Mythical Freelance
It’s really come to my attention how powerful of a tool reading is, and why the most successful people in the world all do it. You live on this world for about 80 years, assuming nothing out of the ordinary happens. And in that life, there’s only so much you can possibly learn through experience.
In my search for building a solution that guarantees work for freelance designers, I’ve borrowed concepts from the industrial revolution. Mass production specifically. With workers all lined up and systems in place, you can produce an entire car in a day. Heck, you can produce lots of cars in a day.
I figured the same could be true for freelancers. What if you have big digital projects that could be delivered just as quick by using 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000 freelancers all working together, with very clear divisions of labor? Let them join on a first come first serve basis, have a robust system in place, crank out the thing, and boom. Product delivered. Adam Smith’s book on the wealth of nations mentions that the division of labor is an incredibly powerful tool in, well, building wealth for nation. Freelancers build a lot of wealth for a nation already, but this could really change the game.
Perpsective
But this takes me back to knowledge learned through experience. I thought I was coming up with something unique. Not new, but putting things together in a different combination than before, hopefully with the potential of producing a really beneficial product. That’s the essence of entrepreneurship after all.
I was wrong!
A colleague recommended that I read Mythical Man-Month.
Here’s a synopsis:
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.
This hits the nail on the head of what I’ve recently been considering in an almost scary way.
I’ve dove into the project management world to discover problems in the space. One of those problems being delivering projects under a time crunch. My proposed solution is adding lots of freelancers (manpower) to deliver the project ASAP.
Mythical Man-Month is like a big caution sign saying:
BEWARE! WE’VE TRIED THIS, AND IT DIDN’T WORK.
I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s absolutely on my list now. Previously I would have been disappointed to discover this. But I know I’ve matured as a designer. The knowledge of what has been discovered nearly 50 years ago simply gives a more informed perspective on how to move forward. And I’m so thankful to have happened upon the book.
When you have those top 10 lists that describe why it’s beneficial to read books, it seems like they all miss this. I’ll add an 11th point for them all here:
11. Reading lets you stand on the shoulders of giants, giving you a fuller view of the world and its complexity, hopefully guiding you so less time is spent rediscovering already discovered things.
Yeah it’s kinda wordy.
