Five Tips for a Successful Home Office Career
Only freelancers can easily admit how difficult another freelancer (most especially writers/bloggers and developers) area of freelancing is like. While others might view them from a different perspective as lazy set of people who are on pajamas all day and covering their status of unemployed by saying I work from home.
Well, that’s their own point of view. But their is a way to prove them wrong and that is by being successful in your freelancing. Personally, what they think doesn’t bother me because I am in no competition with anyone. I have my goals and stick to my priorities. So I have put together five tips that can also make you successful as you choose to Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) rather than building someone else dream and still earn peanuts.
Tip 1: Take your job seriously
When you take what you do seriously people around will adjust to seeing it as a serious business too. Develop that mindset of being in an office-office and follow through with activities that yield good results. By this I mean you should turn off the TV, no music except you are a fiction writer and need cool tune to put you in the mode of what you are writing otherwise music could also be a source distraction making you spend hours on topics that isn’t suppose to exceed few minutes of your time.
Tip 2: Dress and be smart
Try at all time to dress and be smart because on this area some people go insane for isolating themselves for so long. The problem is they just don’t care anymore to the point were people who come visiting or the UPS/DHL man will most times see them in their pajamas. Make out time to go out during the day or weekends either with clients or friends to keep the right mindset.
Tip 3: Families and friends shouldn’t get in-between your productive hours
Yes, it easy for people to come visit you with or without prior notice (especially for people like us in Nigeria) compare to when you are in an office-offfice. In that case you need to apply the office principal for non profit discussion by getting them on their feet and straight to the point why they came visiting. If possible while you guys are still standing at the door. Chances are they will never show up again without prior notice when you keep them on their feet as a sign of you’re busy.
Tip 4: Stick to your to-do list
Without to-do list a day before (believe me) you might be so disorganized doing just anything that comes you way. Make plans for your tomorrows activities by drafting a to-do list. After that you will need to follow through not by doing easy things first or difficult things first. But by doing first things first.
Tip 5: More of income producing activities
No matter how many hours you spend freelancing daily, if you are not doing more productive activities then you are wasting you time. I will simply say look for a job and forget about BYOB. You need to always prioritize income producing activities in your to-do list (as explained in tip 4 above) and do them first. Not going about doing follow up on social media and later on check other friends and family status updates which is just one of the things that could distract you out there.
In all these tips given above if you are not a good writer, developer or whatever area you work on, you probably need to improve yourself first and then put off the TV when you are good to go as your own boss.
