NO
It's time to say no.
In design or other things that you do, if you compromise on one end to achieve the other end, your outcome could be a net Zero.
Take networking event for an instance, if it helps to generate 30% of your entire sales, 30% of your stress in life will also be a result from them. Maybe more.
Email spamming, distracting morning messages, unwanted invitation and meeting without great purpose. It could be more.
Anything that requires sacrifices will not necessarily give you a net gain.
If you are a salesman and the only way to sell is to first buy things from the other salesman from your network, the net gain could be negative.
Compromising is not a good idea.
Commitment. What are you committed to creating great design? What are you committed to NOT create great things?
Define. And eliminate the latter.
We spent too much time thinking of how to win a net gain game, to take advantages over one another and not how to create great design that solves problem and moves the world to a better place.
And the more one is desperate in the game, the lounder one wants to speak to the other.
The sum of the time and effort used to figure how to win the competition should be spent in creating good, genuine design, ideas, and product in the first place.
If you are not sure about anything, say NO. Say NO to sacrificing time to help build things for others that won't help to move the society forward.
Say NO to building things in order to commit to something unnecessary. It's time to make time for yourself to create something for a better world.