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 meant that by time I’d answered all the emails, taken all the calls, done all the edits, filled out all the tax forms and contracts, and chased the invoice several times to get paid, I felt I deserved another check just for the administrative portion of the exercise. Once I saved for taxes on that check, the cost benefit analysis came into stark relief: I definitely should have said no.
Some of this is just implied in the machinations of working for yourself. It definitely has downsides, there is no doubt. But there’s also something else at play, something I’m trying to rectify now: I was neglecting to ask how the work in question was serving me, rather than the other way around. I was falling into the mushy middle of self employment.
The mushy middle is a place where nothing is quite what you want it to be. You’re not being paid enough money to warrant the headache or scope of the task at hand. And you’re not really thrilled or creatively sparked by doing the work either. It’s just mushy. You get paid, but not enough. You get some satisfaction, but not enough of that either. If you take on enough of this kind of work, you’ll find yourself always working and never satisfied.
Post-pandemic, I’m interested not only in working less, but being more clear about the role that work plays in my life. Which is why I’m experimenting with a new concept wherein the work I accept must fall into one of two categories: It’s actually worth the total amount of time it will take me (taking into account all the admin and attendant headaches involved) or I will really enjoy doing it.
Disclaimer, of course, that this approach requires some privilege. I have no dependents, I have some savings, I live in a country where my taxes pay for my healthcare, and I stopped living in on of the most expensive cities in the world thanks to Covid. In other words, I do not have to accept every single piece of work that I am offered. But at the same time, the two buckets theory also sometimes requires me to do something I never would’ve done before: Ask for more money if a project comes my way that is underpaid. It requires me to be honest about what my labor is actually worth.
Most importantly, it makes me clear on the kind of creative work I actually want to be doing. Rather than hustling to finish a mountain of mushy middle work so I can finally get to my creative project, the stuff that brings me joy is baked right into my workflow. Because I’m taking on work that’s adequately paid in bucket one, I don’t have to worry to much about how much the work in bucket two will make me.
The biggest shift of the two buckets theory is to judge work offers on their actual real-life merits, not their mythical potential. This opportunity is either bringing me good money, or it’s bringing me joy; if it’s not bringing either, I’m not interested. This may not work for everyone, especially those at the beginning of their careers. But I’ve made peace with my ambition (or lack thereof), I’m tired of constantly be striving to get to some better place, and I’m more interested in enjoying my life as it is this week. So if work doesn’t fit into one of two buckets, it’s going to be a no from me.
