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The Gift of Saying No

Sometimes saying no is a benefit to both parties.

A LinkedIn post lamenting requests for cheap work called to mind what many of us forget, especially in a bad economy, or else during a long dry spell of romance. We forget what we value, we forget our standards, we forget what we’re worth. Or maybe we forgot to consider those things in the first place.

A tight economy or even naysayers can conspire to make us operate on a scarcity model, one that dictates that we take what comes our way—in case nothing else does. We feel we have to say yes to work that we can’t afford to say yes to but believe we can’t afford not to. We have to put food on the table, but many of us panic or at least become cynical long before we really face starvation.

You have time to breathe and ask yourself some questions.

What are my strengths?

What do I offer that has real value?

What is that worth?

Is this client or project in line with my values and goals?

Will this challenge me in good ways?

A good exercise is to recall the bumpy roads you’ve been down that you swore you wouldn’t revisit. Perhaps it was the low-budget project you allowed yourself to get talked into, with the promise of exposure and more work. Recall how you felt after that, and what it confirmed about the type of work and client relationships you wanted.

If you find yourself being resentful at the assumptions people make, like a website should cost $500, then you’ve positioned yourself to be a contender for that work. If you didn’t see yourself as a contender, there would be no reason to even flinch as such a request. By giving ourselves time to evaluate before reacting (even if our reaction is only internal), we deepen our commitment to what we value.

Having then shifted that focus, we may even arrive at a solution that we hadn’t been able to consider at the beginning. Maybe that solution is passing on a name of a junior designer, offering up a simple service they can afford, or helping the client understand the work involved…all from an objective distance.

In this Zen Habits post, the author gives some tips for saying yes more slowly, for those who can’t stomach saying no. The person who posted the question on LinkedIn, as a result of repeated requests for low-cost work, lowered her rates. Prevailing logic says now is the best time to raise them. David C. Baker’s website Recourses has great position papers related to this, like Avoiding Marketing, Saying “No,” and Rethinking Rates.

We get locked into ways of thinking—that clients want cheap websites, for example. When instead, the real answer lies in what we draw to us. And why. This requires puzzling through issues we want to avoid—Why am I afraid to say no? If I find better projects, what if I fail? What do I owe to myself and my business, and what do I owe to others? And how can I make it work so both of us benefit?

This is why saying no sometimes works better for both parties. Saying yes for the wrong reasons can lead to working with a disengaged spirit, which serves neither party well. And more importantly, each time it happens, it’s a missed opportunity to learn something about ourselves.

When life gives you asparagus

Despite thinking the other day that I should build an ark, the frequent heavy downpours punctuated by bold sun and dramatic clouds hardly has me down. One reason is that farmers market season is in full swing and, once again, I can make my weekly pilgrimage in search glorious produce.

One twist this year is that, having just moved into a new place with a large organic garden bed, I find myself holding back on planting too much for fear that I won’t need to visit the market. It’s an activity that is part errand, part community spirit, part sensory stimulation…the colors, the sounds, the smells. It’s woven naturally into my life.

The new King market opened last weekend at NE 7th and Wygant. I was asked to take photos and was happy to see a huge turnout, not to mention a bit of sun. Needless to say, the asparagus tent was one of the more popular. And now begins the Spring asparagus feeding frenzy that started with making never-ending asparagus risotto (recipe link below).

asparagus

The folks at EcoMetro Portland, and creators of the Chinook Book, wrote a useful article on how to understand organic certification. This is something I often wonder about because I know certification for small farms can be costly. But one reason I choose to shop at our farmers markets is that I can talk to farmers. The lack of anonymity in a venue likes this means you can feel more comfortable with your shopping choices. You can learn about a farmer’s growing practices, whether they’re certified or not. Personally, I want my produce to be at least pesticide free; I’m more interested in buying local and I trust who I’m buying from.

The article also has a link to a wallet-sized pesticide guide that will help you understand which produce is more harmful than others if grown with pesticides. Produce that you peel is less harmful, for example, than a strawberry.

A side note: During the month of May, the PSU market has bike workshops each Saturday to help you get your bike market friendly, So, get thee to the farmers market.

carrots+bikes

Risotto alla Primavera

This recipe is from Bon Appetit via Epicurious.com.

It’s easy to underestimate how much risotto expands, as well as one’s waistline if you made as much as I did. I’ve eaten it for the last five days, once for breakfast with a fried egg on the side and another as pan-fried risotto cakes. Wet your hands a little, form a cake, pan fry in a little olive oil and serve with a side salad.

I didn’t have enough parsley so I added thyme instead. I also added shiitake mushrooms which I probably would have sauteed a bit first, but I threw them in as an afterthought. They added a nice complexity.

I might have added half as much more asparagus than the recipe calls for to add a bit more green.

Enjoy!

Can I Recycle This?

