Fed up of doing work you don’t want to do?

What value does each project you work on offer you beyond money?

Nobody likes turning down work — especially at the moment with things feeling even more uncertain, yet after a run of working on projects we might not feel are entirely suited to the sort of work we ‘want to be doing’, it’s quite natural to feel downhearted or frustrated that you’re not doing the best work of your career, or just taking projects because they pay the bills.

However, all of the work we do quite often has multiple forms of value — and trying to identify what type of value each project we work on, can help you shift your perspective on what the project is offering you. I tend to score projects on the different types of ‘value’ they offer me, so I can take a view on how it’s adding to my career and portfolio.

Commercial — I’d hope that all of your work pays you, but even if a project isn’t the most creatively satisfying or rewarding, having a solid paycheque at the end of a piece of work is not a bad thing, especially whilst we’re in uncertain times. I know I need to balance work which pays well with work that pays little (there’s plenty of work I do that is a loss-making exercise, so I recognise I have to take other projects to offset that).