Personal Work Ethic
1.) You're only as good as your last job!
Something to remember when you do what you love for a living. Sometimes you have bad days and you want to take a step back or go back to the drawing board but so long as you do yourself justice in the eyes of your employers/clients, you'll never have to worry about a bad reputation. Make sure you're maintaining your standards when you don't feel like you're going from strength to strength.
2.) There will always be someone better than you!
Accept it. Don't try to beat others at their own game because you're always going to be out of your element when you're not aiming to be the best you can be at what YOU do. Education is constant and experimental is vital to improving yourself, but carve your own niche and let time take care of the rest. We artists and manual labourers aren't the robots that the corporate world want us to be. We don't suddenly upgrade to be the best in the world and I don't believe there's any such thing. You are unique and so long as you don't try to be something you're not, you will go on to define what makes you unique.
I hope this helps somebody. If you have your own specific work ethic or philosophy, please feel free to share and thanks for reading.
Work just enough to not be fired and be important enough to the system to be not let go of. Like you refuctored some backbone network code that's deeply ingrained into the system or wrote the helpdesk.
1. Always be better than last time (or at least aim for it)
I apply this for art and sports. If you can’t accomplish at least the level you did last time, there’s something wrong. You can be happy with your last/latest achievement, but that doesn’t mean you should be satisfied and not push and try even harder.
2. Draw only when you’re in the right frame of mind
Forcing yourself to draw results in not being to put 100% into it and thus shitty half assed work which is just a waste of time. You’re not going to improve and create good work, you’re imprinting a negative emotion onto art, and I hate the idea of finding art unpleasant.
3. You can do it if you try (and if you can’t, try harder)
I truly believe that I can draw anything. Well I think if most people tried and wanted to hard enough, they should be able too. Perhaps I don’t aim high enough (I don’t think that’s too true), but I’ve always been able to do what I set out to, and honestly have (pleasantly) surprised myself.
And people who complain about not being able to do this and that,.. or that it didn’t turn out as expected. I don’t understand why they gave up. If it’s not how you expected, why didn’t you keep working at it until it IS how you expected it to be?
4. Evolve, experiment, challenge and try new things/don’t stagnate
Because that’s how you improve. You don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again or stay in a comfort zone. You push yourself to improve.
Well... I have a few silly hats, but regardless...
I like work, nothing worse than hanging around doing nothing.