Cross posted at casabona.org/blog
As a freelancer, I don’t have an office, or employees, or all the extra stuff that one might have as a business. I work from home, with my laptop, my cell phone, and if I need to offload some work, I have a group of subcontractors I can call. This of course makes it harder to separate personal and professional life, especially if I’m giving people my cell phone number as a means of contact. That has changed with Google Voice.
The final piece in the Backpack for Freelancers Series is on collaboration. After talking about managing your projects and managing your clients, it’s not too far fetched to think you might want to share your notes, screens, to do lists, with a client you’re working with. As it turns out, collaborating is very easy with Backpack.
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.
When I first started freelancing, one thing I knew for sure was the importance of having a contract. I drafted one, had a few people (including a lawyer) look over it, and over the years I have rewrote it and added to it (I posted it way back in February). Whenever I get a new client, I will draft a proposal, and once that’s accepted, send over a contract. Most of the time this takes place online, as I’m dealing with people all over the world. Last week I went over a contract with someone in person, and kind of surprised myself.
Cross posted on my personal blog.
It used to be the case that Sunday truly was a day of rest. Shops closed, people went to church, had an early dinner, and called it a day. Then stores started to stay open on Sundays. The hours got longer. Now some places are open 24 hours, 5 days a week. Some 24/7. It used to be the case that once you left the office for the day, you were done working. How could you work? All your stuff was at the office. How would anyone reach you? Now we have cell phones, IM, email on our phones; we are reachable all the time. “Open” 24/7. And that’s what people expect now. Our culture is moving towards a 24/7 work mentality to be more productive, and make more money. That needs to change.
It’s more coincidence than anything that I started to have these thoughts before, but on the same day that, I started reading The Four Hour Work Week. I’m just into it, and this post is not a book review, but Ferriss does talk early on about some of the stuff that spurred these thoughts. I wrote a while back about not responding to email right away. It’s not to be rude, but to set a precedent and draw some boundaries. If people think you are always available, they will expect you to be on call all the time. This isn’t healthy for you or them. And it’s not just with email.
I’ve had clients call me at midnight because they ‘needed’ to talk to me. I get calls on the weekend, and people who want to schedule meetings on Sundays. And it’s not that I’m lazy that I don’t want to do that; people can’t work all the time. It’s not physically or mentally healthy. So how do we solve this problem?
Don’t be afraid to draw those boundaries. Tell your clients or co-workers that you’re only available during business hours. Don’t answer business email on the weekend. Take the weekends for yourself. I took the 4th of July weekend completely off. From Friday to Sunday I did no work- I even put up an email auto-response. It was the first time in a long time I did that because I have the same mentality others do- I work a lot. Usually I take the weekends for side projects or small rush jobs I want to get out of the way. But it’s that mentality that causes a lot of people to burn out hard and fast.
Maybe it’s that we are in front of a computer anyway, or we think, “Well I’m not doing anything now,” that we take that call or work on that project. But we don’t have to produce all the time. It’s ok to do nothing. Having a lazy day is perfectly acceptable, and in some cases, needed. So far I like The Four Hour Work Week because Ferriss talks about how to be more productive in less time, and how to take time for yourself. I’ll post more about it as I read it, but remember this: Working 24/7 is NOT a good mentality. I think we should remember the days when Sunday really was a day of rest.
Especially when you’re just starting out, finding work can be a difficult and intimidating process. You might not be sure where to look or exactly how to word that email. Fear not: I’m here to help. Today I’m going to talk about three ways to find work, what to look for, and how to keep it coming.
Freelancing the Net is a blog dedicated to giving advice and tips to other freelancers or those looking to freelance. It is the first hand account of how a freelancer got to where he is, from the beginning up until now.
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