Chapter 26 – Care

“To make a difference in someone’s life you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful, or perfect. You just have to care.”
~ Mandy Hale

Working with someone who cares is amazing.

Plenty of people are intelligent or talented. Even more are hardworking and diligent. But if they don’t care it’s wasted. Caring may be the bedrock upon which all else in this book is built upon.

This idea is adjacent to the saying “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”, equally true with “Caring beats talent when talent doesn’t care”. You are infinitely capable of mastering new skills and learning new disciplines. But if you don’t know how to care about the work, your co-workers, and the goal, then there will always be something missing.

To care is to make the issue your own. It’s not someone else’s problem, it’s your problem because you care. It’s a desire to help and provide solutions that bring forth your full creativity and problem solving against any obstacle. 

You’re not just providing a design because that’s how you get paid, you are providing designs because you care about how it might be used to help.

It’s not hard to understand why finding designers who really care is so rare. By the description above you can see the burden that’s added when you care and accordingly why so many wouldn’t want to subscribe to it. That’s why it’s such a distinction maker. 

It involves more commitment. It takes your work beyond “good enough” and demands that you grind further until it’s a truly excellent fit. An issue that arises isn’t “someone else’s problem”, but in a way becomes your problem because you care. It’s a perpetual question of “How can I make this better?”, which you ask despite knowing it’ll cause you more work.

It involves more thinking too. When handed a requirement you aren’t just looking for the path of least resistance, you are actively thinking about the task’s contribution to the whole project and how to best serve it.

Imagine being on the outside looking at these two examples of designers. It’s coming time to grow the team and grant one with more responsibility and opportunities, and the designer who cares makes for an easy decision. Think too of the teammate who transitions to another company. Being someone who cares catapults you to the top of many lists for people other’s want to work with again.

People who give a damn about people and work other than their own are incredibly valuable, and somebody you want on any adventure you go on.

Care.

What I’m Not Saying:

• Caring looks like overextending yourself and working 80 hours a week
• You don’t have to be good as long as you care
• Exhaust yourself by taking on everyone’s problem

What I Am Saying:

• Being a person who truly invests in a project’s success is incredibly valuable
• You can be greatly preferred over those with more talent or experience if you fight for something’s success like it’s your own
• Being someone who commits and wants a project to succeed is incredibly rare, and gives you an opportunity to stand out