Outside the Frame: Why Creative Practice Makes Us Better Product Leaders

How photography and art help me recharge, express myself, and make space outside of work.

I love what I do. I’ve spent most of my career in product design and UX, and a big part of my job today is helping people solve complicated problems.

I’m thinking about customers, teams, strategy, business problems and priorities. What’s working? What’s not? What should we do next? I’m creating clarity, helping teams move forward, making decisions and supporting other people as they navigate their own challenges.

It’s work I find incredibly meaningful. It’s also a lot of thinking.

Over the years, I’ve learned that I need something that gets me out of that part of my brain. For me, that’s often photography and art.

I need a place where there isn’t a problem to solve

There’s almost always a problem to solve at work. Even the creative parts of product design have an objective. We’re designing something for someone, trying to improve an experience or working toward an outcome.

Photography doesn’t ask that of me.

I can grab my camera and walk outside without knowing what I’m looking for. I can spend an hour trying to photograph a hummingbird, take my camera out on the kayak, or wander through a garden and become completely fascinated by the light hitting one flower.

There’s no business outcome or roadmap. There’s no meeting afterward where I need to explain why I made the choices I did.

I’m just creating. And I’ve realized I need that.

Creativity is how I recharge

For a long time, I think I associated recharging with doing nothing. And sometimes that’s exactly what I need.

But I’ve also learned that many of the things that restore my energy actually require me to do something. Photography is one of them. So are gardening, sewing, knitting, baking and making things with my hands.

They’re active, but they use a different part of me.

When I’m behind a camera, I’m not thinking about the meeting I just left or the decision I need to make tomorrow. I’m thinking about light, composition, color and what’s happening in front of me.

I’m present.

That’s a very different kind of rest.

Making something that’s mine

Leadership is inherently about other people, and that’s one of the things I love about it.

A good day might mean helping someone work through a challenge, giving a team clarity, advocating for an idea, connecting people, removing a barrier or creating space for someone else to succeed.

But there’s something important about having a creative practice that’s simply mine.

Photography gives me a way to express how I see things. And when I look at the things I’m drawn to—nature, gardens, birds, water, quiet moments, small details—I realize my photographs probably say something about me too.

Lately I’ve also been experimenting with taking my photographs beyond the original image, turning them into watercolor-inspired pieces, sketches and other forms of digital art. I can take the same photograph and interpret it in completely different ways.

There isn’t necessarily a right answer. The question becomes much more personal:

Does this feel like me?

That’s a question I don’t get to ask very often at work.

Not everything needs to be productive

This one can be hard for me because I’m a doer.

If I’m going to spend time on something, it’s very easy to turn it into a project. Learn the camera. Organize the photos. Improve the technique. Create the collection. Build the website. Open the shop.

Suddenly the thing that’s supposed to help me recharge has its own backlog.

I’m still learning this one.

Creative work doesn’t always have to be productive to be worthwhile. Not every photograph needs to be good. Not every experiment needs to become something I sell, share or even keep.

Sometimes I can make something simply because I enjoyed making it. That’s enough.

Burnout isn’t always about working too many hours

I’ve also started thinking differently about burnout. Certainly workload matters, but I think there’s another kind of exhaustion that comes from spending too much time in one mode.

Always solving. Always deciding. Always responding. Always helping. Always being “on.”

Even work we care deeply about can drain us when we don’t give ourselves opportunities to step outside of it.

Creative practice gives me that space. It doesn’t remove the hard things or magically make the work easier. It just gives my brain somewhere else to go for a while.

And often, when I come back, I see those hard things differently.

There’s something good about being a beginner

There’s another part of photography I’ve come to appreciate: I’m still learning.

I can spend more than 20 years building expertise in design and still go outside with my camera and completely miss the shot. There’s something wonderfully humbling about that.

I get to experiment, make mistakes, try a different setting, change the composition and take a hundred photographs to get one I really love. And sometimes I just get it wrong.

Being a beginner reminds me how uncomfortable learning can be, but also how energizing it can be when something finally clicks. It reminds me to stay curious and gives me a little more empathy for people who are learning something new.

As a leader, I don’t want to lose touch with that feeling.

We need something outside the frame

I don’t think everyone needs photography. But I do think we need something outside of our role, our title and our responsibilities.

Something that absorbs us enough that we stop thinking about work for a while. Something where we can make mistakes without consequences. Something that lets us express a part of ourselves that might not have a place in our day-to-day work.

For me, photography and art have become part of that space.

I’m still experimenting, still figuring out what I like and still learning what feels like me. And I’m trying not to turn all of it into another job.

Because sometimes the best thing I can do for the leader I am at work is to put the laptop away, pick up my camera and go see what I find.

Sometimes stepping outside the frame is exactly what helps us come back with more of ourselves.