Freelancing: how not to become a slave to your own independence

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Working from home is fraught with several pitfalls, falling into which you begin to feel like in prison. Basic organization can solve the problem of constant deadlines, lack of days off and lack of time for personal questions. Verified by personal experience.

Freelancer. There is in this concept a kind of romance of a free and independent person. He does what and when he wants. He independently determines the framework of his personal and professional life. And most importantly, he is his own boss. This is what most office workers think. And only an experienced freelancer will tell you what freelance is. Without elementary organization, remote work can smoothly turn into voluntary slavery. And in a month, seven days a week and normal communication with friends, you will dream of a stuffy office, a normalized schedule and a "vampire boss".

Still, freelancers have their own rules, not following which means turning your life into a little hell.

1. Army discipline

After six months of working from home, you know one thing for sure: responsibility and discipline are the two pillars that support the mental balance and health of a remote worker. And freelancing means being even more boring and correct in comparison with any other, even the most exemplary office employee.

The main problem that you face after a "break" from office life is a quick addiction to irregular sleep, which, in turn, leads to a constant lack of time to do your job. Oddly enough, it is the understanding of this unexpected freedom that will make you do stupid things, exposing the sad reality of banal disorganization.

The need to travel to the office for a certain time five days a week was the very "glue" that held you back in a normal rhythm of life. Standard hourly and per-minute actions actually wish you well, protecting you from nasty bruises under the eyes, an unclean apartment, lack of time for household trifles and constant "oh, let's agree tomorrow."

Life Tips:

• Love the morningwhere it shouldn't be no social media until 12:00 … All of these time managers are right: the most productive part of the day is morning. And how you start it will determine your entire next day. Freelancers in 99 cases out of 100 need the Internet to work. The first mistake many make after checking their work email is checking for updates on social networks. As practice shows, this business does not take five minutes. And if the morning started with the net, the day was gone. Therefore, start it by solving important matters.
• Plan your day. It sounds trite, but the surest way to start living in an organized way is get a diary … Not a notebook with colored sheets or a children's notebook, but a daily planner, where you will write down all your affairs every day. Don't miss a thing: even going to the store, making breakfast, and showering in the evening should be part of your daily routine.
• Save the evening for entertainment. Whatever the temptation to watch a movie during the day, read a light article about the life of Renata Litvinova, correspond with friends, try to weave a bracelet according to an interesting pattern - do not give in. All these actions will quickly lead you to the need for night work, where sleep deprivation, waking up at lunchtime and overworked eye capillaries await you.
• Obligate yourself financially. In the sense that sign up for some courses with a fixed visit time (preferably in the morning). At first, it really helps a lot to return to the previous organization.

2. Health

Many complain that it is impossible to have a normal lunch in the office, but if you work from home … You also cannot have a normal lunch, as well as breakfast and dinner. Even being at home, a few meters from the stove and refrigerator, you still remember the physical need for food even when the stomach “sings” mournful songs. And instead of taking full advantage of home cooking, you choke on tea sandwiches. It saves time. On a trip to a gastroenterologist, for example.

The office worker at least eats breakfast and dinner normally. But a freelancer, whose home and work merge over time, completely forgets about hot and healthy food.

Life Tips:

• If you do not want to get gastritis and the full package of problems attached to it, add nutritious food to your invaluable diary … Nobody forces you to spend hours in the kitchen preparing culinary delights, since the Internet is full of simple and delicious recipes. You can give preference to boiled and stewed products: they cook faster, but at the same time are healthy. And don't forget about hot food. Even a banal vegetable soup can solve many problems.
• Sign up for a gym. Either start jogging in the morning or. In short, think about physical development. Working from home is often a sedentary work in a static position. The office worker wins here, too. He moves on the way to the office. The standard freelancer route is: bed - computer - kitchen. Open the door: back problems are on the doorstep.
• Take care of your eyes. Many will say that the office worker suffers from. But not like a freelancer. The very essence of this concept - working on several projects at the same time - does not imply an eight-hour working day. Sometimes you have to sit at the computer for 15 hours, looking at the pixels on the monitor. Therefore, do not be lazy to do gymnastics for the eyes. They will only be grateful to you for this.

3. Communication

Here, as you are lucky, of course. You can be a remote journalist who goes to interviews every day, and then the problem of lack of live communication will disappear by itself. But if you belong to the category of people who value conversations at lunch, tea, at business meetings and just exchange phrases during the work process, then working from home can seem like a daunting challenge. And the silence and loneliness will test your nerves. Sometimes it is really depressing.

Life Tips:

• A great solution is coworking. Many such joint work spaces have already been created, all kinds of art cafes and other establishments, where people by their mere presence create a concentrated working atmosphere. Googling and you will surely find similar establishments somewhere near your home or in a neighboring area that will not allow you to go crazy at home alone.
• If there is no coworking space nearby, and the native walls are already familiar, you can always find a cafe, at least McDonald's, where there will be free access to Wi-Fi. Here you will find people who, with their voices, will create the necessary "office background".
• Do not distance yourself from friends and family, which happens very easily and quickly due to the same disorganization and lack of time planning. Do not forget that most of your loved ones finish their working day at the appointed time and rest in the evening. And if you do not stop postponing assignments until later hours, then over time you can forget about joint gatherings in cafes and walks in the evening park.
• You must have a weekend. And this is really very important. Working from home on projects that you really like, you forget about normal sleep, communication with friends, holidays, and also sacrifice your weekends. The work is rushing, so why stop ?! It is really worth stopping, otherwise you will lose track of time. There should be at least one brain reboot once a week if you don't want to end up being cut off from the outside world.

4. Personal space

An interesting thing will happen to him: it will disappear somewhere. Working as a freelancer, you begin to understand why some people allocate a separate room for a study. If this is not done, then the whole apartment will soon become a study. And every bedside table, book, even your favorite bed will be associated with plans, deadlines and diaries. Native square meters will turn into a solid office, where you will not only have to work, but also live.

Life Tips:

• The advice here is essentially obvious: allocate a separate work area in the houseif you can't afford a study. And this corner should consist of a table, a chair and a table lamp. No lying on the couch, carpets, "yoga" on an armchair or stool. Think about the item "Health" and back problems.
• And again coworking. He, darling, is the best way to recreate the office atmosphere of working happiness.
• Some advise you to dress in before you sit down to work. This, of course, is not for everybody. This is not to say that the advice will solve all the problems at once, but you can try it too. Although, to be honest, it doesn't work.

5. Personal time

Anyway, everything is personal: family, relationships, dreams and plans. Freelancing really means expanding your daily schedule in favor of doing your direct work. As you wanted, you got independence from the regular place and direct subordination to anyone else. But now you have to look for a job almost every week, negotiate with potential employers, and get used to a fickle income. All this takes additional hours. And you will have to sacrifice personal time.

Life Tips:

• And again, a diary savior appeared on the horizon. If you don't want to look like an overgrown and unshaven monstrosity, give your personal care a proper place in your schedule.
• You will understand why they are so needed. It is on these rare days of carelessness that you can redo a bunch of personal affairs that have accumulated over a week of round-the-clock work.
• Financial punishment. So that there is no temptation at the last moment to refuse to meet with friends, because you are once again carried away by reading the news feed and did not have time with work, book a table in a cafe, buy cinema tickets. In general, again, oblige yourself financially. Yet now you are your own accountant.