Why You Should Stop Complaining
Complaints are a poor way to express an idea
When I try to summarize the hundreds of essays, and two books, I’ve written for designers, one candidate is the simple phrase: stop complaining. Many of our conversations are complaints about organizations, their dysfunctional or foolish leaders, or about feeling ignored and misunderstood. It’s mostly a waste of time.
We’ve had the same complaints for decades and the complaints have not helped. Complaining does not reduce the causes of our frustrations. Complaining does not make us more skilled at overcoming what frustrates us. While it is true that many organizations are dysfunctional and many leaders are foolish, we can no longer say it’s a surprise. It’s part of the job and career we have chosen.
It’d be just as silly for firefighters to be continually outraged about the stupid and perenial reasons fires get started. Or for doctors to rant about the dumb things people do that bring them to the ER every night. For us, we all know that bad design makes money and it’s that money, in part, that pays our salaries. That’s part of why they pay us: it’s compensation for frustration.
This sounds cold and heartless but I promise I am neither. However, I understand why you would not believe me based on this essay so far. So let me try to explain. How about this: a kinder edit could be: improve your complaints.
The logic is simple in that if you keep yelling the same thing over and over again and nothing changes maybe you are missing something? Even if you are right, and something is wrong, your action isn’t resolving the complaint. Instead of repeating the same ineffective habit, maybe learn to be a better, more effective complainer? Designers often use the same three bad arguments over and over again, despite how ineffective they are. We can do better.
But perhaps you think I’m even more of a jerk now. Maybe you you are a fantastic complainer, among the best there is. You are a complaints master. You might even, right now, be thinking about complaining about this essay to others. Which would mean you’d be complaining to other designers about me telling designers to complain less, a crushing loop of tragicomic absurdity.
If you can give me one more chance, a more pragmatic and gentler edit might be, convert your complaints into actions that lead to change. Do you want to complain or do you want things to change? If the later, you need to study how change happens as part of being a designer. It has to become a central part of how you view your work.
What is the design of a complaint?
Among your design superpowers is the ability to reframe problems so that they can be solved. When you feel the urge to complain, ask:
What purpose does a complaint serve?
How is a good complaint different from a bad one?
What problem can a complaint solve? And for who?
How do you evaluate the success of a complaint?
This list might seems useful… but it’s a ruse! Gotcha!
Why? A well designed complaint transforms into something else: a pitch, an argument, a proposal or a plan. Complaints themselves almost never change the circumstances generating the need to complain. And if it does, it’s because someone converted the complaint into an effective action. Complaints alone change nothing.
Why are complaints so popular then?
A major reason is we are emotional creatures. We want our feelings validated and to not feel alone. Venting and finding support, two things we sometimes get from complaining, are important and good. The trouble is that venting and support do not change the circumstances you are in. In some ways they make it easier for you not to take action to change your situation, since you feel slightly better than you did before you complained.
But the larger reason is that it’s easier to agree that something is wrong than it is to agree on how to fix it. There are always too few resources to satisfy everyone. Which means there are always complaints. This means the existence of valid complaints alone does not mean anything should change. Someone has to think through how any proposed solution might cause the same or more complaints, just from different people.
For example, imagine you have four engineers working late on a project:
Engineer A: I’m hungry
Engineer B: Me too!
Engineer C, D: Yes! Why don’t they feed us!
All Engineers: FEED US!
Project Manager: Ok. I will order pizza.
Engineer A: I hate Pizza!
Engineer B: Can it be gluten-free?
Engineer C: If it’s gluten-free I want a tuna sandwich instead.
Engineer D: Me too! I want a sandwich!
Project Manager: So one gluten-free pizza and three tuna sandwiches?
Engineer A: No! I hate sandwiches too.
Project Manager: hmmmmm… so..uh…
All Engineers: FEED US!
Confession: originally I had designers in this joke, as that would be more on theme, but you’d accuse me of being even meaner to designers, so I switched it to engineers. I have also been on gluten-free diets in the past, so I’m not making fun of you if you are on one now.
The wider point I’m making is that these problems are universal. If you work with human beings these problems are normal and to be expected.
Getting people to agree is the major challenge of getting people to work well together. And few people people want to do this work. Do you? Yet complaining is easy and free. And when you complain other people often join in, validating you for complaining. Entire social movements center on complaints without solutions. This can feel good and can lead to change, but only if those complaints transform into something else.
The easy popularity of complaining also explains professional complainers who benefit from the problem never being solved, and earn more popularity than the people actually working to fix the problems everyone is complaining about.
What should we do instead of complaining?
One of the core ideas of the book Why Design Is Hard is that we really only have three healthy choices. And complaining is not one of them. Convincing you of the value of these choices and helping you make them well is the core theme of the book1.
There are only three ways then to think about the changes we want to see:
A) Seek power. To resolve a complaint someone has to make a decision. Who makes decisions you think you should be making? Who doesn’t listen to your advice but really should? Designers need power to design. There’s no way around it. Decisions are really about power, and you need to increase how much power you have for your ideas to go anywhere.
B) Become influential. If you don’t want the responsibilities that come with power, that’s OK. Instead, become an influencer. Think of your job as a consultant or an advisor, and draw from the rich heritage of skills those roles have always had. If the powerful people you work with listened to you 30% or 50% more often, and gave you more credit, would you enjoy your career more? If yes, then influence is the way. Influence needs to become more important to you than creativity.
C) Be self-aware. You do not have to chose A or B, but the remaining option is to be more self-aware about your limitations. If you can mature your beliefs about design and escape the ego trap, you’ll become a healthier person. Your career will have more flow and be more fulfilling. You’ll get smarter at identifying healthy places to work, or perhaps you’ll realize you want to be your own boss. By becoming self-aware, you’ll be less reactive to the messy reality of human nature in organizations.
These choices are not mutually exclusive. The sensible thing is to think about which ones apply best in different situations and for different phases of your life.
This trio of choices was posted on Twitter in 2019 and surfaced in other essays and talks around the same time. It applies to everyone, not just to designers.
This message deeply resonated with me. I used to be someone who complained more, but over the years I’ve trained my mind to shift toward action instead.
We’re all emotional beings, but I’ve noticed that getting stuck in complaining makes it easy to fall into an emotional trap and stay there much longer than we should before taking action. Those emotions can accumulate and compound over time.
Complaining together seems like an easy way to socialize and build common ground - maybe it works for brief chitchat. But when facing big decisions, important work choices, or daily challenges, frequent complaining just prevents us from moving forward with our lives more quickly.
I’ve made a specific effort to maintain a positive attitude and get out of complaint mode in favor of taking action. I heard a simple framework from design leadership at my company that I really like: “Accept it, change it, or leave it - but don’t get stuck in between.”
This approach has helped me channel energy that would have gone into complaining into actually solving problems and moving forward.
Scott, your take on complaints remind me of Dale Carnegie's chapter on arguing: He said don't.
To me, my complaints are a signal to ask, "What can I do?"
In everyday life, I respect a person who answers the signal with, "I'll write to my congressman" or visits that office. I once took my representative an article from The Atlantic regarding causes of the widespread housing shortage, and he made photocopies so the article could be marked up and pondered.
When I was chairing big peer meetings at work, when someone "complained" then I would have that person agree to take responsibility for addressing the issue, to get back to us at the next meeting. That helped our meetings feel productive. I was very diplomatic!
As for your "ego trap" link, I can't resist saying that once, as I stood on a low stage at my Toastmasters club, I looked over my friendly fellow Toastmasters and said, "Thank you all for having a bit part in the movie about my life."