9 Essential Ideas to Find Time for Freelance Work
If you’re like me, and you have a full-time job but do freelance work on the side, it’s difficult to find the time for that freelance work — and still have time to actually, you know, have a life.
It can be done, however. You just have to know where to look for that time.
Actually, the important step is not finding the time, but designating that time as sacrosanct — it’s for freelance work, and nothing else. Make it a commandment: Thou Shall Do Nothing But Freelance Work During This Hour. And never violate it, or you’ll never get any work done.
But how can you make that time in the first place? Here are some ideas (and I’ve done all of them):
1. Wake Early. I like to get up at 4:30 a.m., but that’s not necessary to find time in the morning. I find mornings are the best way to concentrate, but they’re not for everyone. The early morning is a quiet time, and can be very productive, as the craziness and chaos of the day hasn’t set in to destroy any of your best-laid plans. For tips on becoming an early riser, see my article on Zen Habits.
2. Lunch break. Take a brown-bag lunch to work (it saves you money and is cheaper anyway) and eat while you work. Or, if you’re not able to do work at your day job, take a laptop somewhere else and do your work, or go to a public library and use their computers and Internet connection. This may be the best option for people who don’t want to wake early and want their evenings free.
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8 Steps to Pound Out That Dreaded Project
All freelance workers (heck, all workers in general) know about the Dreaded Project: that item that sits on your to-do list, deadline looming or even long gone, too intimidating to tackle. We’ll do anything but that Dreaded Project, even though we know it’s the most important thing we should do.
Fear no more. We’re going to conquer that Dreaded Project and turn it into a tame little puppy dog in just 8 steps.
Then you can get it off your to-do list and breathe a sigh of relief. It’ll be a huge burden off your chest, and you can safely go back to diddling around online until the next Dreaded Project arrives. But that’s OK — you can apply these same steps to that one too.
1. What’s bothering you? Take just 5 minutes to think about this Dreaded Project. What’s bothering you about it? Why don’t you want to do it? Often our reasons for putting it off go unsaid, and we avoid thinking about it. We know it’s there, but it’s too dreadful even to consider. Well, take those 5 minutes and consider it. Often it’s not as bad as we first imagined. And if we know what the problem is, we can address it. Spell out your obstacles, and plan a way around them.
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20 Time & Energy Drains You Can Eliminate
By Leo Babauta
It’s amazing how we can while away our days by doing practically nothing, and feeling busy and stressed while doing it.
And then, at the end of the day, we are so tired we zone out in front of the television or Internet until we’re ready to drop off to sleep.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, it’s possible that you’re the victim of time and energy drains — things in your life that drain away your energy and your time without you really thinking about it. Eliminate those drains, and you’ll find yourself much more productive, much more energetic, much happier. In fact, even if you’re pretty productive already, it’s very likely that you still have time and energy drains that you could eliminate to improve your life.
What are your time and energy drains? It’s different for each person, of course. The best way to find out what your time drains are is to do a little time log. Now, before your eyes glaze over at this idea, I don’t recommend a detailed log, unless you’re good at doing that. For the rest of us, it’s easier to just keep a blank sheet of paper or notebook by your side and just jot down what you’re doing. You don’t need to write down the time or keep track of the minutes — just write down the activity. At the end of the day, look over your list and you’ll see the kind of things that are taking up a lot of your time without giving you much benefit in return.
Energy drains are a little tougher, but if you go over a list of the things in your life, and give it a little thought, you can probably identify some of the things that are draining you unnecessarily and find ways to change your life accordingly.
Some of the most common examples are listed below.
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5 Ways to Speed up Your Development
They say that time is money. So logically, one wants to find ways to improve their speed and make more money with their time. If this is your goal, then here you’ll find a list of what I’d recommend for the toolbox of every software-developing freelancer.
Automation
If you’ve had to do something twice, automate it. Whether it’s recreating a database, transferring new files to the web server, or just crunching a handful of data, doing it by hand twice is already once too many.
Learn a scripting language, get comfy with the automation tools your applications offer you (think snippets in TextMate or macros in Photoshop), and start using them, so that you can focus your valuable time on the important things.
Imagine your tools doing the work for you in the background while you’re sitting in the sun with a coffee, and reading everyone’s favourite freelancing site.
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10 Ways to Make Laziness Work for You
You’re feeling lazy right now, and reading blogs instead of doing what you’re supposed to be doing. That’s OK — we all do that. We’re all lazy, in different forms, at one time or another.
But let’s look at how to make that laziness work for us, and how to turn lazy into productive.
We often beat ourselves up about our laziness, even though it’s a natural condition that every human being gets to some extent. It’s time to stop the self-criticism and see how laziness can actually be a positive, no matter what society tells us.
Here’s an observation: often the smartest people are the laziest ones. They’re always looking for ways to get out of work, or do make something easier, and their creative ways of doing that have come up with some of the most ingenius, productive inventions: the computer, the microwave, the car, the Clapper, to name but a few.
