Two weeks was all it took. Once it set in, the culture shock numbed me to the media. It turned bathrooms, cars, and roads into outrageous luxuries. It even robbed me of my short-term memory for a while.

I’d experienced severe culture shock once before, after months in Africa. This time, I hadn’t even left the US Southwest. And I’d only been gone for 16 days.

It almost wasn’t fair. Except that I came out of my Grand Canyon river trip a wiser person. Moving at the speed of the Colorado River, living a life devoid of crowds, traffic, electricity, and noise, I learned a few lessons about sustainability.

I’d like to share three of them with you. They have altered how I think about sustainability. I hope that you find them useful, too.

Lesson #1: Excess is Normal
Taught by: The Groover

Good Lord. That’s a lot of water.

This was my first through upon entering the bathroom stall at the Hualapai Lodge lobby in Peach Springs, Arizona. Inside, there was a toilet. In that toilet, two gallons of clear, placid water anticipated my waste.

After 16 days of rafting down the Grand Canyon, I hardly remembered what a toilet looked like.

The trip toilet had consisted of army surplus ammo cans. Known as “groovers,” these metal boxes served as our 16-person group’s only waste repositories. Approximately every four days, one of the cans would fill up. At this point, we clamped it shut, loaded it on a boat, and dragged out a new empty one. We literally sat on the can every time we had to do our business.

All that water…for a single bowel movement?

Back in the Canyon, we hand-fetched and filtered our drinking water from the Colorado River. Two gallons of water was precious.

Using water to rinse our waste away simply wasn’t done. It was too much work to fetch and filter it. We also wanted to keep the river clean. It was our home.

Here in civilization, each bowel movement is honored with its own two gallons of water. Pull the flush lever, and the waste swirls into a hole and disappears. It’s wasteful, but it is standard. We consider it normal.

Lesson #2: Adapting Nature is Work. Adapting to Nature is Easy.
Taught by: Canyon Campgrounds

I continued to marvel at the toilet. The white porcelain bowl sat on impeccably scrubbed tile, laid for the sole purpose of making visitors’ bathroom experience more pleasant. An wall-mounted electric machine dried hands at the push of a button. Faucets with sensors decided the amount and temperature of the sink’s water. Wide walkways, high ceilings, inoffensive artwork, and air conditioning optimized the sense of comfort.

Just a day earlier, our group had been paddling down the Grand Canyon’s scorching innards. The Canyon didn’t care how comfortable we felt. In its world, we were inconceivably small, flesh floating on the coattails of a millisecond.

Despite the heat, bugs, and work of setting up a new camp every day, our ancient playground offered abundant amenities. At every camp, we found flat surfaces on which to set up our tents. A chilly Colorado River offered bathing, drinking, and cooling off. Trees secured our rafts. A wild panorama of stars replaced evening TV shows.

We hadn’t altered the environment to suit ourselves. Yet the Grand Canyon was complete. Our primitive setting felt in place, with everything perfectly arranged. Our duty was to adjust to it. And that took surprisingly little effort. Don a coat in the rain. Put up a wind shield to protect cooking food from gales. Clean sand out of stuff.

After indulging in the wilderness, coming back to climate-controlled, polished-floor, double-wide-sidewalk America felt like a taser shock. Despite all the mining, building, and paving required to make an environment comfortable for humans, being back felt incomplete.

Since coming back, I feel more comfortable, but only marginally. Cool air from vents feels nice in summer. My mattress beats my Therm-a-Rest. Yet modern amenities haven’t improved my quality of life that much at all.

Lesson #3: Think About Origin
Taught by: The Colorado River

When we traveled the river, our necessities came from rafts. Each raft was rigged to the hilt with supplies. The river provided transportation, baths, and water, but everything else—food, shelter, kitchen, toilet, trash—stayed on the raft during the day.

At night, we would lug everything up to camp, where we set up our kitchen, tents, and other necessities. The next morning, we packed it all up again and reloaded the rafts. The 16 of us easily lived from those four rafts.

