How Doing Less Work for More Money Saved Client Work | Hacker News Reader

How Doing Less Work for More Money Saved Client Work

joshuablankenship.com

83 pointsjoshuacc7 comments

I've reached about all the same conclusions myself, except for the "only work with one client at a time" part. Ideally it would be great, but I've found that design work is often an ongoing process, where you might need to invest tons of hours into designing a home page at one point, and then just spend a couple hours on a widget redesign the next month.

So I need multiple clients just to fill in the gaps when some of them don't need my services that much.

If I applied the "1 client only" rule, it would prevent me from having that flexible long-term relationships with my clients, and I think the quality of my work would suffer from it.

Yeah, his one client rule is really particular to his situation, not people doing this full time.

Absolutely agreed. If I was doing 40+ hours a week of client work, I'd have the margin (and financial need) to work with multiple clients in any given season. But in addition to a full-time gig, I just can't swing it.

Most the work I take on is shorter design/direction gigs with 1-3 week timeframes. In the gaps I take my 15 hours and use it for personal work. But again, all unique to my situation.

great read. Designers perennially bitch and moan about difficult clients, but when I review my last year of consulting, I can agree with Joshua that the difficult experiences have been _my_ fault. I get to pick my clients, and it's up to me to set expectations and manage the process. It's very true that all the skills and talent one has developed can be rendered meaningless by a lack of professionalism. And sometimes the very definition of professionalism means not getting into something at a price / timeline / term of agreement your integrity can live with.

You’re supposed to be the professional, remember?

I do.

> I don’t want my reputation and talent to take me where my integrity can’t sustain me (and it will, if left unchecked).

It must be tough having so much reputation and talent. If you can learn to control your talent the world will truly be a safer, if duller place.

Without the context the quote seems very egotistical. With the context I think it makes perfect sense. Your comment draws a completely different picture.

I can’t juggle. I definitely can’t juggle multiple clients and serve them well on the thin time margins I’m keeping. I’ve always failed when I tried. I know my limits. I don’t want my reputation and talent to take me where my integrity can’t sustain me (and it will, if left unchecked). It damages my rep and renders my talent meaningless in the grand scheme of client services. “He’s real talented, but he doesn’t do what he says” is a massive failure unless my goal is to be known as an unprofessional, out of work, real talented guy. I’d rather serve one client to the best of my abilities than multiple clients simultaneously, mediocrely.

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