Now, I don’t know about you, but laziness doesn’t seem so bad to me when you look at it that way. Let’s see how laziness can actually be productivity if you use it the right way.
Use High-Powered Tasks to Transform Your Productivity
By Leo Babauta
If you’re like most people, you’ve got a to-do list that spills over onto the next page — one or more lists of tasks that just seems to be getting longer and longer. And no matter how hard you work, no matter how many hours you put in, no matter how many of the tasks you knock off your list, it just keeps growing.
Master your never-ending to-do list by simplifying it and focusing exclusively on high-powered tasks.
Take a look at your to-do list right now — how many of those tasks will really matter in a month? How many of them are just boring, mindless, repetitive, time-consuming tasks that will keep you extremely busy without really making a difference in your life? Look through you list and see if you can find the one task that will really change your life.
That’s a high-powered task.
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How to Work in Bursts to Get More Done
By Leo Babauta
If you’re like me — and if you’re a freelancer, you’re probably like this — you procrastinate on your assignment because, well, you just don’t feel like doing it right now. There are tons of reasons why: it’s an intimidating project, you’re not sure how to start, or simple inertia stops you from getting started.
A solution that works every time: break the job into smaller bits, and do those bits in bursts.
That may sound obvious, but not many people put this to optimal use. Too often they procrastinate because they’re stuck with a daunting task on their to-do list. If that’s you, try these 10 productive tips:
Granularize. Got a project? Just put the very next physical action on your to-do list, not everything on the list. Is that task still too intimidating? Break it down even further. For example, instead of writing a whole article, write the intro. Or do an outline. Instead of doing a whole graphic design, just do a sketch. Or start by brainstorming. Or searching the web for ideas (don’t get lost on the web).
Create a Morning Writing Ritual
If you’re like most writers, you procrastinate. You have a hard time getting started writing, unless you’re seized by a burst of inspiration. Instead, you might do some “research” online, fiddle with your to-do list, or work on a number of other tasks instead of doing the writing you need to do.
If you’re having trouble getting your writing done, try creating a morning writing ritual. You can get a lot more done each day, as an early boost of productivity will spur further productivity throughout the day.
Why create a morning routine? A few reasons:
7 Ways to Crank Out Articles
One of my best skills is being able to turn out a high number of articles each week. My output varies depending on the complexity and length of a story, but I can crank out anywhere from 3-6 articles a day — which doesn’t hurt the pocketbook.
But writing productivity doesn’t come easy. All writers grapple with procrastination: you know you should be writing right now, but you find a million other things to do instead.
It’s not an insurmountable obstacle. You can squash the distractions and procrastination and crank out articles like a maniac with some simple hacks.
Here are some of the best methods for writing productivity:
How hard do you work?
Back when I worked for the man, I often spent time commuting to and from work thinking about how much freer life would be as a freelancer. After freelancing for a few months and after having started getting a decent client list, I found that rather than working less than I used to, I was in fact working much, much, much more.
Although there were some easy weeks, for the three years I freelanced I averaged a 60 hour work week and peaked one horrible, stressful week at just under 90. Admittedly I am what most would call a work-aholic, but even so I suspect that most freelancers work more than they did when they worked as an employee.
And so I thought I’d open up the floor to FSw readers to see if my experience was an anomaly or if most freelancers work harder than they used to. Leave a comment and let me know how you find it, and be sure to vote in the poll!
PS. On a sidenote, have a look at the sexy new PollDaddy skin that I made for FSw today, its erm.. very green 
The Tao of To-Do Lists
by contributor Robert Janelle
Hi, my name is Robert and I am a slacker.
This is a problem, particularly for a freelancer who doesn’t have an angry boss who yells when you’re not working. A few months ago, I realized I need to knock off the bad habits and start becoming more productive.
For me, the first step in slacker rehab was to replace the angry boss with a to-do list.
A list of tasks is simple, yet incredibly powerful. The question, “What should I be doing right now?” is answered by glancing at the list. Get distracted? A look back at the list and you know where you were going.
Plus, there’s the endorphin rush that comes from crossing off tasks as they’re completed. The feeling is even better when you realize there’s nothing left on the list.
Of course, the to-list becomes useless if it’s neglected, like deferring tasks without adding them to a new list list or forgetting to add tasks as they come up. It would be similar to your boss not caring if you finish the project or not.
Dealing with Login Fatigue – How to Make Managing Usernames and Passwords Easier
I love the web and I love computers, but one thing that gets me everytime is remembering what username/email/password combination I used when signing up to something. This is called login-fatigue (actually that is a word I just made up, but I’d like to start a trend so please spread it).
As freelancers we often have more than our fair share of web and productivity applications, from timers to invoicing tools to project management apps, and that can only mean one thing – more logins
Until biometric finger and eye-scanning move out of science fiction and onto your keyboard or systems like OpenID become mainstream, login-fatigue is only going to get worse. So if, like me you are tired of the ache and pain of countless forgotten logins, passwords tied to email addresses that belonged to an old employer or lapsed domain, then read on and give these ideas a try:
