Here's what I believe:
Blur the edges of your profession. Dabbling in adjacent fields can only deepen your understanding and enrich your work. Doing so many different things that you no longer know what to call yourself is a good thing. Yes, people in print should learn HTML, and digital designers should work on some letterpress. Write stuff. Not too much.
People who proudly declare that they don't read make me nervous.
You should read, frequently and fractally. In fact, here's five things I recommend to everyone I meet: Lewis Hyde's The Gift, Robin Sloan's Annabel Scheme, Frank Chimero's The Shape of Design, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, and Anna Anthropy's To the Right, Hold on Tight.
I believe in taking the time to do something right, the first time.
It's important for those who make content, products, and services to be aware of the power they have. Issues of access, privacy, control, and ownership are ethical questions, and they're not going away. Software is the staging ground for the future.
Take some material. Move it around, play with it, absorb & synthesize. Add structure, reinforcing the good parts and ripping out the bad bits. Patch up the holes that are left. Give it lyricism and grace and elegance. Make it for an audience, shaped so that they can understand it, the way you understand it.
That's designing. That's editing. The same frame of action.