I remember one of my jobs as a young teen was packing shelves at a local supermarket. Needless to say, there was nothing about this gig I liked aside from the fact that four of my friends worked the same shift. I dragged my heels at this job.
The shelves I packed took longer than they should have and they were far from pretty. On the flip side there was Khalid, a fifty something year old fella who liked packing shelves. And because he enjoyed it, he’d rock up to work full of gusto and ready to pack the best damn shelf you ever saw.
There’s a lot to be said for making a living doing something you love. Essentially that love is energy we apply to our craft and it’s a competitive advantage like no other. As a freelance web designer chances are you’ll need to perform many different tasks requiring different skills and if you are like me, some of these tasks you’ll dig, others you’ll hate.
So I say: do what you love and outsource the rest. Someone wiser than I said “If you do what you love 100% of the time, you’ll never really work a day in your life.” Naturally it won’t always be possible to outsource everything we dislike doing so for me, the goal is to outsource the tasks that feel like they require heavy lifting on my part. From there I end up with a lighter load and am able to focus more time on the things I like.
A more recent phenomena in outsourcing within the web design and development community happened when all those splice-shops opened their doors. You know the ones, “send us your PSD and we’ll turn it into valid HTML/CSS!” Perfect for designers who wanted to stay focused on everything but the code.
What about you guys … are you outsourcing any of your design and development?
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About the author
Danno started freelancing in 1996. He is the co-founder and (ex) President of Graphics.net, owner of FeedIcons.com, EliteFreelancing.com, FastCharacters.com and SteelAndSnow.com. He digs wind, waves, guitars and circles. Follow Danno on Twitter.
October 3rd, 2008
I totally agree man. I word it this way: “Stick to what you do best, leave the rest.”
I tend to outsource PHP or Ruby, but do the rest myself. Sometimes if I hit a creative block I’ll send one of my PSD’s to a friend to rock on for an evening too.
June 13th, 2009
Any outsourcing companies to suggest? Theo of free laptop computers