"I don't want to be a UX lead and sit in meetings all day."

My mentee said this to me last week.

And I knew the feeling from years ago.

The secret nobody tells you--

UX career growth doesn't have to be vertical.

Sometimes the most fulfilling path is sideways or deeper.

You could try this instead ↴

Make a list of all your work tasks.

Mark each with--

🟢Green = "I love this! Time flies."

🟡 Yellow = "This is fine."

🔴 Red = "This drains me."

Look at your green items.

This is your map to what's next.

One designer I coached did this and found she loved teaching others. Now she runs learning workshops for her whole company. She didn't move "up" but found work that makes her happy.

Another designer saw he was great at talking to both engineers and business teams. He created a new role as a "design translator" (yep, for real) - same level, but work he enjoys much more.

If you want to build your own path, here's my 5-step Career Compass Framework that helped hundreds of my mentee to design their own UX career maps ↴