The Satisfaction of an Unsteady Paycheck

Does this statement seem off to you? Does it make you cringe, and wonder why I would pair the words “satisfaction” and “unsteady paycheck” together? That’s ok - the thought initially did that to me too.

For most of my adult life, I’ve worked in a job where the paycheck was predictable and reliable. I knew that I’d get paid every two weeks, or twice a month (depending on the job), and I knew how much the paycheck would generally be. It REALLY made budgeting easy. There was no surprises. If the paycheck wasn’t the regular amount, I knew why.

Today, however, I don’t know when I’ll get paid or how much the paycheck will be. I run my own business, and there are still expenses to be paid. Since I’m very much in the startup phase still, budgeting is a nightmare some months. There are certainly days where I’m wondering how I’ll cover costs of my business, let alone “pay myself”.

It sounds miserable, but it’s actually very motivational.

Work for the money

In a steady, reliable, and predictable job it’s easy to become complacent and adapt the feeling of entitlement towards your paycheck. Some days you may show up, sit in a chair, and avoid productivity at all costs - but you will still get paid for those hours. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it’s not for me.

I like to feel like I earned the money I get. I want to work for the money.

I took an assignment this last two weeks on very short notice, and I unexpectedly learned so much from it. It was an easy assignment, just tedious, helping an individual edit a paper they were working on. It involved a little ghost writing, a little editing, and a smidgen of formatting. The hardest part about it was that it was 50 pages long and had to follow APA guidelines. So, like I said - not hard, just tedious.

Up until this project, I had been working regularly with a couple of clients with a monthly retainer fee. So, to an extent, I still had some of that predictability when it came to finances. This was the first project-based payment I’d received.

When I initially met up with this person, they provided me with a down deposit of half my estimated time. I’ll tell you - I have NEVER been so excited, terrified and motivated in my life. A large down deposit meant that they had confidence in me - and I better not screw it up!

These last two weeks I’ve worked very hard on the paper, balancing it on top of my existing client workload. Today I’m meeting up with the individual to submit the finished product and receive the final payment for my work. I’m tired, but I am so satisfied at the product I’m providing them.

Steady or satisfied?

I’ve been thinking about my meeting with the individual today and wondering why this project, this money earned, feels much more satisfying than my previous paychecks. I’m the type of person who’s always given 110% to every job I’ve had, so it didn’t make sense to me.

After using my husband for a sounding board (amen to patient husbands!), I realized that the difference was that the correlation between the amount worked and the final product was not clear.

In my previous roles, I was always a cog in a greater machine. Most days, I never saw how hard my work produced a finished product. While I appreciated the steady paycheck, I didn’t feel satisfied because I felt there was more work I should have done, or felt that my portion of work didn’t make a difference in the final deliverable.

Now, working as a virtual assistant, the correlation is clear. When I’m given a task, the end deliverable isn’t some distant building that will be completed in three years that my work could have easily been done by someone else. Instead, the work I do is lightening the workload of my client, and the deliverable is the task being complete. The correlation is clear, and undeniable.

To me, the satisfaction in understanding the impact my work has on my client is worth the unsteady paycheck.