I read blog posts on lots of topics and am continually amazed at how similar issues are across the spectrum of fields and interests. The changing landscape in the newspaper business has many similarities to the challenges faced by real estate industry. Photographers face much the same marketing challenges as real estate agents.

A link on Twitter from local photographer Patty Hankins lead me to a post on a blog called Beyond The Art Fair. The post, How Long Did That Take To Make, made tons of sense and seemed to apply to such a larger world than just those who use their creative talents to make things. Jeane Vogel, the blog's author, wrote:

Much of our work in this country is paid for by the hour. We value the TIME it takes to make something-- sometimes more than the skill and talent and education and heritage of the work. Oh sure, we appreciate those things, but often .. the value of the work comes down to the TIME of creation.

This struck a chord in both the real estate agent and the photographer in me. In real estate, I get the question all the time - "we only need you to write the contract. Can you give us a discounted price for that?" That question completely dismisses the years of experience, the hours of classroom learning and the cost of obtaining and maintaining my license - without which, I couldn't "just write the contract".

16 years ago it took me hours to write my first offer - I had to keep asking other agents how to fill in the forms and which forms I needed to include to make the offer legal, binding and to actually express what the buyer wanted to accomplish. Now it takes me no time at all, partly because I haven't hand-written an offer in years (yay for computers!) but mostly because I've written so many of them that experience makes the physical task easy. So is my time worth more now because of my experience or was it worth more then because it took me longer?

We really do tend to value things by how long they take and not the knowledge and skill that we bring to our chosen fields. I'm sure you can find examples of that in your job, whatever it is.

What do you do that people devalue because you make it look so easy?

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(C) 2009 Susan Pruden.