Instead of being insulated from my surroundings by cars, thick walls, and a computer screen, we lived in and on the Earth. Whenever I altered the environment, I saw the effects of my actions. I watched my feet trample plants, my tent pad level wind-sculpted sand, my garbage feed fire ants.

I also noticed how little propane we needed to cook our daily meals. I reveled in stars, and didn’t miss electricity at all.

Fast forward to home. It’s a hot summer morning. My air conditioner, powered at its origin by coal, keeps my bedroom cool. A reservoir, running through a system of pipes, hydrates my shower. The wastewater goes to a treatment facility. My trash goes into a container, which then goes onto a truck, which in turn dumps it into a landfill. It’s much more complicated than living off a raft.

Now, as I rumble around in my car, recharge my laptop batteries, and crank the air conditioner, I think about where things comes from. I still feel connected to the Earth, despite the layers of concrete noise that separate us. I wonder how I am impacting it.

I think about how I, like all my resources, came from the Earth, and will one day return to it. Maybe humans and toilet water aren’t that different, after all.

Business Pundit will be a little different in July. I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks sitting on an inflated device one mile beneath the earth. This is otherwise known as rafting the Grand Canyon, a once-in-a-lifetime trip that I was lucky enough to land a spot on this year. As a result, I won’t be blogging as regularly as I usually do, at least for a couple of weeks. During this time, Business Pundit will still feature original daily posts, mostly of Listmania persuasion, and a few interviews.

I will be back towards the end of July. At that time, I hope to find a media landscape full of positive business news and devoid of celebrity deaths. If I do in fact find such a landscape, I will realize my dire navigational error and return to America ASAP.

Have a kickin’ 4th of July weekend. I’ll see you on the other side.

-Drea

Yesterday, I met three strangers for lunch. It was part of my local Chamber of Commerce’s “Connect 4 Lunch” program, which sets up four small business owners in non-competing industries for networking lunches. The idea is to meet people you otherwise wouldn’t run across, share tips, and send referrals.

I ended up with a lawyer, a costume maker, and an insurance agent. We went around the table and introduced our businesses. It was a classic elevator pitch scenario.

I thought my pitch would be easy: I’m a blogger, web content specialist, copywriter, and magazine article writer. Easy enough, right?

Unfortunately, when my turn came, I froze. To my own dismay, I blurted out: “I’m kind of a generalist, and it’s hard to explain my niche, so let me start at the very beginning…” I proceeded to ramble off half my life story, slowly losing my audience as I went.

So much for succinct. A good elevator pitch requires practice. And I hadn’t prepared at all.

The costume designer drove this point home when she asked: “What’s a blog?”

I reviewed the situation to see what I could have done better. I came up with three questions to ask before my next networking event. I hope they help you, too:

Who’s Your Audience?

Before I went to lunch, I knew that my audience weren’t fellow media industry folk. That meant that terms like blogging, content production, and even copywriting might not trigger instant recognition. So I would want to explain my business in a little more detail.

Before: “Now I blog, and also write content for people, with a broad range of topics.”

After: “I mainly work on the Internet. There, I write a blog. Are you familiar with blogs?” (Pause. If not, explain.) “I also write the content in websites for large and small businesses. That would include a description of services or products, staff biographies, press releases, event calendars, special emails, and anything else a person would want on their particular website.”

That second sentence would need rehearsing, because I tend not to speak in specific terms like that off the cuff. That’s why preparation is so important–because it takes time for certain descriptions to feel natural.

What’s the Purpose of Your Elevator Pitch?

The best-case scenario for my Connect 4 lunch would be a referral or two. Targeting my pitch to my audience would help me gain those referrals.

In order to do that, I have to think about what my peers—a lawyer, a costume designer, and an insurance agent—had in common.

The answer: Not much, but they were all small business owners. Why would small business owners be interested in my writing? Because they have a website they want written or updated. Perhaps they’re starting a marketing campaign involving email, letters, or flyers. Maybe they want to start a blog of their own–I could consult them on that.

