The work that didn't happen this year

A short note before the studio closes for two weeks.

There is a particular trick the brain plays at the end of every year. It looks at the projects that got made and treats them, after the fact, as the only ones that were ever possible. They were not. There was always a different list, of equal length, of projects that did not happen, and the shape of the studio is partly defined by what did not happen as much as by what did.

I keep a small list of nothings each year. Not for accountability. Just so I do not forget that the year had two columns.

A few patterns from this year’s list, abstracted to avoid embarrassing anyone in particular.

Some of the lost pitches went to studios with a fancier-looking website than mine. Two of those studios I happen to know undercharged badly to win the work. I have not heard from those clients since.

One project came in as a brief I did not want to take. I wrote a polite no. I do not regret it. I might have said yes five years ago and that fact is worth noticing.

The clients I parted ways with mid-engagement had one thing in common. The actual decision-maker on the design was not in the room and was not going to be. I should have caught it earlier.

The studio is not closing. The notebook is not stopping. But the year was thinner on output than I would have liked, and there is no sense pretending otherwise.

The earlier post on taking less work is the underlying argument; this is the year-end check on it. The reading list for the year is here. Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity is the framing I have been working from this year, more rigorously than I have used it.

See you in January.