Freelancing

Monday Spark: Surprise…you can lift your spirits with structure and self-discipline.

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work scheduleOne of the benefits of being a freelancer is our ability to set our own schedules.

We can do what we want when we want. We can works days, or nights. We can take days off during the week. We are at home for our families. And so on.

Cheerleaders for freelancing spend a lot of time pumping up this aspect of the freelance life. Hey, we can even take our laptops to the beach if we want!

The problem is, being the boss of setting our own schedule and work structure is not the same thing as having NO schedule or work structure.

In fact, floating around without any kind of schedule or discipline usually translates into low productivity and disappointment.

Put another way, having a “good day” and feeling great about ourselves is not driven by having the freedom to do nothing with our time. It’s driven by being productive, doing good work and feeling we have achieved something worthwhile.

So let me repeat…

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Monday Spark: Happiness drives success, not the other way around [VIDEO]

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shawn achor success and happinessAt some point you might have said something like, “Oh man, I’d be happy if I could just pull in an extra $1,000 this month.”

Would that really make you happy? Yes and no. Yes, you would be happy to have achieved your goal. But that state of happiness would pass quickly. By the next day, or week, you’d be worrying about your income for the month ahead.

In other words, the successes you felt when you made the extra $1,000 might have brought you transitory happiness, but didn’t transform you into a happier person.

This is just as true with bigger successes. You might be deliriously happy about bringing in a huge new client. But a week later that state of happiness will likely be replaced with worries about getting all that work done, and how you are going to fit it into your schedule.

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Monday Spark: Yes, you should reinvent the wheel.

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Five people play one guitarIt’s easy to sit in a meeting room on a Friday afternoon and say, “I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here”.

It’s much harder to say, “It’s going to involve working through the weekend, but let’s step back and see if we can be genuinely creative, and come up with an idea that really is new and interesting.”

In other words, the decision not to reinvent the wheel is the easy way out. It’s the lazy way out. It means you can stop thinking, stop worrying about making a mistake, and grab a “proven process” off the shelf.

It’s also a first-class ticket to mediocrity.

Beware anyone who tempts you with a “proven process” or an easy “success formula”.

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Monday Spark: Tips on creativity from John Cleese.

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john cleese on creativityThe video below is an edited version of a longer talk on creativity, given by John Cleese in Belgium. (Remember John Cleese from Monty Python and Faulty Towers?)

Pretty much everything he talks about applies to freelancers like us. Yes, what we do is creative!

I absolutely agree with him about “sleeping on” a problem. I have had the same experience many times. I’m struggling with something in the evening, sleep on it, and then find the answer to the problem is easy to see when I get up the next morning.

But most of all, I like what he said about carving out some space and time…a place where you can be creative. It’s hard or even impossible to be creative when you are being interrupted or distracted.

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Is there a market for more social media experts?

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nick usborne social mediaEvery week I seem to find an article, post or tweet that mocks social media experts.

Granted, most of these pieces are written by social media gurus themselves, who are anxious to separate themselves from this influx of new competitors.

As I say in the video below, there are two sides to this story.

Yes, in one respect these gurus are right. A lot of people claim to be experts, based only on their own, personal familiarity with various social media sites.

But they are also wrong, because there are also plenty of other people who are taking the trouble to dig deeper and learn the skills of true social media marketers.

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Monday Spark: If you had one shot or one opportunity…

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one shot or one opportunityLook, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

These are the opening lines of Eminem’s song, Lose Yourself. You can watch the video of this song below. As you will see, I chose a version that includes the lyrics, so you can read along as he raps.

I don’t listen to a lot of rap, but when I like it, I like it a lot. For me, good rap is poetry turned up loud.

In this song, Eminem talks about how sometimes life hands you an opportunity that is within your grasp now…but will be gone tomorrow.

As a freelancer, you’ll experience these opportunities.

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