How can you truly do creative work if you have to worry about money? The first time I was faced with this question, I was approaching my senior year in high school and deciding between art school, culinary school, and business school. That summer, as a dramatically symbolic gesture, I burned my art portfolio and stopped watching Food Network. I come from a humble middle-class family with little to no safety net. A creative career seemed like a luxury that I couldn’t afford.
I was faced with the question a second time when I was strategizing to become a full-time designer. By this point, I was six years into my career in healthcare real estate finance but I had been moonlighting as a designer and strategist for various projects and startups. I saw the potential to become a full-time designer, but I could also see how the pressure to make a living might dampen my ability to take risks and do good work. It'd be a shame for my creative pursuit to end up being just like any other job. Freelancers are faced with this issue head-on but salaried creatives experience this too. Your agency to do good and meaningful work can easily be traded for job security and faster career advancement. It's comfortable to give into pleasing people, keeping the status quo, and becoming the docile "factory worker."
Christoph Niemann, one of my favorite illustrators, humorously tackles this issue in his Summer 2015 talk at the 99U conference. His solution is to create a financial “safety zone;” he keeps six months of his expenses in the bank account. This financial margin affords him the space to concentrate on his work and remain stable through life’s unplanned events. He realized that this also had a positive impact on his creativity; the "safety zone” was an emotional insurance against doing work he didn’t believe in or doing mediocre work to simply please his clients.
“This has a real impact on my creativity, I realized. This means that I never have to take on a job that I don’t believe in... maybe even more importantly, I always feel, if I want to, I can walk away from any job.”
I took this advice. As a condition to pursuing design full-time, I saved up six months of living expenses and set it aside as my “safety zone.” I then saved up another six months of expenses so I could afford to quit my job, enroll in an immersive design program, then job-search full-time for a few months. I slimmed down my lifestyle significantly to do this and it took me about two years, but it was so worth it.
The confidence, courage, and peace of mind that this provides are invaluable. I was able to decline a high paying offer to work for an early-stage startup that I believed in. When the startup failed, my family’s day-to-day didn’t change and I took my time finding the right next step. Even when I’m working, I feel liberated from having to say yes to every project or idea. I’m more willing to debate my perspective on a design solution or even decline to do something that I do not find value in. I stopped viewing work as a duty or obligation. I feel free to author my professional life around doing good work that's meaningful to me.