I had at least three opportunities sitting in front of me. If I had listed those opportunities and prepped my pitch around them, I could have of clarified how I could help each business owner out.

For example, I could have added that “I have helped many small business owners write websites, emails for their clients, press releases, and marketing materials like flyers and brochures. I take a careful look at what they need, then I customize my writing to represent their businesses so that people want to know more.”

What’s the Most Fulfilling Part of Your Job?

Everyone at the table (yours truly excempted) expressed an emotional underpinning that made their work special or fulfilling. For example, the insurance agent said that the most fulfilling part of her work was helping young people buy life insurance.

“That’s unusual,” I remarked. “Don’t young people keep stuff like that off their radars until they have kids?”

She nodded. “That’s what a lot of young people think. But the truth is that buying life insurance when you’re young costs less. If you get sick later, life insurance can get really expensive, or you can’t get it at all.” She explained the other benefits of buying life insurance young. She said she felt fulfilled when she helped young people secure their futures.

By explaining where her passion lay, the agent also educated me. Every time I think of insurance, I visualize warrens of bespectacled actuaries calculating life expectancies in dank basements. Listening to the agent, I started to see insurance as a protector, a financial guardian, a sorely-needed check during hard times. Insurance could actually lead to fulfillment.

I didn’t run out and buy life insurance. But the agent, by sharing her passion, had planted a seed. She made life insurance more friendly. When I do buy it, I might just turn to her.

Next time, I’m going to review what I find most fulfilling about my own line of work. After verbalizing it a few times in private, I’ll be prepared to share my passion with other people, planting my own seeds.

*

I have another Connect 4 Lunch meeting next Tuesday. The next set of strangers will hear my business pitch, not my life story. I’m committed, no matter how much practice it takes. Onward, elevator pitch!

This scale, originally designed in the 1960’s, produced an aha! moment for me. Several years ago, I experienced a number of life changes in a single month: Losing my job, closing on a home, moving, starting a new business. After the storm settled, I found my health trashed, and couldn’t figure out why. Now that I’ve seen the scale below, I realize that I was edging on 300, practically a guarantee of illness:

Score of 300+: At risk of illness.
Score of 150-299+: Risk of illness is moderate (reduced by 30% from the above risk).
Score 150-: Only have a slight risk of illness.

I can only imagine how many people face tension motherlodes in the bad economy. Consider how many of the items on the list are correlated with a recession:

Fired from work — 47
Business readjustment — 39
Change in financial status — 38
Change to a different line of work — 36
Foreclosure of mortgage or loan — 30
Change in responsibilities at work — 29
Spouse starts or stops work — 26
Change in living conditions — 25
Revision of personal habits — 24
Trouble with boss — 23
Change in working hours or conditions — 20
Minor mortgage or loan — 17
(etc.)

So if you’re laid off (47), then your new lack of income means a change in financial status (38). You find a new line of work (36), which means a change in work responsibilities (29). Around the same time, the bank forecloses on your home (30), leading to a change in living conditions (25) and change in residence (20).

As a result of all these events, you run a moderate risk of illness (225). If your spouse loses her job (26), you adjust your diet for cheaper food (15), and you end up arguing more (35), guess what? You’re at 301, meaning you will probably fall ill. If you don’t have decent health insurance…I won’t start.

Many media conversations and self-help books focus on workplace stress. This scale, on the other hand, shows that it may be better for your health to have a stressful workplace than to have no work at all. If the bad economy is stressing you out, manage that stress. Your health is the most important asset you can lose.

*I don’t think the scale is accurate for everyone. But it’s a good standard.

I generally ignore Google AdWords ads, but this one caught my eye:

Life of a Farm Blog – blog.mahindrausa.com – Follow the stories of a guy with 3 kids, a red tractor and 170 acres

Mahindra & Mahindra is an Indian automaker. At first, it baffled me that they would be using this guy’s blog to advertise themselves. They make Indian cars; he’s about as all-American as they come:

Joel Combs – 32 years old, live on and farm 170 acres in Pine Knot, Kentucky USA. Gateway to the Big South Fork NRRA. I have 3 children, ages 5, 7 and 9, and I work as a Machine Operator for Kingsford Charcoal in Burnside, KY. I’m a 5-year member of LIUNA local 576, and my hobbies include hunting, fishing, boating, cars, barbecuing, and most all things outdoors.

I suppose I assumed, naively, that domestic farm equipment was static, by default the domain of American and Japanese manufacturers. Linking back to Mahindra’s homepage, I found out that they not only sponsor NASCAR, but have a relationship with US farms going back to World War II.

Mahindra & Mahindra…was in 1945 was selected to assemble the famous Willys Jeep. In 1963, M&M formed a joint venture with International Harvester to manufacture tractors carrying the Mahindra nameplate for the Indian market. More recently, a joint venture between M&M and Ford Motor Company in 1995 created new opportunities for growth in the world vehicle market. A short time later, the European model of the Ford Escort began rolling off the Mahindra assembly lines.

The company has two assembly and distribution centers in the United States. My surprise about M&Ms US presence has roots in a college education that taught a now-primitive form of globalization. Business classes centered around American, European and Japanese companies as primary, and everyone else as peripheral. Over time, I formed an image of the US tractor industry as a classic, impenetrable one. Farmers would always use brands from the States, Europe, or Japan, period. It was a safe haven from change, solid, predictable.

M&M, which has historically been involved with the US and has been part of the Indian tractor industry’s wild recent growth, invaded my professor-approved paradigm. The tractor industry wasn’t the solid thing I had pictured it to be. Nobody ever taught us about M&M, or Indian tractors, or historical joint ventures with the same. I had to reconstruct my tractor safe haven after discovering Mr. Combs’ blog. The tractor industry suddenly went from predictable domestic fossil to a thorny land of new entrants and global players. I don’t necessarily believe the latter claim to be true, but that’s what triggered uncertainty in my mind.

The tractor industry wasn’t something I ever wanted to question. I wanted it to stay the same, to remain safe. I imagine this is how many people feel about American, or even Western, industry in general. Paradigm shifts are painful. They induce uncertainty. Nothing is impenetrable or immune. No business holds that sacred, predictable (admittedly ethnocentric) space that I thought the tractor industry occupied. Industries evade their old, seemingly solid definitions. Even the artifices of daily life–the grocery store, the gas station, the restaurant–are beholden to skyrocketing prices, and thus uncertain.

What business feels safe anymore? Predictable?

Thanksgiving in America is a combination package. On the one hand, dragging oneself through endless security lines and traffic jams to visit relatives with dubious entertainment value does not count as one of life’s most pleasurable activities.

On the other hand, the activities embedded in the holiday–giving thanks, gratitude, reunion, and kingly feasting–are like a day spa for the soul. If done with right intent, Thanksgiving’s gratitude launches celebrants into a delightful state of peaceful reflection that carries the holiday season.

I confess that I’ve never succeeded with the latter. Thanksgiving to me has always been a combination of habit and obligation. Cook bird. Gather with family. Eat until stomach resembles a large pumpkin. Nap. Give private thanks that nothing dramatic happened this year. Wake up the next day with a personal manifesto to only gain 5 pounds this holiday season. Repeat once a year.

Gratitude Means Relief
The fragmented and infected plot that launched the holiday never concerned me. Anglo-Saxons who may or may not have feasted with the Native Americans they fought and eventually sequestered into areas that would later sprout casinos which sucked up Anglo money seemed so archaic compared to the opportunity to take two days off to feast and laze.

I can’t imagine that this is what the originators had in mind when they first built their feast in the 17th century. The day was originally intended as a mass, or thanks to God. As in, thank God we made it through this alive. Or, thank God half of us didn’t die during last week’s massacre. Thank God this food is here and we’re not all living off gruel and twigs. Their revelry had an undertone of genuine relief, a foundation for gratitude.

