Successful freelancers need to charge at least double the hourly rate that they'd be happy earning doing full time work. (In many fields, it's more like 4 or 5x).
And they need to spend at least half their time getting better at their craft (and helping the market understand and appreciate what they do).
Your mileage may vary, but one sure route to becoming an unhappy freelancer is charging just enough and hoping that the low price will keep you busy all the time.
[If you're a freelancer with a career or marketing question, I'm recording a course on this topic and will be including reader questions as part of it. The form is open until tomorrow, Monday, at midnight. Thanks.]
March 15, 2015
Today is Pi day, the 14th day of the 3rd month of the fifteenth year… 3.1415
Pi is our most famous irrational number. Not irrational in the sense that it's a foolish argument, a form of wishing for one thing while doing another. No, pi is irrational in a magical, beautiful sense. It can't be cropped off and fit into a box. The closer you look at pi, the more you see, forever.
And that sort of irrational magic is at the heart of our best work. Meeting spec works fine as long as you're the only person who has to meet spec. But in any competitive environment, fitting into a box does us little good.
To be transcendent and irrational is to always have a few more digits to spare, to demand that you not be rounded off and filed away. To be human.
March 14, 2015
Money owed accrues interest. Banks and credit card companies thrive on this. The borrower gets to keep using the money, and the lender ends up with more in the end.
Apologies owed, on the other hand, accrue nothing whatsoever of value, to either side.
Forgiving a financial debt costs your balance sheet. Forgiving an owed apology frees you to be generous again.
March 13, 2015
We really don't understand privilege until we've lost it.
It's pretty easy to criticize or misunderstand those that complain about privilege (of any kind), but in fact, we have no idea what it is to be in those shoes, not right this minute.
March 12, 2015
You can do two things with pumpkin seeds. Eat them, an excellent source of protein, or plant them, and watch a successful seed bring back 100 more.
The farmer who plants the seeds aggressively, without regard for, "hey, be careful, I could have eaten that seed," often ends up with many more pumpkins and many more seeds. On the other hand, the person who guards all the seeds and then eats them ends up with not much.
And of course, money works the same way. Time, too.
March 11, 2015
When there’s a wreck on the side of the road, we can’t help it. Despite our best efforts, we look at the accident, sometimes even slow down to get a really good look.
Why?
To remind ourselves it’s not us. To reassure ourselves it’s not someone we know. Phew.
Rubbernecking is our way of reassuring ourselves.
Often, though, we do precisely the opposite when it comes to the apparently unfixable, to the enormity of horrible events, to tragedies.
(Enormity doesn't mean "extra enormous." It refers to the emptiness of something so horrible and large we have trouble comprehending it).
Time magazine produces a cover that we can't bear, so we don't buy that issue. We don't see the billboard. A disease appears uncurable, so we don't talk about it. It's easier to talk about the little stuff, or events with hope.
We also do it with science, to facts about the world around us.
There’s a long history of denialism, defending the status quo and ignoring what others discover. That two balls of different weights fall at the same speed. That the Earth rotates around the Sun. That the world is millions of years old. That we walked on the Moon.
The denials all sound the same. They don’t come from stupidity, from people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on. They come from people who won’t look.
Why deny? It's a way to avert our eyes.
Two related reasons, internal and external.
The external reason is affiliation. What happens to one's standing when you dare to question the accepted status quo? What are the risks to doing your own research, to putting forth a falsifiable theory and being prepared to find it proven wrong? What will you tell your neighbors?
When adherence to the status quo of our faith or organization or social standing looms large, it’s often far easier to just look the other way, to feign ignorance or call yourself a skeptic (n.b. all good scientists are actually skeptics, that’s how they build careers… the difference is that the skeptical scientist does the work to prove to her peers that she’s right, and acknowledges when she’s not).
There’s more data available to more people than ever before. And the prize for using statistics and insight to contradict the scientific status quo is huge. If a thesis doesn’t sit right with you, look closer, not away. Do the science, including acknowledging when your theory isn’t right.
The internal reason is fear. The fear of having to re-sort what we believe. Of feeling far too small in a universe that’s just too big. Most of all, of engaging in a never-ending cycle of theories and testing, with the world a little shaky under our feet as we live with a cycle that gets us closer to what’s real.
Part of being our best selves is having the guts to not avert our eyes, to look closely at what scares us, what disappoints us, what threatens us. By looking closely we have a chance to make change happen.
March 10, 2015
In five words, that's one secret to delight. When you do the work that others can't possibly imagine doing, you set yourself apart.
Seeking out the things that are more trouble than most people think they're worth is a powerful place to be.
The hard part, of course, is actually doing something that appears to be far more trouble than it's worth.
March 9, 2015
For years before 1992, experts warned that the fisheries in Eastern Canada were in peril. Industrialized fishing processes (sonar, trawlers, etc.) were pulling dramatically more cod out of the Atlantic, and the fishery was severely threatened.
Insiders ignored the warnings, shouting about job preservation instead. 35,000 workers were directly involved, with more than 100,000 people supported as a result of the fishing trade. Jobs needed to be defended.
In 1992, the catch dropped 99%. Every single job was lost, because the entire system collapsed.
It's easy to defend the status quo, except when the very foundation you've built everything on disappears. Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there's a cliff on the route.
March 8, 2015
Really?
You're arguing about that trivial difference between us?
Substantive disagreement is rarely the issue that splits tribes, destroys thriving groups or wastes time at meetings. Instead, it's our desire to carve out a little space for ourselves in a group that seems to agree on almost everything.
The work is too important to sidetrack about the things we disagree on.
Point out this narcissism when you see it and move on to the important stuff, to amplifying the things we agree on.
[HT to Ernest Crawley who has one of the coolest resumes ever. And then appropriated by Freud.]
March 7, 2015
"Because if it was, someone would already be parking there."
If you're sufficiently pessimistic about new opportunities, it probably pays to stop driving around. Opportunity is often where you decide it is.
March 6, 2015
