Day 12: Good Advice

by ashleighpenrod

I’ve been freelancing for a little less than two weeks and I’ve already learned some very good lessons.

If you freelance or work from home, here is a list of suggestions for you:

1. Don’t wait until you think you might be leaving your office/apartment/dwelling to brush your teeth. The reality is that you might not leave at all, so you’ll end up brushing your teeth twice at 11 p.m. just to meet your daily quota. You most likely don’t have dental insurance, so this is an important point.

2. Waking up and heading straight to the computer is a bad idea. Wake up and take a moment. Grab a glass of water. Change into your yoga pants. Brush your teeth.

3. Eat something. Anything. Four cups of tea into the day, you might not feel hungry, but your delirious and semi-angry emails to people you don’t know will say otherwise.

4. Take advantage of the flexible schedule. Now that you can work at night instead of in the morning, don’t blow off the morning dance/yoga/insert-your-own-passion-here class you always used to miss. Get your butt out of bed, brush your teeth and go!

5. Don’t ever turn down a coffee or beer date. If someone wants to hang out with you, immediately say, “Yes. WHEN?” Your daily interaction with Brian Boitano will not be enough to satisfy your very basic need to be around others.

6. Don’t depend on your mail carrier to hang out and talk to you.

7. Before you spend 30 minutes blowing up your fit ball so you can work and develop killer alignment at the same time, make sure it’s the right height for your desk. If not, you will get really excited only to sit down and find your keyboard at eye-level.

8. Make yourself some reasonable short-term goals and then chill out. Not sure what you’ll be doing a month from now? It’s okay. Right now, you’re probably just hungry.