Gratitude Means We’re Lucky
Two times in my life I’ve experienced genuine gratitude on Thanksgiving. The first occurred while I was living in Ghana, where everyone subsists off of fufu (pounded cassava root with spicy soup), banku (fermented pounded cassava root with spicy soup), and egg sandwiches. Compared to that monotony, a Thanksgiving feast among fellow Americans was a privilege and relief. African life had worn me thin enough to make Thanksgiving a vaunted occasion.

The second time in my life that I feel genuine gratitude is now. Having closely followed the economic crisis from its unfolding in June, I see nothing short of a series of miracles taking place.

For the entire year, the press has been screaming that things are VERY BAD and ABOUT TO GET WORSE. No retirements, no homes, no healthcare, no money. Read enough news, and you start to believe that nothing can redeem our situation. Time to buy a cabana hut in Veracruz and hide while entropy dismantles the whole shebang.

In light of this VERY BAD news, I observe Thanksgiving taking place with NO bad news. There’s no turkey shortage. No salmonella outbreaks. Gas is cheap. Big screen TVs are a dime a dozen. Heck, you’d think we were back in the good ol’ days of 2006.

The miracle doesn’t stop there.
Consider this:

-Food prices have risen exorbitantly during the past year. Nonetheless, we are putting a feast on the table, with enough for days of leftovers.

-Many people have been laid off. But there’s still enough money for a $50 turkey.

We’re still lucky. Despite difficult circumstances, the Thanksgiving celebration isn’t bankrupting anyone. It’s a reprieve from the economic maelstrom that has been pounding our collective psyche like a poltergeist. It’s people time, not system time. It’s food, not food prices. It’s water, not drought.

Thanksgiving is good news this year. For that, I truly am thankful.

If one location consistently and emphatically proves that dogma wrong, it is the hospital. If one hospital branch has the unmitigated ability to ruthlessly and immediately price every ounce of your flesh, bones, and blood, it is the ER.

On Halloween night, I decided to make a pumpkin pie. If you’re lazy, one of the main ingredients in this quasi-delicacy is canned pumpkin.

In the process of preparing the pie, I crossed what the triage nurse in the ER later wrote up on my records as an “evil can of pumpkin.” I opened the can. The lid sunk down, so I tried to push down on it with my hand. It remained stuck. I pushed harder.

Instead of yielding to the force of my hand, the lid propelled sideways with the deadly precision of an automated table saw. The result was a yawning, meaty canyon at the base of my index finger, a halved nerve, and a damaged tendon.

Ow.

I did not have health insurance when this happened.* The mindset associated with being uninsured goes something like this:

1) Injury occurs.
2) Decide whether you can fix it yourself. Can you duct tape, superglue, or sew it shut?
3) If you cannot fix it, do you have a friend who can?
4) Do you have enough time to drive or fly across the border to get it fixed?
5) Can the Internet help you fix it?
6) If you answer “no” to all of the above, go to the ER and incessantly ask them how much each procedure costs. (Since I don’t have an army of lawyers and accountants to negotiate my rates the way insurance companies do, I figured I’d try to get discounts right from the source.)

The people in the ER don’t know how much things cost. “Our priority is to get you fixed,” said the ER doctor, who sutured a pirate scar into the finger with the help of a tool he affectionately referred to as the “meatfinder.”

I imagine it’s better that way. But it would be nice to get an ER price menu for relatively minor emergencies like mine.

Two days later, a surgeon informed me that he would need to open up the finger again to repair the severed nerve and tendon. I read somewhere that doctors don’t treat uninsured patients as well as they do those with insurance, so I broached the discount topic with care.

“So, uh, do you have some billing people I can talk to?” I asked him.

“Why, don’t you have insurance?” He replied.

I shook my head. Luckily, this doctor acknowledges that the healthcare system is hard on people who aren’t insured or homeless, so he scheduled the surgery at a center with a cheaper rate than the community hospital.

“They only charge $57 a minute,” he assured me. If I bring several checks and pay everything upfront, I get a reasonable discount. This was within the realm of possibility, so I agreed.

