I was driving home after dropping off my daughter, Bug, when my phone started lighting up.

I had sent out photos from one of the kids’ events, and parents were texting me back. Thank you for capturing these. Thank you for doing this. One person called me a saint.

I’m definitely not a saint.

But it did get me thinking.

I work a full-time job. I freelance. I co-coach my daughter’s basketball team. I’m a husband and a dad. I’m a graphic designer and art director. I take photos. I play guitar. I cut my own hair. I cook. I’m handy enough to figure shit out around the house. I’m constantly tinkering with some camera, computer, workflow, system, or piece of technology.

There are a lot of things running at once.

And somehow, most of the time, it feels manageable.

So how the hell am I doing this?

I’ve been a professional designer for about 20 years, but I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of creative who can just make anything from nothing.

I can’t draw for shit.

I could focus on that. I could list all the things other creatives can do that I can’t.

But give me material and I’m dangerous.

Give me typography, photography, information, constraints, a brand, a problem, a shitty UI, a physical space, a deadline, some half-formed ideas, three conflicting opinions, and a bunch of context.

I know what to do with that.

I take things in. A lot of things.

I process them, find the relationships between them, and somehow arrange them into something coherent.

That’s my creativity.

It took me a long time to understand that arrangement is creation.

I’m an integrator. A synthesizer.

And apparently I’ve built my life the same way.

I have ADHD.

For a long time it was easy to think about that entirely in terms of what it made harder. Focus. Distraction. Context switching. Too many thoughts. Too much input.

All of that is real.

But I’ve also spent decades learning the terrain.

I’ve learned that I need systems. Not because I’m naturally organized, but because I’m naturally chaotic.

Systems give the chaos somewhere to go.

When I’m working, I know there are different versions of my brain I need at different times.

Sometimes I’m in intake mode.

Sometimes I’m in strategy mode.

Sometimes I need to shut everything else down and produce.

Sometimes I’m Dad.

Sometimes I’m Coach.

Sometimes I’m Photographer.

The trick isn’t forcing all of those versions of me to operate simultaneously. It’s recognizing which one needs the controls right now.

My systems are the banks of the river.

They don’t stop the water.

They let it move without flooding the whole fucking town.

One of the other things I’ve learned is that I can’t optimize my brain while treating my body like some unrelated piece of hardware.

If I need sleep, I sleep.

There are nights when I have to push through and get something done. That’s life. But I also know what happens if I keep borrowing against myself.

I get slower.

The work gets harder. Decisions take longer. Everything gets noisier.

So rest isn’t the opposite of productivity for me.

It’s part of the production system.

The better I’ve gotten at listening to myself, the less I have to fight myself.

None of this happened overnight.

I’m 40ish years into being me.

I’ve been a paid professional designer for about 20 years and I’m 19 years removed from design school.

That’s a lot of reps.

I’ve worked alongside incredibly talented people. I’ve watched experts solve problems. I’ve watched people completely fuck them up.

I’ve worked across branding, UI, digital, print, photography, events, and whatever else someone decided to throw at me.

I’ve been a creative director and intentionally moved back toward being a hands-on senior art director.

I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve become a husband and a father. I’ve gotten sick. I’ve recovered. I’ve built systems, abandoned systems, rebuilt them, and slowly figured out which ones actually stick.

I’ve accumulated an enormous amount of context.

And I think that’s what experience actually is.

Experience isn’t knowing every answer.

It’s having seen enough things that when something new comes at you, your brain has somewhere to put it.

Maybe this is also why I love living in San Francisco.

I like cities. I like motion. I like walking outside and having things happening around me.

This sounds backwards, but sometimes silence is incredibly loud to me.

When there’s nothing happening, there’s nothing for my brain to grab onto. Everything turns inward. Every thought suddenly has the microphone.

Give me a city, though, and there’s material.

Cars. People. Buildings. Conversations. Music. Sirens. Someone doing some completely inexplicable shit on the sidewalk.

Noise.

I can work with noise.

I know how to filter it. I know how to focus inside it. I know how to find the signal.

Maybe that’s the whole thing.