I had lunch with Erica Noonan who, among other things, runs the mom blog for the Boston Globe. We were discussing the fact that these days everyone really has to take charge of their own career -- no employer or client will pay you for the kind of work that will give you the skills to get the next job. It's really necessary to have your own projects. The problem is: which projects?
I've got three criteria that help me sort between the good ideas and the great ones:
- Don't do anything for free that you won't do indefinitely. Once you pick something to do, it's likely that you'll have to do it for free for a while, sometimes for a long while, before anyone ever pays you for it. It can be really easy to talk yourself into a project where your line of reasoning is something like, "well, it will be hard and unpleasant at first but eventually someone will pay me for it, so that's okay." That's not the kind of mindset that's going to produce your best work, and even if someone does pay you for it, you've become an expert in something you don't like to do, which is a curse, not a blessing.
- Pick something you can start without anyone's assistance or permission It's also really easy to talk yourself into doing something that takes tons of expensive training, venture capital, or permission and resources from organizations. Choosing an idea like this is like choosing a ladder to climb to the roof that has the first five rungs missing. Don't bother.
- Pick something narrowly comprehensive. Too many projects are, essentially, variety shows, and the web doesn't reward random rattle bags of stuff: it rewards what I'll call "narrow comprehensiveness." That is, everything about something. Good examples of this phenomenon are OJR editor Bob Niles' sites Violinist.com and Theme Park Insider, both of which have passionate followings of people who really care about those topics. (They're also good examples of Rule #1, since Bob is passionate about those two things, too).
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