Are you emotionally suited to be a freelancer?
Time to read: 3 minutes
Our new content creator, and sax enthusiast, Sandra Vogel looks at the attributes you need to sustain a life as a freelancer.
they may not look like self starters, but when that postman comes…
Freelancing doesn’t suit everybody, but it sure suits me. I’ve been freelance for 20 years and can’t imagine working any other way. But it’s not for everyone. You know those buzzwords – highly motivated, self-starter, flexible attitude. Well, they apply to freelancing big time.
Highly motivated
Um – yep. Motivated to sit at the computer when the sun is out, the sky is blue, there’s a deadline to meet, a client call to take, and a couple of pitches to get in. Well, that’s one way of looking at ‘highly motivated’. And there are times when it most certainly applies.
However, there are other ways to look at motivation. I’m motivated to make as much of my free time as possible. That means there are times when I can – and do – drop everything and get outside on a weekday to have fun. The trick is keeping that motivation in line with working. That does take a particular personality type. It’s the type who can manage their time well, not be too ambitious about what can be achieved in a couple of hours, and ensure that time is allocated to fun as well as work.
If that means being motivated to work on Saturday morning to free up a Thursday afternoon, so be it.
Self-starter
People often see this as synonymous with motivation. In fact, it is different. A self-starter just gets on with stuff. They’re the opposite of the procrastinator who always looks for reasons NOT to do things. The procrastinator says, ‘Oh, I won’t write this blog today, because I’ve got a slot in the diary tomorrow’. The self-starter says ‘if I write this blog today then that diary slot tomorrow will stay free, and I can do something fun in that time.’
Self-starters have initiative, and they make things happen. Importantly, they don’t walk away when things get tricky. That’s a really important personality trait for anyone who wants to be a freelancer. There’s no manager sitting nearby to provide feedback that you’re doing OK, or give pointers if you’re not doing OK. You just have to figure it out.
Being a self-starter shows itself in all kinds of things, not just hunkering down to tasks in the diary. It also applies to bigger-picture stuff like hunting down new potential clients, following up on possible work leads. Even having a view of the universe and where you want to be in it, and then working out how to get there.
But being a self-starter also means doing things that might not feel very exciting, but that nobody else can do for you. There’s nobody around me to say ‘Sandra, I think it’s time you filed your tax return and updated your CV’. But when these things have to be done, they must be done.
Flexible attitude
I’d say this is a vital attribute for any freelancer. I’m a pretty controlled kind of person. I like checklists, and I like to have things planned out. Most days I sit down to work knowing what will happen during the day. I also want to have my week planned out fairly fine. Fridays are important and different from the other days of the week. I don’t like having meetings on a Friday, and I usually have no work scheduled after noon. The last work thing I do on a Friday is plan the following week.
How is that flexible? Well, while the aim is to take Friday afternoon off, it’s also ‘available’. So, Friday afternoon is a bucket that work can slip into if necessary. It might slip into the bucket because schedules have overrun. Maybe a client has come up with something for me to do on a short deadline. Or, because Wednesday afternoon was beautiful and I went out for a bike ride, everything in the diary was pushed ahead half a day.
Being relaxed and able to handle stress
A freelancer has to be good at that. There are often multiple demands on my time, and only I can decide the best way to resolve them. So, when two clients want something done right now and I must negotiate a way through that, I need to be calm and considered. When my computer decides to give up working and I’ve no spare, I just have to handle it. When something comes up that takes me away from work unexpectedly, I need to handle both the work and the out-of-work situation equally well.
Like I said at the start, the life of a freelancer isn’t for everyone. But if the cap does fit, it’s a great way to make a living. I’ve worked with some wonderful people (and my current Comms Crowd colleagues are among the best of all), done work I’ve really enjoyed, and spent more weekday afternoons in the cinema than I probably have a right to. What’s not to like?
