True North
When beginning to draft this post, my goal was to compare freelancing vs having a full-time job. I was really excited with my method, mostly involving listing out the pros and cons of each. Easy. I got this.
About forty pros and cons and a thousand words in, I realized something that I hadn’t before. Freelancing and having a full-time gig is not really comparable; instead they compliment each other. They complete one another. Each challenge that you tackle while freelancing, returns to you as a skill set at your full-time job. Day to day tasks you hit at your full-time job return back to you as an invaluable experience for your freelancing projects.
In my experience, there is one thing that stays true for both freelancers and full-time designers — finding your True North. You will realize that unknowingly you apply a motion blur to little details when things are moving at such a high speed. Whether you work at a start-up, or possibly a large company, or maybe you just have a big freelance project, or maybe — just maybe — you have a bunch of small projects as well as your own personal side project. Take a deep breath, set your zoom level to 25%, and try to focus on your True North. I found my True North to be personal growth. Whatever I do, wherever I work, when I zoom out, I see personal growth as my fuel. Would I grow as a designer at this company? What would I learn from working on this project? Will I be challenged?
When I was freelancing, at first I saw only the positives and I couldn’t imagine going back to the full time world. To begin with I had much more freedom, I worked from anywhere I desired to work from, made my own schedule, made more money and got exposed to new industries as I wanted. On the contrary, I also had more financial responsibilities such as taxes, billing, hour tracking, and expenses. It was easy to lose track of time and overload myself with work that is more than I could tackle. I very rarely was given any constructive feedback which I believe is crucial for my personal growth. My performance was based on deliverables. Freelancing always made me feel like I was missing an opportunity. The next big thing. Most importantly, I wasn’t collaborating with people, it felt like I was injecting myself into a company, breaking and fixing things, delivering the goods, and then I was moving on to the next project. But I didn’t feel like I was growing as a designer, or learning anything new from each project. I was wrong.
I had realized freelancing taught me many things including the different levels of time management, understanding the importance of work ethics, identifying and prioritizing tasks on my own, adapting to and working with different teams, not being afraid of mistakes, learning from mistakes, delivering, on time, always. On a day to day basis, I don’t think about the skills I have, until I actually use them. I never realized I had these skills until I got a full-time job, and I now use these skills to overcome longer term challenges. As a result, I now get to inject myself deeper into projects to understand, define and prioritize problems, and work across teams to design solutions. Most importantly, I am fortunate to learn from my teammates on a daily basis. I’m learning human skills every day. As much as I try to learn from my teammates, I also try to educate them on problem-solving skills using design thinking. These are just a few of the benefits of working as a full-time designer.
We humans, like to note similarities or dissimilarities. That’s how we can relate and make decisions. We like to measure. Even if a comparison is an easy way to note and measure dissimilarities between freelancing and having a full-time job, they both are a part of a timeline we’re on. I highly recommend every designer to freelance, be on their own, be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and use those challenges and turn them into skills. I also highly recommend freelancers to join a team and work in a structured environment to not only put all those difficult to earn skills to work, but to learn to articulate what you design to people who actually understand design. Be part of a team. Try to learn from teammates, learn from problems, learn from mistakes, learn from solutions. If you have the opportunity at some point to experience both freelancing and then also the full-time world, I hope that you will benefit how I have from seeing both sides of the table.
There’s one thing in life that you cannot take back, and that is time. You cannot rewind time. You cannot undo it. Each decision you make is a statement. Each statement you make, it will have an impact on defining who you are. Make an impact to people around you and let people impact you. As long as you always focus on your True North, it will all contribute to your personal journey and keep you going in the right direction.
Every now and then change gears, slow down, take time off, take a deep breath and focus on yourself. Not your company, not your projects, not even your side project. Just yourself. Your life. Your goals. Your True North.
