It's been a common saying that,
Whenever you're Good at Something never do it for free.
Most people relate it to remuneration in terms of rewards or benefits and so did I believe it to mean. Until now I never thought much about this quote, though people close to me reminded me of it frequently.
I'm a type of person who will dig the well only when there's extremely high need of water and won't bother wasting time over it. I have pretty much of other stuff to take care of, remember I'm an OPEN CATEGORY student!
So until now, I used to do a number of technical works in my college which involved development and implementation of new techniques. I used to do a lot of work, put in a lot of efforts and personal investments, yet would do it for free. People used to appreciate my work and I kinda liked doing them.
Well, your brain eventually matures and makes you think multidimensionally i.e. How, why? what's the profit, etc. It is this phase wherein you realize that people are just making use of your skills for their benefits and under a few instances not giving the value you require.
I did a lot of work for free and realized that people simply don't give value to your works on the other hands just consider if they would have paid me for my works, like it if the product would have required them to make a payment it would have been more valuable to them. They would have been more respectful towards the product. I made a few videos and managed the online activities of our Civil Engineering department of our college, lately I realized that just working for free people often take me for granted, get their work done and I do appreciate that I was able to help them but the sad part is that the product or service that I create or provide isn't valued or used too often and ends up just in files for reference. It is to be learned from the mistakes and experiences and I certainly take it into consideration as a result of which I would now be curtailing all the free services and would be leveraging my skills for monetary rewards.
It is extremely essential for one to be able to escape from the emotional state of unrest and attain peace of mind certainly, man is equipped with limited amount of motivation and with every effort you to put in a certain amount of motivation is consume and in-order to replenish the motivation stock you need positive affirmation and the best form of it is seeing your product being used and valued by others.
Another thing I commonly observed is that material output that is tangible is much valued by people than the intangible products such as videos, intellectual properties. This is certainly disheartening but you have to live with it....
Would simply like to end this with a small statement,
Anything that is available for free isn't valued!
Even the Gurus of the Ancient Indian Education system asked for Guru-Dakshina
in a nut-shell its, Ghar ki Murgi Dal Barabar!
पढ़ने के लिए धन्यवाद!