I then visited my third bargaining destination, the ER’s billing office. They were the goldmine. I could get a 30% facilities discount on my visit there.

There is some wiggle room for uninsured people, after all–though not enough to justify not being insured, if you catch my drift.

After several phone calls, I have a fair estimate of what my finger repair is worth:

$595: ER facility fee with 30% discount
$350: ER doctor’s fee
$525: Surgery facility fee
$400: Anesthesiology fee
$1500: Plastic surgeon’s fee

TOTAL: $3,370

Note that the total is discounted in several ways. First, the surgery discount is contingent upon me paying for everything upfront–no credit cards. The plastic surgeon discounted his fee because he knows I’m self-insured (a fancy word for “lacking insurance”).

If I were on a payment plan, not only would I not get discounts, but I would be charged 18% interest on monthly payments. Ouch.

It’s fair to conclude that with opportunity costs (lost typing speed and slower mousing capabilities will be a big one after surgery), follow-up visits, cost of medication, cost of gas, etc., plus the potential costs associated with damaging any other area of the digit, my index finger is worth somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000.

I personally value it more highly than that, but I’m not going to ask the market to do the same.

Moral of the story: Insurance requires monthly payments. Freak accidents make these payments worth making.

*Colorado folk wisdom dictates that, if given a choice, you don’t need it until winter, when you are certain to bust a knee skiing. Colorado folk wisdom does not acknowledge the fact that common kitchen devices can become minstrels of death in the proper circumstances.

In honor of NANOWRIMO, I thought I’d share with you some of the ways writing a novel has impacted my business!

I’ve been writing memoir and fiction for about five years. On a couple of occasions I’ve tried to write a novel. So far… not so good. But I’m determined. This summer I started again. I knew my weaknesses and studied everything I could get my hands on that addressed those areas. Now I’m halfway through a first draft, complete with actual characters and a semi-decent plot. That’s pleasantly surprising, but what really unexpected is how writing the novel has impacted my ‘real’ (read: paying) work.

Accentuating the Positive and Improving Craft

Whether you’re selling toilets or crafting narratives, there are skills you need to master. While it’s important to keep learning new things, you’ve also got to acknowledge what it is you do best and leverage that. Much as I love a dramatic read, I’m no Jodi Picoult – at least not yet. I’m good at a certain type of light fiction and for now – while I’m mastering the basics – I’ll stick with that. In the freelance writing arena I’m learning to spend most of my time on jobs that require skills I already do well and carve out additional time to pursue new types of writing.

Planning the Work and Working the Plan

Probably my biggest problem with fiction has been falling prey to this myth that ‘real writers’ just ooze entertaining and insightful prose and that anything less than brilliance might not be worth the effort. I have resisted planning, structuring, and plotting my fiction. No more! Once I surrendered to the guidance of more experienced novelists, I found that that planning the work really did work. The constraints freed up my creativity and improved my focus. Once I got a taste of that kind of structure I was hooked. When I applied the same discipline to my freelance work, productivity and quality soared.

Creating Accountability

When I started writing the novel I decided to create accountability for myself by telling just about anyone with ears to hear or eyes to see. I started a series of articles on the subject, announced it on my blog, and posted milestones on Facebook. It’s real, in part because other people know about it and they inquire about my progress. At the same time I mentioned to my writer’s group that I was ready to take the next step in my freelance career, to start working with editors whose feedback would help me improve my writing. Something about saying that out loud gave me the chutzpah to start going after work that was just a little more challenging.

Not everyone’s going to write a novel. I just think it’s very cool how reaching toward a big personal goal can have such a tremendous positive effects in unexpected ways.

What non-business activities have made an impact on your professional life?

This past Saturday was miserable, for two reasons.

Reason #1: A doctor prescribed me medication that did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. If you’ve ever taken medication that gives you more symptoms than it cures, you know what I’m talking about—one little pill can easily ruin your day.

Reason #2: While I was sitting on the couch, feeling like a mixture between a compost heap and a Halloween ghoul, the second part of the misery kicked in. Someone I value very much as a mentor and colleague called me. She sounded unhappy, to say the least. After a few minutes, I learned why.

