We all have those days (or a week) when there is just no power in us to do productive work as a freelancer.
Those days are terrible, because they create anxiety and stress about the quality of work and deadlines. No delivery, no pay!
Some simple, yet effective tips, may help you stay productive day after day.
Make a Schedule
Managing your working time as you please might be a big appeal of freelancing, but it can also be a huge curse if you are just a lazy person.
If you really want to be productive, you have to build a certain schedule that will resemble a ‘9 to 5’ job.
Perhaps you don’t have to spend 8-10 hours working, but you should spend hours on the job. Only you don’t have to dress. Or work in silent environment. Or have boss that breathes down your neck. Different things work for different people, but I believe that morning routine is the best (no matter when your morning starts).
Grab a cup of coffee, make breakfast and hit the keyboard right away. Your brain is rested, your obligations are falling in line and you will get the feeling you are being productive and it will run throughout the day.
Don’t forget that breaks are also OK. You will rarely be able to finish everything without a break. So, do some stretching or other activity that will make your brain relax and get your blood flowing.
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Focus
About those breaks… While it is OK to make breaks, don’t count Netflix, gaming, 9GAG, Facebook as a break. Stay away from things you are ‘addicted’ to, and stay away from social media even if you are not. You are just wasting your valuable time and upping your stress levels, because you are constantly aware that you are avoiding responsibilities.
You can try using effective working techniques, like Pomodoro technique, where you basically work 25 minutes without distraction followed by 3-5 min break. It is very effective!
All those opened tabs are just distracting you from work, so make sure you close all that have nothing to do with what you are working on.
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Cooperate
Just because freelancing doesn’t demand sitting in an office, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have colleagues.
One of the best tips I can give, from personal angle, is to give easier more grunt work to some of the freelancers out there that are willing to do the work. If your time is too valuable to spend on a few hours of reading, maybe someone can make a quick summary. Or help you with statistics, tables, picture design etc. If it makes sense to hire someone (from financial point of view) you should do it.
Not all cooperation has to be financial. Sometimes you will do favors for free for people in your niche, and they will return them. Great example is tweeting and retweeting. If you like the work of a colleague make sure you tell him that and support his work and try to make arrangements so that he supports you back.
In general, social media is a great place to do it, but don’t confuse working and growing with useless hours of scrolling.
Conclusion
There are many more tips I can offer, and I will in the upcoming articles, but these are really the most basic ones you can use on daily basis. In the end, it’s up to you to discover how and when you are most productive, so make sure you share your experience with others.
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