My husband is a pilot. His workspace is fairly defined. It has huge fiberglass wings and crazy sharp propellers that will chop you to little tiny bits if you don’t knock properly on the office door.

I wish I had propellers.

Instead I have a laptop, which, sadly, isn’t quite so lethal, and my non-pointy office also functions as a DVD player, a bullhorn for Star Wars-related whines, a sports wire, a news station, a photo album, a gift shop, and a jukebox. So when he sees me staring at the screen with my head in my hands, I could be trying to figure out why people continue to care about Paris Hilton… I could be contemplating the fact that my nephew’s new haircut makes him look like a forty-five year old in a Piglet sleeper… I could be one syllable away from a Pulitzer… he never knows.

What he does know, for his own health, is to assume the Pulitzer thing, even if it’s five in the morning and the theme from The A-Team is pouring tinnily from the speakers as I sob face-down on the keyboard, bitter freelancing tears raining down upon my caps lock key. But that wasn’t knowledge he simply absorbed from basking in my per-job presence: He had to be carefully taught. And so did I.
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After returning from a few days away, I’m mentally recharged. But after a quick email check this morning—the first since I got home—I have to say, I feel all of the old pressures creeping back in.

There are deadlines to be met. Clients who admit they left things on their desks for days but want me to have it done ASAP. Just getting back into the whole pace of it all is a little overwhelming. And since I’m trying to reformat the way I work and the clients I accept, I’m really trying not to fall into old work habits.

Here are some tips for change that I hope will help you even if you’re not coming back from a much-needed vacation…even if you’re just looking to make adjustments in your work life!
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Freelancing is a good career choice for a student. While letting us study, it also gives us both money to pay the bills and experience that we need in the future. I’ve seen a lot of student come out of college with only theory and no experience. I’m not talking about expertise in a given field (for example, in my case that would be sociology), but of real world experience. You know what, sometimes you do have to wear a suit. You do have to know how to write a proposal, a brief, etc. My friend Glenn Wolsey points out: “The good in favor of freelancing – extra cash in your pocket. The bad, added stress to hit deadlines and hours disappearing before you know it.”

Next month I’ll be doing a presentation and roundtable at a Microsoft event about web technology and business. I have to be honest, I’ve never done a presentation for such a large and experienced audience. The good that will come out of it is that I’ll learn. From that day on, I’ll know how to improve my presentations and public speaking. Don’t wait to finish college to get some experience. People notice young people that work hard and know their field well.
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By Kristen Fischer

Swamped is an understatement. As a freelancer, there are definitely weeks that go down in the books as beyond overwhelming.

With several deadlines looming for Friday, I’m racing against the clock to complete my assignments. I’ve got websites and resumes to write this week, and I’m working day to night with a few breaks in between to get it all done.

This week, though, I thought about it all: Why do freelancers go through droughts and tsunamis from one day to the next?

It’s because of the nature of our work. For example, one of my clients gave me a big project last week, and then another this week. I didn’t want to turn down the work because I can really use the money as a new homeowner. But coupled with my regular workload, I quickly found that I was overloaded with work.
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By Ivan Brezak Brkan

I can tell you your future! Sure I can. Are you holding a mouse while slouching in your nice office chair? Maybe you’re a coder. Resting our hands on the keyboard wrist pad, are we? Guess what, you’re going to be in a lot of pain pretty soon. Think neck, back and wrist pains… Have them? Good. I was right.

You are suffering from repetitive strain injury – and you’re not alone. With more and more people working on their computers for far longer hours, RSI is becoming a big problem. Costing people their health and business billions of dollars.

An Army of One
As a freelancer, you depend solely on ourselves. You have partners, colleagues, etc. But the brunt of the work you do personally. A broken computer you can replace. Lost files can be saved. You on the other hand aren’t replaceable. In this case, it’s all about you. No one will look after your health besides you. Loss of delicate movement in the hands can spell career death to a designer, illustrator, writer, developer. In order to prevent current and future pains, here are a few simple tips to get you back, and always ready for action.
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By Ivan Brezak Brkan

So you’re at the beach, in the mountains, in the country – it’s peaceful. You feel relaxed. The wind in your hair, the sun in your face, the overall boredom. Boring. It’s all nice of course, but you can’t seem to shake the feeling that you have better things to do. The project you left at the office does seem somewhat more interesting… The sun, the sweat, the overall frustrations of a creative workaholic. For me, it was this article. Okay, not this exact one, but one I have promised Cyan I’d write. Well – I screwed up. There, I said it. I promised something and didn’t do it. The shame.

Let’s analyze the “issue”, lets analyze vacations. Widget, widget, widget, vacation. Most people would say it’s a time when they unwind, take the time to be with friends and family, basically – have fun. That’s ok. Worker 2.0 doesn’t work that way. He may crank virtual widgets, be it in a text, code or pixel manner, but the concept of a vacation doesn’t work for him anymore.

We can call ourselves geeks, web workers… It truly doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have serious issues. Vacations are one of them. We get bored, we want to check e-mail, we want to surf the Net. Laptops and mobiles don’t stay at home, but in our pockets. The problem with the concept of a classic vacation is that for a lot of us – they are boring after some time. We need a challenge. Tim Ferris calls for the death of vacations and outlines a concept of mini-retirements. The idea is not to wait for retirement to explore the world, but to do that in six month chunks. What Tim says makes sense, and yes, sometimes we just need to disconnect to connect once again. Unfortunately, most of us won’t end up changing our lifestyle in that way, but the idea of taking time off on a recurring basis is something we all need to do.
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By Kristen Fischer

This freelance life is odd, isn’t it? For me, I’ve never had to worry about balance in my life until I stepped out of the cubicle and into my freelance writing career. I know it’s the same for freelance designers and freelance artists, too.
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By Leo Babauta

There isn’t a freelancer alive who doesn’t get stressed out, trying to juggle projects, trying to meet deadlines, trying to deal with difficult clients, trying to have a life while working multiple jobs.

