What is it like to be a Freelancer?

Read this before you quit your job and start working as a full-time freelancer.

When you are working in a 9-5 job, the freelancing landscape may appear to be greener. With freelancing, you can enjoy flexible work timings, design your own schedule, and get an opportunity to interact directly with your clients. In a nutshell, you get to decide and choose everything you would want to do and how to do it. Nevertheless, there are some prospects that you require to consider before you quit your job and get on board with freelancing.

• Time Management:
  Most freelancers find time management to be quite a challenge. Since there is no proper schedule or time you require to adhere, you may end up wasting your time and regretting it later. Therefore, you require a ton of self-discipline and tools to manage time-management better. You can also go to coffee shops or cafés and work there. This will lead to minimum distraction.

• Schedule: Selecting and organizing a schedule is critical. Since there are no fixed timings, it is easy to lose focus and work 24x7. Schedule breaks in between days or take one day off or two if you really want it. You have to be able to organize and correctly define your day so that you can work systematically and efficiently.

• Structure: Keep a well-defined structure in mind. Draw a line between your personal and professional life especially in the communication domain. For example, if you use WhatsApp, keep that only for personal use. You can install and direct your clients to another social networking app. Keep things in one place. It is easier said than done but in the long-term, it will help you establish a particular structure and system in place. A system keeps things organized. From time to time, take a look at the structure in place and ask yourself whether you could do what you are doing more effectively.

• Money: - Don’t be caught up under the impression that you will be making loads of money when you start off. In the first year, you must establish yourself and your work ethic. Everything requires to be in order. Whatever opportunity or client projects you get, pick them up and execute them properly. It may seem like a one-time thing, but you may never know if the client would come back with a bigger project. Drop the idea that you will have a constant inflow of money all the time and instead, embrace the idea that money will be fluctuating, and your income will solely depend on you. You have to get clients, ask for payments, request feedback, improve your game and work at it before you can earn loads of money.

• Interested vs Committed: If you are choosing to freelance only because you want to get out of the 9-5 work routine, then you are choosing freelancing on the wrong grounds. Only and only choose freelancing if you are committed to it long before you even start it. Just a misconception-based interest in freelancing won’t ever help you. It will make things difficult. If you are passionate or willing to commit 100 percent of your time and energy to freelancing, you may go ahead and get into it. There is no real happiness in half-hearted work.

These are some factors that you would need to consider before joining the freelancing world. Above all, before taking a plunge, have a clear idea whether freelancing would really make you happy and whether you would want to pursue it as a full-time earning opportunity.

Thanks for reading.

Good Luck!