{"id":2476,"date":"2013-12-31T22:22:36","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T21:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/?p=2476"},"modified":"2014-01-04T18:35:53","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T17:35:53","slug":"not-so-glamorous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2013\/12\/31\/not-so-glamorous\/","title":{"rendered":"Not so glamorous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I keep meeting young people with slightly wrong idea on how things work in design industry. The motto \u201c<q>I\u2019d rather be homeless, than work on something I don\u2019t love.<\/q>\u201d is dangerous and ill-advised.<\/p>\n<p>This is partly (or mostly) our fault. The Internet is full of success stories and even though many of us already discuss our own failures \u2014 unfortunately, mostly in a closed circle of trusted friends \u2014 it is as equally important to share our general career paths and bits from our everyday life at work. Here\u2019s my attempt.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First things first. The most important concept, far more important than doing what one loves is one\u2019s own survival. You cannot do what you love if your existence is at stake.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a quality of life threshold under which we cannot be professionally happy \u2014 no matter what we do. If we\u2019re not able to buy food, secure a home, cover utilities, transportation and medical services, we cannot devote all our time to perfecting Photoshop skills and avoid client projects. Secure money first, then upgrade the repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>Accepting only attractive projects means rejecting jobs that we don\u2019t like doing. For that to happen, a simple condition has to be met \u2014 you need more requests coming in than you can accept. Are you at that stage?<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s another secret. Every project has its challenges. <em>Every<\/em> project. In reality, no job goes without a hitch. It\u2019s up to us to learn how to accept difficulties and develop necessary skills to bend, get around and stick to the problem, until it surrenders. Web design is a service industry, not a form of art. The service world is neither perfect nor just. Dealing with it is a part of your job.<\/p>\n<h2>Achieve proficiency<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Focus on one niche field (in the beginning, mine was CSS)<\/li>\n<li>Deliver high quality work (even when you\u2019re \u201cnot paid\u201d to do it)<\/li>\n<li>Be patient and gritty (especially for a first few years)<\/li>\n<li>Write (own blog is always the best choice)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>My glamourous career<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>4 years of intense self-education<\/li>\n<li>8 years to founding Creative Nights<\/li>\n<li>10 years till the first international stage appearance<\/li>\n<li>12 years till participating in a book<\/li>\n<li>300+ blog posts and articles (an embarrassingly small number)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My main computer, an SSD equipped 2006 (!) MacBook Pro is idle-less 50+ hours a week. That\u2019s sans workshops, meetings and other off-computer work. I still run Adobe CS3, because I don\u2019t need any of the new features.<\/p>\n<p>I usually check and answer e-mails only twice a day and rarely participate in chats and Skype calls on short notice. However, I\u2019m obsessed with tracking my time. At Creative Nights a typical setup includes RescueTime for gathering stats, I Done This for less formal reports and On The Job for per project tracking. Having all these numbers is gold for project estimates.<\/p>\n<p>The office shelf currently displays 130+ books, magazines and papers on writing, user experience, typography, web standards and general design.<\/p>\n<h2>That\u2019s all<\/h2>\n<p>I have no secret moves, no shortcuts. All I have is years of experience working with and learning from talented people, an old computer and a shelf full of books.<\/p>\n<p>Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<h2>Links of interest<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abookapart.com\/products\/design-is-a-job\">Mike Monteiro: <em>Design is a Job<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/i-m-h-o\/cd23d0f6517a\">Money does buy happiness<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/rescuetime.com\">RescueTime<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/idonethis.com\">I Done This<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/stuntsoftware.com\/onthejob\/\">On the Job<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I keep meeting young people with slightly wrong idea on how things work in design industry. The motto \u201cI\u2019d rather be homeless, than work on something I don\u2019t love.\u201d is dangerous and ill-advised. This is partly (or mostly) our fault. The Internet is full of success stories and even though many of us already discuss [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,17,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}