It’s not the easiest job, and although we probably wouldn’t trade it for anything, freelancers need ways to cope with the stress of the job and ways to avoid becoming a burned-out, ex-freelancer.

Today, let’s look at ways to deal with stress. You’ll never eliminate stress completely, at least not while you’re alive, but there are ways to keep it manageable:

Don’t overcommit. We often take on more than we can actually do. That leads to overwork, stress, and missed deadlines. Take on only as much as you can handle without too much stress.

Learn to say no. In order to avoid overcommitting, we need to learn to turn down projects and requests. Many of us have problems with this. Practice makes perfect. Turn down as much as you can afford to.

Work on small tasks, not large projects. Tackling large projects can be overwhelming. Instead, focus on one small task within a project — something you can easily do in a short amount of time (10-20 minutes is perfect, but a little longer is OK). If a task takes longer than that, break it down some more. Now just focus on that little task.

Don’t try to control others, or the world. This sounds obvious when written down, but in reality, we often try to do both. You cannot control other people, and trying to do so will only result in frustration. So will trying to control everything around you. All you can control is yourself — focus on that, and you’ll stress out less.
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By Robert Janelle

Image from iStockPhoto

A common reason to choose freelancing is to be able to make a living doing work we actually enjoy. In my case, I write. I’ve been writing short stories since early childhood and later got heavily into essay writing.

The journalism thing came around because it seemed like a decent way to get paid for stringing sentences together.

But one of the pitfalls of freelancing is the blurred distinction between work and life. When the desk is only a few feet away at all times, it’s tempting to be always on, always chasing the almighty dollar.

There’s also the problem with turning a passion into a profession: it gets harder to enjoy your hobby unless there’s money in it for you. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else but lately my motivation to do pretty much anything has been limited unless someone’s dangling a cheque in front of me.

For example, I write about video games because I love playing them but now I rarely feel like picking up a controller unless getting paid to write a review.

But pondering this led to a realization: It’s probably healthy to take a break from client projects and work on something that’s just for you. The following are some examples I thought up for different fields:
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By Kristen Fischer

Image from iStockPhoto

I did something revolutionary this week—I took a day off.

And after spending a morning at the gym and an afternoon sitting on the beach and later gardening, I really went into vacation mode. This was ground-breaking because I am a severe workaholic, and trying to apply better self-care practices to my life. (Generally, I work six or seven days a week, taking breaks, but still working continuously!)

Later that day, I let myself go online, but only for personal reasons. I posted to my blog about my relaxing Thursday off. And I was fine until I got a reply that said, “I wish I could take a day off and go to the beach.”

My friend didn’t mean anything conniving about it, but it got me to thinking how much I detest those little plugs people make. They always seem to hit my vulnerable spots, in this case, how emotionally hard it was for me to give myself a day off. It is difficult for me because of never-ending deadlines and that little-known syndrome only freelancers know about: the fear of starving.
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Image from iStockPhoto

Okay, I’ll admit it. My wrist is swollen and I’m still typing. Of course, a deadline is a deadline, and I’m not one to miss them.

It all started last week when I took a break from writing to paint the trim in my house. After tackling a doorway per week, I decided to go for the gusto and complete a hallway’s worth of doorways in a mere six hours. I ignored the pain. Two days later, I broke out the ice. Then the bandage. Then I stopped working altogether for a few days.

While I was lucky to be able to take time off because my workload permitted it, I have to tell you that I wasn’t always so in tune with my body. I used to push myself hard until a project was done. But I’d crash really hard.

Even though I took a break this weekend, this aching wrist is a reminder that I need to take care of myself in the midst of an injury. And as a self-employed writer—and a self-defined workaholic—that’s kind of hard to do.

It’s easy to take a break when you’ve got a few hours of down time during the day, or when you have a vacation schedule. It’s not so simple to do so when you want to work but can’t. When you have to do nothing. Oh, the dreaded doing of nothing at all!

So I’m bringing you some tips to help you cope with the times when you have to take some time off, and may have to work during a trial. Whether it’s a family emergency, a stubborn cold or even a busted up wrist, there comes times during this self-employment journey when you have to be the one to pace yourself before your body really retaliates.

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By Kristen Fischer

Image from iStockPhoto

What are the weekends, really? I find myself asking this sometimes after a long work week. Being a workaholic and owning my own business means that I am generally writing on a Saturday afternoon or cramming in an assignment to get ahead of the work week on Sunday night. It is truly difficult for me to give myself a day off.

I realize I can’t go on this way forever, which is why I try mostly to contain my assignments to the week. But even that is hard. I justify working on the weekends when I recall the times during the week that I take a nap, dart out to the gym or treat myself to tea. Those are the times I think about the 9-to-5 corporate slaves and grin.

But there’s something that they have, which I believe I do not. I realize that those 9-to-5ers generally have more of an appreciation for weekends, and they can easily enjoy them. After all, by the time Friday at 5 p.m. hits, it’s like a jail breakout. Most 9-to-5ers leave the office, and they’re done with work. Because they don’t have to be at their office, and aren’t near it, (and yes, most of them are miserable at what they do), they are more apt to relish the weekend, not working at all—really recharging themselves and having fun!

How on Earth do they do that? And how can a self-employed person get the most out of their weekends, too?

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