Freelancer’s life is a puzzle. Each day an individual will have to go through surprises, joy, learning, pain, disappointment, growth and the list goes on. Staying motivated and energetic is a tip to solve this. Naturally you ought to develop best practices to reach your benchmark.
Beginning with everyday schedule of a freelancer, it’s certain that his calendar is blocked for the whole day. Human nature is that someone has to keep pushing to do a task, while working as a freelancer from home; you will not have managers or leaders to control you and help you manage the work you do. This sits as a load on the top of the day to day activities and remains a burden. Know that, it’s your responsibility to plan and implement it right. You must maintain a clean slate and reorder your work every time it’s complete.
To help you tackle the solitude, here are some basic rules:
Maintain a work routine:
Make it as a habit to wake up soon daily. We tend to be lazy as we need not report our work and no one watches us. However its important we need to stick to healthy habits, start working as soon as you can. The longer break you take the lesser is the quality you provide to the clients.
Divide the tasks and put them in timeslots. Give yourself a buffer time and finish the task ahead and do a check on the work. When you do work in an orderly manner you will be well engaged and will not know the difficulty of being alone.
Exercises & break time
It’s always a good practice to freshen up mind and body to get new ideas. When you concentrate on a particular subject, sometimes you enter the level of saturation and will not be able to focus. The stress level builds up as you are not in the office oriented environment where people work together with you. It’s obvious that you need some break at that point of time.
Follow some exercises and keep your body fit to rejuvenate your ideas. Take a small walk, make yourself a cup of coffee, and hear some music. This will help clear your mind and reduce stress.
Create a stop line for yourself
Some of the tasks we do might extend late than expected to drive business. It’s because we would not have arrived at the best results. However it’s wise to know when we should really stop working on it. While you spend more time on it, you will lose focus and accumulate stress.
You must always have free time for you to enjoy rest of the things. You need to recover and get your mind filled with other things or you will get burned out and ruin the beautiful things for yourself. The more hours you work at once, the less productive you get. Remember to follow the timeslots created and your own rules on when to start and stop the day at work.
Keep your environment lively
Like i mentioned, the environment is a critical factor affecting one’s mood and the actions caused out of it.
While you work in Office you will have an entire team to take care of yourself and assist you in the job if you are stuck, whereas at home you are the master and the creator of your work. There are a wide range of forums which can guide you solve this. Join in a forum where people of your interest are present. Post your queries and you will get a quick fix.
One of the other reasons of isolation as a freelancer is we keep working from one place. To get a good productivity and be an efficient freelancer you must be able to handle this by,
Often changing the place where you work. Get some fresh air in the mornings and sit on a balcony. Change sceneries in your room to not get bored. Play some mild music and feel fresh. You have the advantage of visiting different states as you can work from home. Make use of the benefits and tackle desolation.
Stay communicated with the loop
You can create your own team of people and can stay connected. You can be relieved to know how far the rest of the people have progressed, what new trends comes in, how people manage their work. This motivation will drive you to work smarter and handle the competitive world.
Spend your leisure time with this group of people you have formed. Meet them for lunch and share your ideas. You can organize events of your own and keep in touch. You will not only support yourselves but all the contributors who undergo the same.
Manage projects you take:
You ought to manage your assignments as they come in. Do not take too many and get cornered to work. As much as staying productive is important, sometimes you just can’t. Taking multiple projects is one of them. This will lower down your spirits and leaves you alone making you to finish the job.
Opportunity keeps knocking for those who can do a neat job. Keep it light and simple so that you have the time to enjoy what you do. It will provoke the passion in you. Building up work will make you stick on it as a result will smash your schedule.
Focus on your personal life
After the long day that you have, do not get influenced to extend more. The bareness of being alone will prolong and make everything incomplete. Remind yourself to breathe and relax. At times like this playing games, working on your hobbies and spending time with your family and friends will polish and make you set for the following day!
The famous poet Wordsworth’s lines come to my mind “I wandered lonely as a cloud… “
When you can find a silver lining by assisting yourself and following some best practices there’s none who will have to survive alone in this world. It’s our perception of looking into things and managing them effectively.
Keep working smart and stay cheerful to develop new products each day..
About K Saravana Kumar
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