Being your own boss has its privileges. You can set your own hours and work from home in your pajamas while watching movies in the background.
The freelancing trend is catching on. More than half the U.S. labor force works as a freelancer.
But it’s hard to stay driven when working freelance. The opportunities to procrastinate are too frequent.
Check out this guide to using accountability to stay at the top of your game as a freelancer.
Table of Contents
Don’t Be Wasteful
Time is money. There’s no time this is truer than when working as a freelancer.
Don’t be wasteful of your time when working as a freelancer by setting a daily schedule. Most of us are creatures of habit.
Setting a fixed schedule every day helps us get into a routine of productivity. Use a focus timer or time card calculator to keep you accountable throughout the day.
Focus timers allow you to set a timer for each task you need to complete during the day. There’s a built-in break between each task to keep you organized.
Outside of digital timers, whiteboards are also helpful. Add a daily task list with checkboxes so you can track your progress.
Seeing the checkboxes is motivation to get more done. The trick is to limit the number of items on your list to match a typical workday.
Allowing your list to pile up can make your goals seem unachievable. We often procrastinate when our task list seems impossible.
Pacing your tasks throughout the week helps you avoid procrastination. Slow and steady wins the race.
Don’t Be Helpful
Can you take me to the airport? No.
Can you stop by my house to water my plants while I’m out of town? No.
It may seem like you’re being inflexible, but saying no to the random requests of friends and family is the first step to success as a freelancer. Working for yourself doesn’t mean you don’t have a job.
Your time is just as valuable as anyone with full-time in-house work. Stop trying to help everyone with daytime errands.
Practice saying no unless it’s a major emergency. Small errands don’t seem like a big idea until the unexpected happens.
A major traffic jam turns a 15-minute errand into an hour-long excursion. You lose a friend’s house keys and spend the afternoon trying to retrace your steps through the subway because she doesn’t have a replacement.
Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Treat your freelance job like any job you’d have in a corporate office.
Set business hours and only agree to personal errands at the end of the workday.
Don’t Be Social
Social media is a drug. Well, not really but studies have shown that Dopamine plays a huge role in why we can’t put our smartphones down.
A Harvard study reveals that the pleasure of social media is on par with sex, working out or eating a delicious meal. If you wouldn’t do any of these in a traditional job, it’s inappropriate to do them as a freelancer.
Put your phone on silent during the workday. Log out of your social media accounts to put one additional step between you and your timelines.
Your brain will thank you for avoiding early celebrating. Let social media be the reward of a hard day’s work.
Rewarding yourself for not working can actually have an adverse effect. You are training your brain that spending more time away from work brings pleasure.
To form good habits, you want your brain to associate positive emotions with productivity. Also, social media isn’t the only culprit.
Email, texts, and other types of digital socializing all have the same effect. It’s best to turn off your email so you don’t receive alerts while working.
Check-in with your employer or client on breaks if you need to.
Don’t Be a Workaholic
Checking tasks off your to-do list can give you a rush. That feeling of pride in your accomplishments when you thought it couldn’t be done.
But when the to-do list is done, it’s time to close up shop. Don’t try to get ahead by putting in more hours.
The same is true if you’ve fallen behind. You may be tempted to punish yourself by staying up later to meet your goals.
But this isn’t always effective. The quality of your work goes down when your body is fatigued.
Giving your body ample to time recharge is important to accomplishing your goals for the next day. You’ll avoid sabotaging your future schedule and ensuring your mind is sharp when starting up new tasks.
You might also be surprised that sleep allowed you to find a way to finish a leftover task faster than when you attempted it at the end of the workday.
Don’t Be Transient
Get good at what you’re doing before hopping from one freelance gig to another. There’s no substitute for experience.
Experience with one freelance role gives you valuable insight into how your schedule should be set up each day. It helps you learn how to troubleshoot to become more efficient.
There’s so many freelance opportunities available that it’s hard not to be swayed by gigs claiming to offer double or triple your current earnings. But there’s no guaranteed money in freelancing.
The best way to maximize your value as a freelancer is to become an expert in your current role. If you’re set on having more than one freelance role, wait until you are twice as efficient at your job before leaving.
If you can spend half the day earning your goal, the second half can be spent learning a new role.
Stay Driven to Succeed
There are few ways to stay in control of your work schedule outside of freelancing. Small business owners often have to manage employees and contractors throughout the day.
They are the first and last line of defense for any problem. But freelancers are only responsible for themselves.
There is no storefront or investors to worry about. Freelancers can stay driven by simply managing their time like pros.
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