My three circles of work
I’d like to share a conceptualization I developed over the past few days to describe the confusing nature of what I do from day to day. Many other people are in this same boat, so this may actually be useful to somebody else.
Basically I see each of my projects living in one of three concentric circles. The innermost circle is my day job at the newspaper and includes all of the various projects that we have going on (quite a few at the moment). It’s the core of my work life for the foreseeable future. Moving outward, the next circle contains my contract work. I have two current clients with a couple more waiting in the wings. And the outermost circle holds my pet projects that I plan to build and maintain on my own.
The relative sizes of these three circles vary over time, but the total area remains somewhat constant (depending on personal obligations) and represents the limit of what I can reasonably accomplish. As it stands now, the innermost (day job) circle is expanding, the second (moonlighting) circle is not giving any ground, and so the outermost (pie in the sky) circle is really getting squeezed. Most of my pet projects are just in the conceptual stage right now so this isn’t such a bad situation. Given enough time, the demands at work will ebb and I’ll be able to choose which of the other two circles should be expanded. I haven’t quite decided what to do when that occurs, but I’ll keep you posted…
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I am at constant battle with those 3 circles as well. My day job circle has just inflated with a promotion, but I might have an opportunity to narrow down to just two circles: the contract & the personal project circle.
I believe the Holy Grail is to only have the personal project circle. The question is how do you get there?
Yeah, it’s a battle for sure. It’s good to know I’m not alone in feeling that way. I agree with you about the Holy Grail, but I’m nowhere close to that right now.
Part of the issue I think is short-term versus long-term gain. Contract work is usually the ultimate short-term gain (just money). A day job satisfies short-term needs and provides a relatively secure long-term future. But a personal project (especially on the Web) has the greatest potential for extraordinary long-term gain. It’s just hard to justify all the work involved in the short-term.