We designers like to collect print samples to keep for reference or inspiration. It used to be called a morgue file, and maybe it is still. At one place I worked, our morgue file consisted of several tall filing cabinets with multiple categories of print samples. These pieces had been collected for years. My guess is, no one had regularly gone through to eliminate items no longer inspirational or useful. I knew there were goodies lurking in those drawers but I rarely dove in. There was simply too much stuff to sort though. The size of the morgue file defeated the purpose of using it for quick reference.

I recall once seeing the office of a long-time designer in DC who was well known and well loved in the design community. I was impressed, but overwhelmed, by his library of print samples and books. I wondered if that was a requirement to be a successful and good designer.

Of course, these days, one can find almost anything online, negating the need for a large analog collection of idea-generating stuff. But there’s nothing quite like sitting on your office floor with coffee surrounded by a pile of books and other people’s design work. As I get older though, my desire for simplicity increases. A shut closet door offers little solace because I know what lurks behind. Physical clutter is mental clutter to me.

I often pretend I’m moving, and eliminate things that once held interest and now simply collect dust. Each year, I get rid of more and more of my own saved print samples. I rarely feel as though I’m making a dent. But I vow only to keep useful or beautiful items. Soon, however, I face a real move. I sift through my collections of annual reports, small bound books, paper swatches and design books in between putting out client fires, designing a logo and processing images for a magazine, among other things.

Wherever you go, there you are, as the saying goes…as well as all your stuff. Often, I keep things if only to avoid having to throw something in a landfill. The beauty of paper is that one can recycle it. Or not, as the case may be.

Some of these samples I’ve had for years and they traveled with me from the east coast. I scratch my head in confusion over full bleeds of metallic ink, annual reports with super high gloss coatings, small mailers sent in plastic ziplock envelopes with foil confetti inside, thin sytrofoam mailing pouches affixed with cool labels. The best? A plastic jewel case (not even one I can reuse for a CD) with individual calendar cards printed with metallic ink on synthetic photo paper!

Cool though these are, I’m annoyed that I can’t recycle them. I kept a broken, but otherwise perfect-looking, coffee maker for ages, that I did try to fix if for the proprietary screw that prevented entry, only because it killed me to picture it sitting in a land fill. (Incidentally, I never replaced it, favoring pouring hot water through a plastic cone filter that will never malfunction.)

What’s the right thing to do? Transport all the non-recyclable samples to my new place just to keep them from polluting the environment? For the sake of friends helping me move, I want to lighten the load. I justify tossing these things because just yesterday I took my workhorse 13-year-old HP laser printer to get fixed. I take great pride in the fact that I’ve kept this thing for years.

All of this is a long way around realizing, nay confirming, a commitment to produce work that can be recycled, better yet, reused. I never want another designer, who might be looking at my print sample in her collection, to curse me under her breath!

Opportunities exist for creating beautiful work that also sits lightly on the earth. We’re more enlightened these days, or at least we should be. Though I don’t look forward to the move after this one, I’ll be interested to see what I find myself tossing out next time.

UPDATE: Just found–An event promo with a miniature plastic fly swatter and giant plastic flies spilling out of the plastic envelope.

Green Site But Not Green Packaging

As I  decluttered the other day, I recycled — or at least tried to — boxes for various electronic devices. I always try to keep boxes so that moving is easier later, on the theory of better stackability. And that if my computer boxes must contain Styrofoam, better it stays in my basement than goes in a landfill.

But the reality is that you run out of storage space. You have to weigh the cost and benefits of keeping the packaging. In this case, the device, an iPod docking station, came with a mod carrying case like small cosmetic luggage from days gone by. So keeping the outer box was unnecessary.

I love this little critter, the iWoofer from RainDesign, Inc. She looks like a little space alien bug and is named Franny because the iPod is named Zooey. Why not?

First I had to remove the plastic handle from the box. When I tore into the box lid, along with the handle came a stretchy dull plastic coating. This was no mere varnish but almost a shrink wrap. According to a print rep of mine (an FSC-certified and zero-waste printer), it was likely a laminate adhered to the surface. And not recyclable.

Now I’m faced with whether to recycle the box even though I’m quite certain that the laminate makes this difficult, if not impossible. So I went to the company’s website to comment on the packaging and happened to notice a Green Certified Site logo. Clicking on it led me to CO2stats which allows a company to track the CO2 emissions from the website’s visitors (the energy used by the computers) and then the company can pay to offset the emissions.

This is an interesting idea, but I’m inclined to wonder if this is in concert with an overall sustainable business practice or if it’s an isolated feature. I would like to think my contacting the company is not just a complaint, and instead a challenge to find a better solution. I don’t need an iPod docking station but many of us have to buy products whose packaging must then be thrown away.

So far, you can’t buy a computer from the bulk bin like flour at the supermarket. Until that day, what if we all challenged companies to make better packaging?

Anyone have an similar experience? Feel free to comment.