Summary

The author, a new freelance writer, prefers project-based pay over hourly wages due to a sense of pride, efficiency, and control over time.

Abstract

The author, after observing the Upwork freelance market, chose project-based writing jobs over hourly ones, finding greater satisfaction and self-worth in this approach. Despite realizing that hourly pay could be more lucrative, especially considering the research time involved, the author still favors project-based pay. This preference challenges the prevailing work culture in the US that equates longer hours with moral superiority and hard work. The author argues that this culture has led to an unhealthy obsession with the number of hours worked, rather than valuing the actual work done or the efficiency of completing tasks. Project-based pay allows the author to work more efficiently without feeling guilty for not working a set number of hours, and it provides a sense of ownership over one's time.

Opinions

The author believes that the culture of equating hours worked with morality is flawed and promotes a toxic hustle culture.
There is a critique of the societal expectation to work longer hours for the same contribution, suggesting it's an inefficient measure of one's work ethic or societal contribution.
The author feels that project-based pay is more rewarding as it incentivizes efficiency and productivity without penalizing for completing work quickly.
The author emphasizes that people working multiple jobs to make ends meet should not be in such a position and that respect should not be based on the number of hours worked.
The author values the sense of control and ownership over personal time that comes with project-based work, which contributes to a more fulfilling and energized life.

Being Paid by the Hour Sucks So Much More Than I Realized

A random tidbit from my foray into freelance writing so far.

After lurking on this site for a few months, I inevitably wanted to try my hand at freelancing because… mob mentality, I guess.

I decided to start on Upwork (aka Hell) to gain a little bit of experience and a few testimonials before heading out into the “real world” — and I quickly noticed something pretty interesting.

See, writing jobs on Upwork tend to fall into two categories: those paid by the hour, and those paid by the project. I decided to stick to jobs that pay by the project, just because it seemed like the more “legit writer” option.

After a few days of pitching, I’d managed to get a job, and then another, both based on this pay-per-project model. I realized that I loved it. Without articulating why, I felt more competent, more capable, and more proud of my work than I’d felt with anything else I did on a given day. Even though I knew I wasn’t making much, I felt proud of any extra cash that I did make.

I initially chalked the feeling up to the feeling of progress — I was branching out into the world of freelancing, so naturally, I was feeling good about the skills I was developing.

Then I realized that I was totally being scammed. Whenever I came across a pay-per-hour job, it begged the question — how much was I making by comparison? I quickly realized that, because many of my jobs required a fair amount of research, I would have been paid a lot more had I stuck to even the lowest per-hour rate (something I’m sure my clients had already realized).

Yet the truly weird part came right after that — even after realizing all the money I’d been leaving on the table, I still felt absolutely no urge to go pick it up. That is, I still felt absolutely averted to the idea of being paid per hour.

So, I’ve done a little soul-searching and I think I’ve figured out why.

Obligatory social commentary

There’s a strange culture of work that seems to be developing in the US that equates hours worked with morality. (*cough cough* toxic hustle culture *cough cough*). More hours worked = hard work = better, more deserving person, right?

And yet the people who live by that mentality will also be the first to remind you that the amount you make in a capitalist society should be a reflection of how much you contributed to that society, nothing more. Working 8 hours instead of 4 to contribute the same amount, by that logic, should mean you get paid the same amount.

So why is there this strange culture of worship developing around people who claim to work 12 hours a day, every day? I’m no psychologist but I think most would agree that there’s a very small chance that they’re able to maintain anything resembling attention for that long.

And yet we worship them. We compare the hours that our kids study with their friends and we compete to see who can sleep, eat, and live the least before dropping dead. We’ve stopped appreciating the hard work itself and decided to substitute hours worked instead.

By the way, this isn’t meant to criticize those who work long hours or multiple jobs to make ends meet, by any means. Those people should absolutely not be forced into the position where that is their only way to afford the essentials for a decent life.

It shouldn’t be because of a person’s two jobs that they are seen as deserving of food, safety, rent, etc. This is more a criticism of those who praise or scorn someone based on the metric of how many hours they work.

As obvious as this is, we often internalize a little bit of this mentality — or at least I have. Early on in the process, there was a strange sense of guilt to finding a way to do the same amount of work in less time because, well, doesn’t that make me a lazy person?

Being paid per project was my first time experiencing what it was like not to sell my time for a source of income. I didn’t have to feel guilty for finishing a task quicker than I’d thought. For the first time, it seemed that finding ways to be more efficient was actually rewarded.

If I avoid wasting time while working on a project, I could use that time to work on another project or just go experience life, without the fear of not getting paid enough for the work I’d done. The incentive that I see in my day job, to stretch a task out a little longer for the sake of making sure you get paid the amount that you’d budgeted for, is removed. That knowledge alone creates a sense of control in my life, it infuses energy and excitement into everything else I do.

Basically, when I get paid by the project, I have the sense that I still own my time, that I still control the hours that make up my short time alive. And that’s a pretty neat feeling.