Tag: business writing

Thinking in new boxes

I love writing for a living. Despite that, I’ll occasionally have a bit of a moan about the work, especially my monthly gig writing management theory articles. But the truth is, I enjoy thinking a bit about management, for the same reason that I watch some YouTube shows about computer games, even though I hardly ever play computer games.

It’s because of the other issues they bring up.

Both computer games and management are, in different ways and for different reasons, fairly new areas of study. Management theory has a few more decades under its belt, but neither was considered a serious subject of study a hundred years ago,* and some people still don’t treat them seriously now – my dad is endlessly surprised to hear that I can find six management topics a month to write about, despite the huge wealth of books, blogs and academic departments dedicated to the subject.

This makes these fields fertile areas for innovative thinking. There are relatively clear lines drawn around maths, history, English and other traditional disciplines. Cross-disciplinary work exists, but the central core is fairly solid and stable. Management and computer games, on the other hand, are built around borrowing ideas from other disciplines and mashing them together to see what works. That means they also produce insights that can be useful for other areas. For example, the recent furore over gender representation in computer games raises serious questions about what is and isn’t acceptable in society at large, about what free speech means and about how people respond to change.

This means that, when I sit down to read the Harvard Business Review blog or watch an episode of PBS Game/Show, there’s a decent chance that I’ll stumble across something that’ll inspire me in other areas of my life, and that will be interesting not because of the small extent to which I’m into management or computer games, but just because I’m a human being and this stuff is inherently fascinating. Sure, sometimes there’ll be things I don’t care about, like an interview with a hedge fun manager or a talk about why the Mario franchise is popular. But more often than not, I’ll find something that justifies the time.

I like that we have these fluid, open areas of our culture, and I suspect that they’re capable of faster innovation than more traditional fields. But most of all, I’m just glad there’s so much interesting stuff in the world. And if the stuff I’ve said has got you even a little intrigued then go browse the Game/Show videos, look for a title that sounds interesting, and give it a watch. They’re usually 5-10 minutes, and often get into fascinating areas of psychology and cultural theory. Great stuff.

 

* Yes, I know, one of them didn’t even exist then, and that feeds into my point.

Finding the fun in freelancing

Over a year since I started freelance writing, I’m getting to the point where I’m really interested in all of my work. Don’t get me wrong, from the start I was more interested in writing anything than being back in an office, trying to improve working systems for people who didn’t want to change. But now, now the writing is almost all on topics I’m actually passionate about.

Statue of Cromwell in St IVes, Cambridge - not a dude you want to mess with
Statue of Cromwell in St Ives, Cambridge – not a dude you want to mess with

This afternoon I’ll be working on a biography of Oliver Cromwell, one of the most fascinating figures in English history. A guy who went from nobody to king in all but name, and who was central to the most dramatic upheavals England’s ever seen.

Once that’s done I’ll be writing fifteen articles on different bits of British history, including some personal favourites like the Diggers and the Chartist movement. It’s not all working class radicals  – I’ll also be covering the First Crusade and Thomas Becket‘s murder – but I’m a real sucker for reformers.

I also have a regular gig writing management articles, which isn’t so firmly in my super-keen zone but is useful learning for a one-man-business. And sometime soon I expect to be editing roleplay sourcebooks, which means that I have to read the core books for professional purposes – hardly a hardship.

All of this comes from a decision I made a while back. I realised that applying for projects that paid better but didn’t interest me was trapping me in the same mental place as my old job. Except that now facing tasks that killed my enthusiasm meant I put them off. I wasn’t actually getting paid better, because I spent so long avoiding the work and was slower once I got to it. And the experience I was building up would mostly help get more gigs I didn’t really want.

So now, as far as possible, I only bid on work that interests me. It pays worse now, but it still pays, and it means I’m getting the right experience and contacts. Over time, what I can charge for this work will go up. And meanwhile I’m actually having fun working, which was the whole point in the first place.

We too easily get trapped in doing the work that we think we ought to instead of the work that we want. So if you’re not content with your day job then look at what you want to do and ask ‘how can I get there?’ Maybe it’ll take some sacrifices along the way, but isn’t it worth it in the end to be happy?