The cost of convenience

There are people that like coffee, people that drink coffee, and people that avoid it.

I've been thinking about the cost of convenience since reading Julie Beck's article in The Atlantic about Gabe Bullard's book, Against Convenience.

A cup of coffee can come in a range that goes from inconvenient to convenient. If you plot the convenience vs. cost, I bet you'd see that the most convenient is the cheapest, while you'd need to spend a pretty penny to make a good, tasty cup of coffee on your own.

But if we think about cost in other terms, not money, the price of convenience might be higher. Staying with the cup of coffee, there are ways in which we can add convenience beyond the preparation method. We can go to an app, order online, and pick up our cup of coffee at the counter. The cost? The quick chat with the barista: social interaction. I recognize that sometimes that's exactly what we want to avoid, but the article ties these conveniences to people spending more time alone. We also lose out on meeting people or even observing interactions between others.

I now try to avoid the self-checkout lane at the grocery store. I realized that I was missing opportunities to practice Dutch, even if it's just a couple of sentences.

What if we extend this analogy to a freelance business?

Emails are great for delivering work, but they're no way to build good relationships. What are some things that are inconvenient but pay off?

I've done these three inconvenient things:

• Handwritten letters. I sent a letter to each of my clients last year. Some wrote back to me thanking me for it and telling me how surprised they were to receive it. We also give each other life updates in delivery emails or when discussing projects. Our relationships feel human, not transactional.
• A chat around a trip. Before I moved to the Netherlands, I visited semi-frequently. During one of those trips, I scheduled meetings with clients that live in Europe, so we could at least talk while being in the same time zone. These clients started sending me more work after we talked. I just hadn't had the chance to be top of mind for them.
• Telling someone you look up to them. I once got a job just for being a fangirl of two podcast hosts, writing to them and asking how I could achieve what they had. They asked me to join their team in 2014 and we worked on and off for years. That's how I started in writing and translation. After I shifted to working only on medical communications, they wanted to bring me back and offered a bigger position. I rejected it, since I was moving to Scotland. But that pouring-my-heart-out email resulted in opportunities, even years later.

The thought of doing any of the things above scared me, sometimes even to a paralyzing degree. But I'm so glad I decided to trade convenience for community.