I love Seth Godin. If you don’t read his blog on a regular basis…. you should. I really liked his post today about “what we get paid for”. I totally agree with his philosophy. Here’s a bit of it:
Hardly worth the effort
In most fields, there’s an awful lot of work put into the last ten percent of quality…
…Laying out the design of a page or a flyer so it looks like a pro did it takes about ten times as much work as merely using the template Microsoft builds in for free, and the message is almost the same…
Except it’s not. Of course not. The message is not the same.
The last ten percent is the signal we look for, the way we communicate care and expertise and professionalism. If all you’re doing is the standard amount, all you’re going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent, sure, or even the last one percent, but it’s the hard part because everyone is busy doing the easy part already.
The secret is to seek out the work that most people believe isn’t worth the effort. That’s what you get paid for.