But today, even within jobs, there is increasing ability to say no without precipitating serious conflict or taking on insubordination risks. And outside jobs there’s very significant ability to say no. But that doesn’t mean you can say no to everything.
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The thing though, is that you don’t need ability to say no to 100% of inbound work to enjoy 100% freedom, because statistically a decent percent is going to be aligned with or better than what you want to do anyway. I think around 50% “No” you’re already past 90% “want to do it”
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Size of gig distorts this, but unless someone is throwing in a million dollar gig you can’t refuse into your normal gig flow 3-sigma distribution range of say 5k-50k, in general you can say no to any given gig without serious loss, so long as you say yes to a decent fraction
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My must-say-yes fraction has probably fluctuated between 40-60% in the last few years, which is enough for me to stay in playcheck zone. Haven’t had to take a gig just for the money in like 8 years. Knock on wood.
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Even if you could structure incentives right (upside commissions, equity) often certain risks just make certain parts of work distasteful to you.
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There's a kind of freedom in do-what-you-want work that comprises being able to do only the part you want. For eg. I like writing, but don't really like *publishing* -- everything that comes after writing a good, readable first draft. So blogging is perfect for me.
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"Blogging" is a rare example of an activity that carves out the fun part of a previously more complex thing with lots of not-fun parts, and makes it independently sustainable, even financially.
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Blogging is generally a net social good. Nobody is hurt by sloppily edited quick publishing. You still have the option to clean it up for higher quality publishing.
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But other kinds of carve-outs of "fun" parts of things are not good. For eg. patent trolling takes the fun ideation component of R&D and turns it into a rivalrous, profitable thing that imo dampens the activity of people who are willing to go all the way to building things.
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If I were still writing the art of gig newsletter, this would make a good issue... pity the book production is too far along to add this... but maybe I'll start putting any ideas like this into notes for a future edition or additional volume
