I wrote a post on my personal blog titled, “What Developers can Learn from Home Improvement” (the TV show). It was a fun little post that I thought about while watching the show, and how programmers and web developers can learn a few valuable lessons from the show. Check it out!
Resources:
Smashing Magazine has a nice little list of how freelancers can increase their productivity. While all of the tips are very good, I find Making a Plan really helps, and I need to limit the amount of time surfing the web. Seriously, I do that entirely too much. It’s a good list that is definitely worth checking out!
(link to post)Visit 6 Ways Freelancers Can Increase Productivity
As a freelancer, chances are you spend most of your days working from home. This makes a comfortable home office crucial. Unplggd has 8 great tips to make your home office the best it can be, not the least of which being:
A Great Chair: In our many years of computer usage, we’ve discovered one thing is true. You can have the best job in the world, but if your chair is uncomfortable, you spend your day slightly annoyed, frustrated and achy! Office chairs can range from high to low, but no matter what the price point, all that matters is that you can sit in it for more than an hour or two. We’ve had some well loved Steelcase chairs and some higher end chairs that have worked beautifully, it really depends on the person, how they’re built, and how they’ll be using the space. But comfort, hands down, starts here.
So check it out; and if you some inspirtation, LifeHacker has some cool home office resources.
(h/t: @freelancesw)
(link to post)Visit 8 Ways to Make Your Home Office Comfortable
As a designer, you will likely be asked to do comp or spec work; that is, work for free to see if a potential client wants to hire you. This is a big no no for designers for several reasons. I’ll write up my own post next week (keep an eye out!), but for today the site No!Spec has Ten Reasons to say to No. You should check that out, as well as the rest of the site as it has reasons, horror stories of doing spec work, and more.
Smashing Magazine’s Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer is the cliffs notes of almost everything I’ve learned about freelancing since high school. They cover everything from the leg work you need to do to branding, and of-course, pricing. Well worth the read, especially if you haven’t taken the plunge yet.
