• Don’t move forward with the great ideas you come up with
• Stick with what’s safe, what pays the bills
• Discredit your own insights

Just sayin’

Image credit RcktManIL

In the next week or so I’ll be doing the last few pieces of web development work I will ever do. Curiously not feeling any nostalgia; for me web development has become tedious. Having ended up ‘doing web development’ by accident for almost 10 years and having now realised where I went wrong I’m putting all this behind me and moving on.

The epiphany that I had stagnated came last year and ever since I’ve been finding it hard not to feel disdain for what I’ve spent the majority of my working life doing. The projects I’ve worked on have been variously novel, interesting, dull, pointless. Because of my recent lack of enthusiasm for web development, the speed and quality of my work suffered. For a couple of years I have been getting up in the morning dreading another day at work, at my own company. I never want that to happen again. I want to feel pride in everything I do, I want to wake up on weekday mornings looking forward to going to the office.

Sure whilst working on these projects I’ve had the occasional opportunity to engage the ‘marketing’ part of my brain, but that’s not what I was hired for. Oddly it’s difficult to get people to pay you for something they didn’t hire you for. It doesn’t help that they’re paying by the hour and flashes of brilliance can’t be charged for like that.

Don’t read this thinking that I dislike web developers, I have a great deal of respect for the good ones. The fact is I am not a web developer. I’m a marketer that ended up doing web development for too long. The knowledge I gained through the experience will serve me well when I’m working with web developers in the future but it’s time to stop.

When it comes down to it the best thing you can be doing is the thing you are best at. If you’re a mediocre designer, admit it and hire a great designer. Not so good at keeping your paperwork in order? Get a bookkeeper. Lacking in organisational skills? Get a good P.A. The Jack-of-all-Trades approach is fine for a while but nobody’s ever going to respect you in the morning.

We spend the majority of our waking hours working or thinking about working. It just so happens that the things we’re best at are usually the things we enjoy most. If you’re not enjoying it then go out and do something less boring instead.