The Boss of You

Gina Tra­pani, one of my favourite writ­ers on top­ics like work, pro­duc­tiv­ity, and all-around geek­ery, has writ­ten a great post over on Free­lance Switch (it’s aimed at free­lancers, but I think most entre­pre­neurs, espe­cially small-scale ones, can glean some­thing valu­able from it) about what she calls her Per­sonal Busi­ness Model. The PBM is basi­cally a quickly-sketched pie chart that out­lines her ideal work mix (break­ing down her work time into projects she does for love (30%), for the edu­ca­tion (30%), and money (30%) — leav­ing 10% for admin work).

I love this because I’m a big fan of think­ing out­side the busi­ness plan. Why? Because very few peo­ple have the inter­est or self-discipline to refer back to their busi­ness plan on a reg­u­lar basis (let alone to keep their busi­ness plan up to date) — and most of us find our­selves lost from time to time in the details of our work, at which point it’s dif­fi­cult to make a clear, strate­gic deci­sion about what projects to take on. A busi­ness model you can sketch on the back of a nap­kin? That’s some­thing you can stick up next to your desk, on your fridge, or any­where you know you’ll see it every day and be reminded of your big-picture def­i­n­i­tion of success.

Here’s how Gina started work on her Per­sonal Busi­ness Model:

I listed all the projects in my life and career I loved work­ing on the most. The list ranged from the first short story I was ever proud to show my cre­ative writ­ing teacher (fifth grade) through my pro­fes­sional career. Under­neath each I listed what I loved most about work­ing on it and what I was most proud of about the results. Here there were lots of clues point­ing me towards the most sat­is­fy­ing kinds of work I should pur­sue now.

Then, I tack­led the big ques­tion: What do I want to accom­plish as a free­lancer? For me, the answer turned out to be three-pronged: I want to make stuff that’s mean­ing­ful, learn new skills, and make some money.

Go read her post for more details. Oh, but before you leave, can I share one more thing? I loved this bit ear­lier on in her post:

While I do plan to make money as a free­lancer, my ulti­mate goal is to gen­er­ate sat­is­fac­tion. (While money is a part of that, so is learn­ing, ser­vice, and cre­ativ­ity, so we’ll just use the umbrella term “satisfaction.”)

Hear, hear. I’d say that’s true for most peo­ple, not just free­lancers — and all of us can ben­e­fit from spend­ing a bit of time con­sid­er­ing what con­sti­tutes sat­is­fac­tion and/or suc­cess for us.