White Collar Pajamas
Defining a Professional
How close did you pay attention to the cover of the book? Did you catch the sub-title?
"A profesisonal’s guide to freelancing and making the Future of Work, work for you"
What do you think I mean by the word ‘professional'? Do you consider yourself as one?
When most people use the word it often takes the form of a descriptive label, such as:
Professional web developer
Professional designer
Marketing professional
Professional footballer
etc
Here is what Google returns when I look for the primary definition for the word professional.
professional
prəˈfɛʃ(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: professional
-
1.relating to or belonging to a profession.
"young professional people"synonyms: white-collar, executive, non-manual
"people in professional occupations"antonyms: manual
In other words, its an used to describe one’s employment interest: the 'relating to or belonging to a profession'.
This is not the type of professional you want to be remembered as.
There is a brand of the word professional whose definition is seldom used, though fast reclaiming prominence in the lexicon of many leading creative thinkers. It’s a noun. It’s the name you receive once you have, as Steven Pressfield puts it, turned Pro. A Professional, in the noun sense, embodies a much purer, nobler more organic meaning. Its likely you’ve heard it before. Maybe it was referred to somebody else. It goes like this:
“You’re a real Professional."
“She is such a Professional"
“Man, that guy is a Pro”
This is the ultimate compliment for a freelancer.
If the antonym of the adjective professional is ‘manual’, then the antonym of the noun Professional is ‘amateur. That’s what the focus of this section of the book is about. Heck, it’s in much of the entire book is about. So far we’ve come from a white collar employee to a freelancer and now, finally, transcending to a Professional freelancer.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: the difference between the professional and a Pro does have its relevant complements. For most people, transitioning into a Pro will be hard at first, but not as hard as what most creative types already try to deal with. You see, there’s a secret power about employed professionals that few inherently recognise. Much of what 'turning Pro' requires, you’ve already done before. Can you guess what it is?
It’s discipline.
Think of all the times you walked into your office and spit from your keyboard a concoction of words/slides/code even when you didn’t want to as the ultimate priming for a career as a freelancer. You’ve developed discipline. It’s the fundamental tenet of turning Pro. Now its time to invest it in a place where the only person accountable for you remaining disciplined, is you. It’s not going to be easy.
In this section, be prepared to take the training wheels off.
It’s where we connect the dots between all the what’s, the why’s, the how’s and 'when’s discussed throughout this book and string it all together.
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