Make websites dense again. Conjest the UI. You can handle the complexity. Don't hide things, but instead expose hierarchy in 2D layout, neatly organized in boxes. It's visually overwhelming because others have told you to think that way. Future is not minimalism. The future is in the intellect of organizing information, presenting it to the user in the most straightforward, functional, and unobstrusive way.

That empty space is just sitting there doing nothing, projecting nothing to the retina. Put it to use. Tactically use minimalism when attracting attention to urgency or when singular focus is required. Judge your work with extreme disregard to status quo or trends or what others are doing.

Engineer it with objectivity and self-awareness to aesthetic bias or personal taste (which can cloud your judgement). That blue button needs to be interrogated for its blueness. Why is it blue and not green? Is it personal taste? Whims? Copying other designers? Do this constantly. There should be an inner voice interrogating for objectivity at all times. Fall back to sane defaults if you cannot find a reason for something.

Question why things are done a certain way. Most of the time, there is a good reason for it. Find things that are done a certain way with no apparent justification, dissect their reason for existence. Destroy them from your repetoire if nothing is found. Now there is a space for a new, often better solution that cannot be knocked down easily. Avoid crowds where criticism is disallowed or not valued. Avoid extreme positivity/negativity spaces—they breed mediocrity.

Design is full of subjectivism and it bothers me. When there is no yard stick to measure, anything goes. When anything goes, criticism or praise has no legs to stand on. Mediocrity and immeasurability go hand in hand. Idolicize and obssess over people that are good (in your current judgement). Study their work and dig up everything they've done in life. See why others praise their work.