My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [74]
HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE “AFTER WORK.” You may have heard it said that the freelancer with a full day’s worth of work is far more productive than the freelancer with just a couple hours of to-do’s on her plate. It’s true that nothing gets you cranking like knowing that another task needs finishing before the day’s out. On the flip side, nothing breeds “it took me twelve hours to do a three-hour gig” syndrome like having too little to do. My suggestion to those still building up their workload: Make plans to meet a friend, run an errand, or get some exercise at the end of the day so your afternoon has a finite cap on it.
PRETEND IT’S SATURDAY. I used to love working on Saturdays because my phone wouldn’t ring and my inbox wouldn’t ding. For me, the day is pretty much distraction-free. Then it dawned on me: I was working on Saturdays. So rather than eliminate distractions by working through the weekend, I do my best to eliminate them Monday through Friday and save Saturdays at “the office” for emergencies.
When I’m on deadline, I can’t have the TV on, my best friend from high school IMing me, or my email chiming every five minutes. Even my cell phone vibrating stresses me out. Same goes for the dog pacing around my office. So I close and unplug everything I can, and I kick everyone out. I encourage anyone who might need me to email rather than call. I’ll still check the ole inbox several times during the day (or leave email on but set to mute if I’m expecting an important message), but unless it’s pressing, don’t expect to hear back from me until the end of the day.
As for the Internet, that’s a toughie. If you’re a wordsmith, designer, or developer, you’re probably accustomed to researching as you work—the correct spelling of “mnemonic,” the HTML code for magenta. I’m sure you’ve noticed, though, that when you hit Pause on your concentration to Google something, it takes a few seconds to figure out what the heck you were just doing and ease back into the project on your plate (if you succumbed to the siren call of YouTube along the way, make that a few minutes—or hours). So whenever possible, I try to plow ahead with my assignment sans Internet, stick an “X” where any missing details need to go, and fact-check later. In the words of Guardian writer Tim Dowling, working with your web browser open is “really a question of whether the time saved outweighs the time you spend watching a YouTube video of a monkey drinking its own pee.”
FORGET EXTRA CREDIT. I understand wanting to knock every job you do for a client out of the ballpark. But interviewing seven sources instead of the one the client requested or creating five different versions of the home page for them to choose from instead of the two they asked for is way over the top. Besides driving your price-per-hour down with all that additional work, your excesses will likely go unnoticed by the client (unless you actually turn in all your extra work, giving your client more content to wade through, which they’re not likely to appreciate).
Now before you tell me you’re no extra credit junkie, track a handful of your projects with MyHours.com or your tool of choice. Break down your work on each project by steps (research, execution, revisions, and so on). If you’re doing fifteen hours of research for a $500 project that takes five hours to draft, draw, or otherwise produce, you’re probably an extra credit junkie. (Take it from one in recovery.) As they say in Hollywood, stop