The art of working wisely when working for free

April 4, 2012 - PRLog -- Marc Zegans, a leading Creative Development Advisor, has developed a free tool called Working for Free: Friendship, Compassion, Citizenship and Practice Development to help creative professionals determine how work for free without giving away too much of their time or themselves.  By learning how to work wisely when sharing our time, says Zegans, we can thrive personally and professionally.  We do so by giving our time and energy we give away to projects and causes we really believe in. The article is available at < http://www.mycreativedevelopment.com/p/tools-for-you.html.

If you are someone with professional skills or creative talents that others find attractive you can often find yourself in the position of being asked for free advice or help with a project. Most people enjoy helping and like to feel generous and to be perceived as being generous with their time and their talents. Working for free can be fun and rewarding and of course it can help raise your profile within your working and personal communities. However it is often too easy to agree to do things for people for nothing and then you can find yourself overwhelmed by our pro bono work, and then you can fall into a trap of feeling resentful, overloaded and confused about doing free work.  

Zegans, whose clients include artists, consultants and people working in the creative field, has created a powerful, yet easy to implement solution to this problem.  He  shows how you can spend time volunteering for a good cause, giving away your services to friends, cash strapped small businesses or your community without compromising you or yourself or your income.  Indeed, working free wisely can help you create abundance in your professional and personal life.

Zegans says that: “this tool can help you give generously of your time and talents and avoid the trap of resentment by clarifying your intentions….By framing our intentions we can then contribute wisely, build our practice and avoid feelings of overwhelm, exploitation and guilt which often interferes with our doing our best work“

Working for Free Friendship, Compassion, Citizenship and Practice Development is available from Marc Zegans website http://www.mycreativedevelopment.com, in the Tools for you section.

This  tool has five steps to help you organise your efforts:

Categorizing – breakdown into categories the type of free/volunteer work you do for others,

Selecting – choose which of these categories and the types of projects within them that will give you energy while genuinely helping others.  Clear focus and careful screening will benefit all.

Balancing – make sure you only take on a volume of work you can really handle, boil it down so that you can give the volunteer work you do your best energy. This will help you feel great about what you’re doing  and will established a balance between pro bono activities and paid professional work that will prevent overload and resentment.

Contributing –select projects that you genuinely care about and that lever your effort, so that your efforts produce maximum benefit.

Enjoying – Have fun with it.  As you become conscious about your choices you begin to use your time wisely and your passion and energy for the work you are doing will grow . Now rather than finding the time you volunteer a burden, you can kick back and really enjoy yourself, and do well by doing good.

“By implementing these tools our efforts and help become more genuine, heartfelt and authentic. It’s no different from an artist limiting her palette.  With constraints come opportunities to truly blossom”, says Marc Zegans.


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Notes for editors

To see the full article go to http://www.mycreativedevelopment.com/p/tools-for-you.html.

Marc Zegans marc@mycreativedevelopment.com (617) 547-9547


For further information please contact: Caroline Ratner caroline@carolinecomms.com www.carolineratnercommunications.com

About Marc Zegans

Marc Zegans advises creative artists and creatively driven organizations. In addition to prominent artists, writers, musicians, actors and directors his clients have included: the World Bank, the Ford, Rockefeller, Ewing Marion Kauffman and James Irvine Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, From the Top, GrantCraft, The Actor’s Shakespeare Project, Tooth and Nail, Opera Boston, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, The Ariel Group, XVIVO, Artists in Context, NatureStage, Philistine Records, the Social Innovation Forum, Theater Offensive, Embody Physical Therapy and Yoga and Chelsea Pictures. He has also advised the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations on fostering innovation in the public sphere, and managed the City of Boston’s goals program, integrating strategic planning with the city’s first program-based budgets. From 1988 through 1995 he served as Executive Director and Research Director of the Innovations in American Government Program, a joint venture of the Ford Foundation and Harvard University.  In 2005, he was a Fellow at Harvard University’s Ash Institute for Democracy and Innovation.

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