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The ‘Two Buckets Theory’ of Creative Work
If you’re self employed, ask yourself these two questions before taking on your next project
I’ve always felt most comfortable working for myself. I decide when I work, what’s worth it and what’s not, and I don’t have to pretend to be loyal to the amorphous concept of “company culture”—a phrase which has always made me feel slightly nauseous.
However, having recently returned to self employment after some time away, I’m rethinking how I approach working for myself. Specifically, which work I say yes to, and which work I decline.
When I first started working as a self employed writer more than ten years ago, I was very much in the “say yes to everything” camp. That made sense at the time. I needed every penny I could earn, and I had little experience to warrant declining opportunities. But as time progressed, I struggled to let that go. I said yes to things that were underpaid because I thought they might lead to something else down the line: connections, exposure, a stroke of kismet that would lead to my inevitable Big Break. It was only a matter of time, right?
I also said yes to plenty of things that — while perhaps paid okay at first glance — involved working with difficult, unreliable people or arcane workflow processes. This often…
