Sep 28, 2020
What Fiverr Taught Me About Giving Up
Giving up is a skill; you need to know when and how to give up — Olakunle Soriyan.
I joined Fiverr January 2018 as a freelance writer. In case you don’t know, Fiverr is an online community of freelancers from all around the world, with different skills across various industries, where they are hired by clients that need their services.
Within a week after registering on the platform, I was lucky enough to get my first gig (work.) A guy in the USA employed my service to write a product review for a laptop that was just launched to the market.
Within 24 hours, I completed the job and I was very impressed by my performance after reading through what I wrote — catchy headline, flawless highlighting of product’s features and clear and connecting paragraphs. It was also my first time writing a product review, all I wrote about before then were poetry, news reports and other articles on general topics.
I guess he was impressed as well because he came back again with another job. Same laptop reviews, but this time around, more laptops.
I jumped at the work excitedly as usual. The little job was keeping me busy at that time and bringing in sprinkles of dollars. Also, it felt awesome being paid for what I love doing that I could easily do free of charge. I completed the job before the deadline again and the result was as beautiful as the first one.
Again, the client was impressed. I got another notification that the third job was knocking at the door. Another gig about laptops, but this time around there was a little problem.
What happened?
I didn’t fully understand how he wanted me to deliver the job. His instructions and requirements were not clear enough. I sought clarification from him but after his response, I became even more confused.
So I decided to use “idea” to do the job. I could not imagine myself losing my regular client and the little dollars he was paying me just because I didn’t understand a few details.
I struggled through every sentence and paragraph. It was not a rosy journey. I did all I could to ensure that I got the required number of words. I didn’t want to disappoint my client by telling him I wasn’t up to the task.
I finally completed the job and was disappointed at the outcome of the job. In fact, I was more than disappointed. The work didn’t reflect my expertise.
I summoned courage and sent it to him anyway, just to fulfil all righteousness while I waited for a straight forward job.
That was the last time I heard from.
2 years after, I went through the conversation I had with him on the job that broke our professional relationship and I realized my mistake — I should have given up on the job. I should have politely told him I couldn’t deliver. Telling him I could not deliver would not have made me less competent nor reduce my worth before him because I had earlier delivered two wonderful jobs for him.
My sincerity would have saved him time and money and might have retained our professional relationship for a longer time.
I held on to the job but I lost the source of the job.
Learn To Give Up
When you have tried your best and given your all, but what you are trying to achieve is not working out, maybe it is time to give up.
Don’t hurt yourself and others trying to prove a point.
Don’t waste the time, energy and resources of yourself and others holding on to what you can easily give up on.
Remember that giving up is a skill, learn it.
