#HTE

A Nice World: On Staying Motivated Even When You’re Not Making the Big Bucks

I’ve been working independently for over three years now. All the projects I do are either open-source or I just give them away for free. Phonebloks, the modular phone, was shared openly online. Then, we spent over three years developing Precious Plastic, which in the end everyone can just download the plans for and watch our instructional videos to know exactly what to do. I like to make decisions based on what will have the most impact for a particular project, not what will generate the most profit. If that means not selling anything but sharing everything, that’s what I’ll do (no matter how worried my mom gets). Although I don’t earn much money from my projects, I do get other awesome benefits…

What motivates you to make the work you actually want to be doing? Have you found any surprising benefits along the way?

This story originally appeared on Story Hopper, a collection of design stories worth sharing squeezed into short videos.