Being many things to many people may put designers at risk of putting themselves last. Here’s how to cultivate practices that nourish your mental health on and off the clock.

SET DIGITAL BOUNDARIES 
When Laetitia Wajnapel founded her Los Angeles–based firm Cinquième Gauche in 2019, entering clients’ homes (and lives) quickly took its toll in an unexpected way. “During my first project, I forgot to set boundaries,” she recalls. “I gave everything, worked late and found myself drained. I’d taken on all of my clients’ marital problems and stress, and was spending more time trying to manage that than actually designing. After that, I was like, ‘OK, how do I go about not doing this?’”

Boundary-setting has proven important for Wajnapel as a self-protection mechanism. “I feel things very intensely,” she says. “This is not constructive in a business where clients are often emotional and stressed. Moving is stressful, construction is stressful, working with a designer for the first time and trusting them with a bunch of your money is extremely stressful. I receive all this as a human—and as a designer, I receive that on top of the pressure to do a good job for them and make them happy.”