Freelance UK:
Freelancers working from home – trouble concentrating?
1) Maximise productivity. Gain an understanding of which tasks you are better performing at certain times of the day and try to establish a routine based around that. You might brainstorm your better ideas at 1am or be better at proofreading your own work first thing in the morning.
2) Reward yourself. Break down big jobs into smaller, more manageable tasks to be completed by certain times and celebrate with a cup of coffee and a biscuit when you achieve those mini-deadlines. Book yourself an afternoon off for when you’ve completed and invoiced this project.
3) Know your ‘distraction enemies’. Switch off your email when you’ve a deadline to meet. Switch your mobile to silent; knowing an unread text message beeped in 10 minutes ago will prove too much to bear. Similarly close down all web browser windows if you find yourself wondering if surfing eBay might prove more entertaining than the job at hand.
4) Open up only the application you need to complete the task to hand.
5) Think of the money. The sooner you complete this task the sooner you can invoice and get on to the next job. Every hour where distraction wins is money lost.
6) Set your alarm an hour earlier. If you’re up against it, springing out of bed on a mission could break the back of the most of seemingly impossible deadlines.
7) Start in the middle if getting going is proving hard work. So do the easy bits where you have an immediate answer to the brief and work towards the harder elements of the job as you go on. This is a better way of ‘warming up’ than endlessly sharpening pencils, getting your desk ready, shuffling paper in anticipation of starting etc..
8) Schedules and Lists. Organise yourself by thinking through what information you need to complete the project before you start and feel the achievement each time you tick a stage off your schedule or ‘to do’ list. Commit yourself to the schedule by faxing it to the client so they know when they will be seeing stages of your work.
9) One freelancer who works on Freelance UK admitted to talking to a furry penguin whenever ‘creative block’ stumps him. He explains that talking out loud about the problem can help him understand the issues better and therefore find a solution. We just think he’s a bit weird.
10) If you’re really struggling, down tools and go for a brisk walk around the block.
Email editor@freelanceuk.com if you have any other suggestions for fellow freelancers and we'll publish them soon.
