Photo by Sphinx the Geek.

Some professions can be dangerous to your health. These include fire fighters, oil riggers, those serving in the armed forces, and even electricians. These professionals don’t take the danger for granted. They use special equipment and procedures to minimize the risk.

As a freelancer, you also spend your days doing activities that risk your health: sitting on a chair, typing, using a mouse, and looking at a monitor. Fortunately, the risk of injury when doing these seemingly safe activities for a prolonged time is becoming better known. And like those more dangerous jobs, there is equipment and techniques that help you minimize the risk.

Ergonomics is the science of work. It looks at ways of fitting the work to the user, rather than fitting the user to the work. Chris Adam’s simple definition is that “ergonomics makes things comfortable and efficient.” He goes on to say, “Ergonomics is commonly thought of in terms of products. But it can be equally useful in the design of services or processes.” In this article, we will look at both products and techniques that help.

The science of ergonomics is a very young field, and is subject to a lot of variability. Every person is built differently so it is hard to develop universal guidelines. I’d love to have your input in the comments about what works for you and what doesn’t.

Continue Reading

Nearly five years ago, I said goodbye to the day job and hello to the work at home lifestyle. I’ve never regretted it. I don’t miss commuting, office politics, kowtowing to the boss or the lack of control over my time.

However, there are some things about office life that are worth keeping. A sense of structure, interaction with other people and a feeling of security are a few perks of the day job that many freelancers feel like they’ve lost. Here’s how you can have the best of both worlds.

Continue Reading

Photo by orphanjones.

Freelancers, like their artist and writer predecessors, such as Vincent Van Gogh or Virginia Woolf, may be prone to depression, starving, and self-obsessing. To combat the freelancer blues, you need to schedule some sunshine into your calendar.

Here is a list to save your mind, body and soul from the snake pit.

Continue Reading

Photo by ReefRaff.

True or false: freelancers tend to be relatively adventurous people, given that they’ve eschewed a “regular” job to live a more free work/life style? I vote for “true,” so it wouldn’t surprise me if a large proportion of freelancers suddenly decided that they wanted to live the lifestyle of a Digital Nomad – a person who utilizes technology to combine work and travel.

Continue Reading

Photo by riot jane.

The new year is always a good time to reflect upon your business practices of the previous year. Did you perform as well as you’d hoped as a freelancer? Or did you get rejected more often than you were expecting?

When you’re turned down for a freelance gig, how does it make you feel? It stings, right? Even when you have a few years of experience. It’s tough enough being a lonely freelancer, tougher still being rejected for a gig you were hoping for – or worse, counting on.

Continue Reading

Photo by LifeHouseDesign.

WAHFs (Work-at-Home Freelancers) have it tough. Sure, there’s freedom of work schedule, not having to sit in traffic or otherwise commute, eating a home-cooked meal and being able to watch soap operas or Oprah everyday. But for some of us it gets darn lonely working at home all day, every day. Combine the state of the economy, the Holiday season, or the start of the winter blues and the feeling of loneliness right now can be magnified manyfold. If you’re single, it’s even worse because working at home means it’s that much harder to meet people, even for casual conversation, weekly drinks or whatever. Here are some tips for weathering that “lonely freelancer” feeling that sometimes visits.

Continue Reading

Photo by gaetan lee.

In a previous article, Managing Multiple Freelance Gigs With Mind Maps, I covered how to use a grid/ mind map to track your freelancing projects and tasks. In this post, there’s a bit more detail about actually working on tasks, not just tracking them. ( See bottom of article for a free MindJet MindManager 8/Pro 7 map template of my work grid, as per some requests in the comments of the last article.)

The freelance task management process is best demonstrated by an example. Since my work is mostly freelance writing, that’s what I’m using here, though you can extrapolate for other types of work.  Assume that you have a big writing project and several smaller ones for a given week – possibly with some of the larger projects spanning several weeks. Here’s what you do to manage and work on your tasks.

Continue Reading

Photo by tarotastic.

“This is about structure,” the therapist said.

I’m sitting across from her because my husband found me sobbing into the carpet of my home office, again, some more. She’s sitting there because I’ve reached the point, now, where I need to pay people to listen to me.

“I thought this was about huge, huge amounts of anti-depressants.”

“No. For the first time in your life, you don’t have outside structure dictating your every move. And it is affecting your writing, and you are very angry.”

Continue Reading

Photo by kennymatic.

It’s inevitable that many freelancers will watch the people in the companies they work for come and go. You know, turnover. But as a freelancer, you may be the one sticking around while others leave, and the transition can be difficult.

That’s because many freelancers love an ongoing gig—so when you get a new contact at a company, the shift can be unsettling. What if they use another freelancer? Will they communicate as well as your old representative did? What can you do if they’re not performing well? Is it your job to intervene when you’re a contractor?

Continue Reading

Photo by Mat Honan.

We all know there are advantages of being a freelancer, especially if get have the luxury of working at home. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be creative every single day, especially if you’re worrying about payments, existing clients, finding new clients, feeling overworked, or whatever.

Don’t get overwhelmed. Here are some general tips to get the most out of your freelancing efforts.

Continue Reading

Photo by padsbrother.

One of the problems with becoming a freelancer is that there’s no longer anybody watching your work, your progress, your ability and efficiency. Sure, there are clients bugging you about their projects, but who’s really evaluating your little operation?

I’m sure many freelancers are more than happy to be rid of the annual review, but it’s easy to get sloppy and miss opportunities when you’re not looking at your work, measuring your progress, and implementing changes.

Let’s take a look at a few metrics that are useful for spotting trends and problem areas, and how to track them.

Continue Reading

Photo by Michel Filion (aka Mike9Alive).

Recently on FreelanceSwitch, I talked about attaining a good work-life balance. In that article, one of the methods for attaining a better balance was making a clear-cut decision about when you’ll work and how many hours you spend working each day, and sticking to those hours. We throw work-life balance off by creeping past those hours to get “just that bit more” done.

Continue Reading