My Freelance lessons series looks at the lessons, best practises, and rules that I have learnt during my first four months as a freelancer. In the final part of the series I look at lifestyle.
Personal achievements
- Have a side project. Using your non-billing hours to work on a web app, code library, blog, design work etc is both personally satisfying and a great way to self market. I found I lost a lot of the love for coding when I went into full time employment. After 40-50 hours of client work the last thing I wanted to do was log more screen time pursuing personal projects. Being able to carve out time in my working week for personal work is for me a major reason to freelance.
- Set and follow personal goals. The freedom of self employment and time savings make pursuing personal goals much easier. I have set goals to learn Spanish, improve my rock climbing grade, start running, and getting into the habit of writing. Setting monthly targets keeps me on track.
Avoid the workaholic
- Try to stick to a normal day. One of the benefits of freelancing is that you can choose your working day. But this can become a negative if you start working late into the nights.
- Disconnect from time to time. It is easy for freelancing to take over your life, and spend far too much time in front of a computer. I enforce no computer Saturdays.
Get out and about
- Try to work a day a week away from your office. The average freelancer will end up spending a lot of time in their house and in the worse case their bedroom. It is important to get a change of scenery. I work from a cafe on Friday afternoons over a relaxing lunch and find this time perfect for creative writing.
- Attend conferences. They are a great way to meet people, reinvigorate, get inspiration, and get noticed.
- Take mini-working holidays. Go visit a friend in the country and work half days. A change of scenery does wonders.
Remember why you became a freelancer
- Take advantage of your situation once in a while. Take a day off, go and read a book in a cafe, meet a friend. Don’t work to the point where you end up loosing your new found freedom and time.