The Story

A couple of months ago, she had referred one of her best clients to me for some consulting. We agreed that I would consult, while my referrer would do any writing the client needed.

After I did the consulting, the client offered me a short writing job. Not thinking back to my initial agreement with my referrer (…not thinking much at all, in retrospect), I accepted. I wrote the piece.

The client was happy. She told my referrer as much. That’s like having your best client gleefully relate to you how someone you trusted stole your work. No wonder she was angry at me.

Wow. Am I that naïve?

For my part, I couldn’t believe I had overlooked our agreement. It seems impossible to me—I value my relationship with the person who referred me greatly. In fact, I had done the consulting as a favor to my referrer, not because I like doing that particular kind of consulting.

How had I been inconsiderate enough to accept the extra work, thus sabotaging my valued relationship with my referrer and her client? How had I completely forgotten about our initial agreement when accepting the client’s work?

If the economic crisis showed me one thing, it’s that mind-boggling naivete is possible, even when you’re an expert in your field. So I compared myself to Alan Greenspan, felt better, and looked into my methodology to see where I’d gone wrong.

The Problem

I realized that when I accept new jobs, I don’t ask one crucial question: Who am I building a relationship with? I generally accept work based on two narrow criteria: Money and time. When I do that, I don’t consider the impact of my decision on my relationships.

I just learned the hard way that not ranking relationships with money and time can devastate all three. So I created this list of questions to ask before accepting a new job. I am taping this list above my desk, and highlighting #4:

1) Can I handle it?

This is the first question I ask myself when someone presents me with an assignment. I read somewhere that it’s better to do an excellent job on a short project than burn yourself out on a longer project with mediocre results. This is an adage I adhere to.

I love a good challenge, so it’s sometimes hard to say no. But I have learned to choose projects that are within or just beyond my skill level, so that I grow sustainably rather than get frustrated and overworked on something that either doesn’t interest me at all or is so far outside my scope of knowledge that I burn myself out catching up on the topic itself.

2) Do I have time for it?

In my field, work tends to either appear in droves, or disappear entirely. This “feast or famine” setup sometimes leads me to take on more work than I have time to handle. I’m committed to doing a good job on everything I turn in. When I have too much to do, I sacrifice sleep and free time. I get tired and frustrated, a state which comes across both in my work and to my clients. Everybody loses when I take on too much—even if the money looks good.

3) Does it pay well?

This question could also be stated as: Is it worth my time? This question is tricky. Some clients don’t want to pay a lot, but could be excellent contacts in the future. Others pay well for work that isn’t particularly interesting.

Answering this question requires having a sense of overall goals. For example, if my goal is to make $60,000 this year after taxes, I’m likely to prioritize pay, not excitement. If my goal is to establish myself in a certain field, I might prioritize projects and contacts over pay.

4) Who am I building a relationship with?

This is the crucial question I didn’t ask myself when I took on the copy job I mentioned in the introduction. When the client offered the job, I asked myself questions #1, 2, and 3—and utterly overlooked the fact that I primarily valued my relationship with my referrer, and was far more interested in building it than forming a relationship with the client, whose work is rather tangential to my field.

When I overlooked this question, I ended up sabotaging both relationships. This question will definitely be on my list from now on.

5) Do I want to work with this person/organization?

This question is also crucial. It doesn’t relate directly to income or time commitment, but has a strong influence on both topics. If you take on a job you love for a client you don’t trust, is the experience worth it? Does getting paid feel good?

Similarly, if you take on a job that doesn’t interest you much for a client you adore, is that experience worth it? I have learned—especially after my recent incident—that I value building relationships over content of the work.

I have had fascinating jobs in the past, but when I didn’t like the clients, the work didn’t feel as fulfilling or useful. And when I did seemingly random work for good clients, I ended up learning a lot, and even expanding my areas of expertise as a result.

*

I hope these tips help you choose your jobs wisely, and with consideration. And always remember the person who referred you!