Unless you’re crazy-happy to have any sort of work at all, you’ve probably done a job that you absolutely hate. I’ve had a couple here and there. The work goes slow, and it makes it very hard to get motivated. Once you’re finally done with said project, you don’t really feel a sense of accomplishment–you just feel like you’ve wasted time.
If you’re a freelancer, chances are that you want the job to improve your quality of life financially as well as through freedom, but if you’re doing work you despise, it’s self-defeating. Also, doing jobs you hate can hurt your career more than improve it. How? Either by making it a chore to log on and start work on that blasted project again or by reducing your quality of work and earning a poor rating.
What’s a way to avoid harming your career? Keep reading.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
What’s Cost-Benefit Analysis? It’s a fancy phrase about a topic we’ve covered a few times: you’re doing a job that costs you more than you’re earning. It can cost you more financially by wasting your time, or it can cost you by reducing your morale and precious provider rating.
When you’re looking for jobs, consider if you are going to be sick to your stomach after doing it for a few hours. You won’t always know, but there’s a few tell-tale signs that you’ll encounter problems including: a buyer who throws work at you and doesn’t have time to properly brief you on what needs to be done, the job listing has three lines of text which doesn’t describe the job, or the work is of a nature that you know you wouldn’t like.
Most of these signs can be seen in the interview phase. If the buyer says “You want to do this?” and you ask “Yeah, but what exactly do you want me to do?” and they never answer, then you will encounter major resistance if you take the job. You could take a stab at what you’re supposed to do, be completely wrong, and never get paid. Even worse, you could also come out with a nasty rating which will make buyers less likely to hire you in the future.
So, Cost-Benefit Analysis works like this:
I have to spend X amount (energy, money, time, my sanity) and gain Y profit (money, ratings, prestige, future work with this buyer) for a net gain of Z. You calculate Z with the equation Z = X - Y. Pretty simple.
Here’s an example. I hate doing SEO article mills with a passion. I avoid them like my ex-girlfriend avoided anything that could possibly make her IQ higher than 60 (boosh). Also, SEO article mills don’t exist in the pay-grade I’m used to. Further, they tend to be demanding in time. Using the formula, X = me losing time, potential money, and my marbles. Y = about 20 hours of work at 100 bucks. Therefore, Z = a waste of my time. I will hate doing it, I will make less money, and I will probably get a bad rating because I will speed through it.
My advice is to not freak out if you go a day or two without a job. There will be more jobs popping up later that day and even more tomorrow, so have a little patience and wait it out. You will end up in a better situation by doing a job you enjoy for more money than you will by taking whatever comes along. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen many people not put it into practice.
Some people take on jobs to “boost their ratings” even if they hate doing the job and it’s not related to their field. Yes, when a buyer initially looks at your provider rating, they will see a nice high number, but they look through the comments and jobs that go with that rating, they will see that it doesn’t apply to the work they need you to do. I’ve got a good rating doing writing jobs, but that doesn’t mean a buyer will trust me to draw a splash screen for their software unless they have a screw loose. I drew a stick man once, but even that looked bad.
So take the magical formula I’ve given you and apply it to your application process. Don’t let it stop you from applying to jobs because they MAY turn out to be bad, but if you ever catch yourself saying, “Well, this job is going to really suck, but I need something to do,” then you probably shouldn’t take it.
Very good post Nelson. We don’t want to hate our work.