Sell yourself, sell your work

> Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough.

First, "should" is a form of judgement. What the author believes is "enough" is defined by their belief system, not anyone else's.

> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous[sic] work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost.

A reasonable discussion could be had for all but the last two assertions:

  ... no one will benefit, and the work will be lost.

Again, this is a presumption made without merit.

First, work related to a person's profession contributes to experience and possibly ability. Second, work is only lost if it and lessons learned doing it no longer exist.

I think the author's message is more about missed opportunities than casting judgment

For me the title

> Sell yourself, sell your work

is off-putting. It makes it sound like my work should become a product to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. But not everything can become a product and not everyone wants to be creating products all day, every day. Especially since once something becomes a product, the focus is on profit and no longer the actual idea - profit begins to drive development of that idea.

But then I read the article and realised that the title has nothing to do with the message:

> "Selling" to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good."

The author, IMHO, is talking of promotion and not selling. Which is fair enough.

Without promotion, your ideas won't reach a broader audience. But that may be fine for some people and sometimes for me. I choose not to promote my half-baked ideas - fine. That's a different feeling than to think that I can't sell my ideas or that I've wasted my time because I won't be making a profit.

Of course, "selling yourself" and "promoting yourself" is the same thing in some places on this planet, for me though, there is a fine line between the two.

On a side note, whatever happened to hobbies? Whatever happens to exploring and experimenting with ideas? If everything I do has to eventually turn a profit then I need reconsider how often I go to the toilet - is that a profitable activity?