stopped classes.
The Academy’s course was remote, but the university was not communicated. She was not prepared for virtual classes. She never did that. How would the students be without a computer? And the low-income ones without the university restaurant? What about practical design disciplines? And the library? It was chaos. The chaos lasted not 1 month, but 5 months. Now I didn’t know what was going to happen with my graduation, when would I graduate? I also went to the gym daily, not only to help my self-esteem, but it was also a place where I could stay 2 hours away from work, listen to music and think about life. Also, closed.
In May, the date was announced for WWDC 2020, Apple’s event for developers, and with a special challenge for students: 1 week to develop an interactive project using Apple’s Swift Playgrounds learning platform. My colleagues and I were excited about the idea and, using Discord, we got together and developed my project. I submitted and all I had to do was wait for the result to come out. The event would be online, with zero chance to travel to Cupertino and participate in the event.
In June I received the answer that my project was selected, out of 350 projects around the world. I almost didn’t believe it, because I had studied Swift just for the challenge. The event was incredible, with several video conferences with people and mega developers from Apple, including John Geleynse and Lisa Jackson.
From March to July I was still on Apple’s course and working, but my mental health, my plans, all in a difficult state to define. It was not possible to motivate me because there was no way. I had no plans, I didn’t even know when I could have plans again, and without plans … life loses its meaning. So, even though it was a cliché that I didn’t like, I had to take it day after day.
Each day I tried to wake up, have my coffee, work remotely at the startup (interacting with my colleagues was one of the things that saved me), having Apple Academy classes with more colleagues, and going to sleep. And repeat that the next day, and the next.
In those 5 months, I tried countless ways to organize my work. I created a weekly plan with set times… it didn’t work. I created a plan of tasks to be accomplished … but there were so many that I wasn’t sure if I could do it, and I ended up having an anxiety crisis. So, I didn’t organize. I did what I could, what I had time for, and if I had any assignments for the next day, I would run and finish. One day after the other.
In August, they went back to school at the university, remotely, but what seemed like a lifeline was an earthquake. I found myself dealing daily with mild anxiety attacks, with difficulty in fulfilling the minimum tasks, and now with the work of the university to bring me more concern. However, I needed to graduate as soon as possible, and having the chance to finish 2020 with fewer compulsory subjects seemed to me to be a lack of respect for myself, but that I found myself in 2022 grateful to have tried. And I faced it, day after day.
On top of all that, what hurt me was seeing how Brazil was facing the pandemic. I saw the number of cases rising daily, the number of deaths increasing, but the stores reopening, and the gyms. As I am not from a risk group, I went back to working out, wearing a mask, cleaning before and after with alcohol everywhere I touched. And so I continued until December. The Apple Academy course concluded, the UFRGS semester ended, and I managed to take a deep breath, which I hadn’t done in a long time.
The new year of 2021 did not seem new. With the number of cases of COVID rising, the impression was that it would be much worse. I was fortunate to be able to start my undergraduate thesis at the same time as some subjects that were missing to be able to graduate. This motivated me because I saw that graduating became something real again. As a project for my undergraduate thesis I chose an app aimed at people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, not only because of my experience with stress, but also because I see many friends also in the same boat, without knowing how to deal with isolation and lack of social contact. . So, I managed to go back to planning my life, very vague plans, but plans.
After more than a year trapped inside the apartment, I found myself days without leaving the house, without going to the squares, without having leisure outside the apartment. Much is due to having to finish the Apple course and the college that required me until the weekends. 2021 was to put into practice the plan to finish college, to be able to work more hours, maybe rent a better apartment with some nature view.
Now I am in April, and what have I learned? I learned to pay attention and to respect how I am feeling mentally because mental exhaustion seems to me to be a sign of something much more serious inside. I learned to embrace remote work, to analyze when I should take a break from tasks to breathe. I learned not to demand so much of myself, to accept that maybe I will fail, and that’s okay! Work, in order to be really productive, needs to be comfortable, and emotional support (which me being my best support) proved to be fundamental in these hours.
