Freelance, not free time!

A freelancer’s work is often related to using a computer. The best and fastest way to find and send information nowadays is via the Internet. However, using a computer for working, especially at home hides huge risks – the Internet has lots of information, yes, but it also has … Online games! Chats! Facebook! MySpace! Skype! So many things that can distract you from your work, this is the first biggest mistake a freelancer can do, lose his focus.

Imagine that you are a young freelancer, you work from home, and you have to write an article like this for a magazine. The deadline is for the next day. This wonderful sunny morning, you sit in front of your PC or laptop to try to stat to work. You are loaded with energy, you have some great ideas, and you start writing. You are searching for some information on the Internet, and accidentally you see that … The third season of your favorite sitcom was uploaded, and it waits for you to see it! You know that you have to work, but … you decide just to postpone the job and enjoy your favorite actors. After all – you are at home, what anyone can tell you! Therefore, you have fun for a couple of hours, and then you start working again. Then you see that all of your ideas are already on the Internet, and they would not be original. You start thinking about new ones, but in your head, there is still that comic scene you saw in the sitcom only an hour ago. Time is ticking and you have nothing written. The job you started doing with enthusiasm now turns into a chorus. One thousand words required for the article, and you have only two hundred! Two hours you stare at the monitor trying to figure out something … unsuccessfully. It is now midnight. You lose hope; you give up and go to bed. On the next day, you will reach the deadline unprepared. Your employer is going to be so angry that he will not only dismiss you, but also he will do everything possible to stain your name and reputation in front of all of his colleagues. You already knew that a disaster is coming, so you just start looking for a job as a waiter, with precisely fixed work hours, and you forget about freelancing forever.

Therefore, if you want to be a freelancer, you should know that the most important thing is to know how to map out your time in order to be sure that everything will be all right, and you will do the job on time. You should also be able to separate fun from work and have the will to do everything in the right order. One of the best ways to do this is just to go to the library and find there everything you need for the job. If you think, you will not do without a computer, and then erase all the distracting icons from your desktop before you start working! It might sound pointless to you now, but you will feel the effect once you try!