To be honest, I am not usually one for New Year’s resolutions. I know that making a resolution will usually result in a month of virtue followed by 11 months of mentally berating myself for not sticking with something.
However, I decided to try and look at New Year’s resolutions in a more positive light in terms of my work. I thought I would see if New Year’s resolutions could be something more than a miserable and short-lived post-Christmas diet and in fact something to help me develop my business. For a start, just thinking about my freelance New Year’s resolutions was actually a really good reminder that as a freelancer it is up to me to develop my own business, and that is in fact one of the reasons I became freelance in the first place. Often for freelancers the day-to-day grind and mad scramble for work can leave us plodding along without actually aiming for anything specific or developing in a focused way.
So, with that in mind, these are what I have come up with. I’d be really interested to hear what your freelance New Year’s resolutions are too.
Keep freelancing: First and foremost my aim this year is to stay freelance. By all doom-mongering accounts I have picked a fine year to do it, eh? Still, despite the future financial Armageddon of which we shall speak no more (fingers in ears, I’m not listening!), I plan to work as hard as possible this year to stay freelance.
Take advantage of being freelance: Don’t worry I’m not about to start taking advantage by ripping people off. No, what I mean by this is that I will be reminding myself of the reasons I became freelance – flexibility, escape from the nine to five, varied workload, being my own boss – and then actually doing those things. It’s all too easy to end up staring at a screen all day without reaping the benefits of freelancing which motivated us in the first place. To get off to a good start I attended an 11am tap dancing class today. On a weekday! I wonder if my fellow tappers were all hedonistic freelancers as well… Can we let the fact that my morning tap will mean working well past 8pm slide for now and chalk it up as a victory for flexible working just this once?
Tart up the CV: As an employee, CV tinkering, pruning and polishing were regular pastimes of mine. As a freelancer keeping my CV in tip-top shape has gone a bit by the wayside. It’s easy for freelancers to forget about keeping CVs and portfolios ready to send out at a freelance role advertisement’s notice. This year my CV will be getting refreshed regularly with perhaps a course here and a portfolio update there.
Do something new: I started out freelancing to do more varied work so it is about time I started doing the varying a little more adventurously. I am not about to veer off into offering freelance dog grooming services on the side or anything like that. However, approaching new clients slightly off the usual beaten path, developing my writing in a new subject area or pitching to some publications that I really admire and haven’t dared approach yet should provide a new challenge for 2009.
So, will you be making any freelance New Year’s resolutions this year or is it just a load of old twaddle for people who don’t discipline themselves very well for the rest of the year?
Editor: You can talk to Sarah on the forum here.
Jan 7, 2009
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