Why Freelancers Have a Tendency To Never Get Work Done
- April 4th, 2011
- Articles
This is a short but sweet straight to the point article regarding reasons why freelancers get distracted from their day to day workflow, and are unable to work to the best of their ability. Alongside some simple solution to prevent distractions.
Reading too much web and design blogs
One of my personal biggest distractions seems to be spending a lot of my time reading web and design blogs. I have a large list of RSS feeds I’m subscribed to which means opening my RSS feed in the morning can be a very daunting task. Reading hundreds of various design blogs which I’m currently subscribed to can be a very time consuming wasting a lot of valuable time, which could be spent working on various projects I am currently undertaking.
My solution to not spending too much time reading blogs in the morning. I downloaded an android RSS feed app which allows me to read my RSS feed on my mobile portably, which means I could spend time reading my RSS feed on the night time in bed or just before working in the morning from my phone.
I love twitter it’s rare for me not to even go a day without out catching up on what’s happening on twitter. If your are anything like me I’m sure your guilty of having tweet deck, tweety or some sort twitter application running in the background as you work. As you get those little twitter alerts popping up throughout the day it really can disturb your work flow, because your spending valuable time throughout the day reading, tweeting and replying to tweets.
My solution when I’m ready to get down to some serious work I just closed down tweet deck a simple solution. An alternative solution which I find works really well is to slow down the time duration for when twitter updates alerts occur, so rather than every 3 minutes being alerted of new twitter updates I’ve changed it so I only received new updates every 30 minutes.
Spending too much time in the email inbox
Most freelancers’ potential new clients are contact then through email and most communication to clients is through email, therefore an awful lot of time is spent in the email inbox which is a huge time waster in my eyes.
My solution is when i received emails from new clients enquiring about hiring me for a design project i have generic email response which I will send to them, which is basically telling them prices and addition information about the service I will offer them. I have various Email ready email responses to send based on the email. This is a huge time saver because its means I don’t end up sending 3 to 5 of the similar emails though out the same week.
YouTube
YouTube has so many videos and I’m sure whatever your hobbies are theirs videos which your be interested within. YouTube is a big distraction to me because once I watch one video there’s usually another good related video which I’m interested within watching.
My solution is i only watch YouTube during my lunch break restricting the time use or watching videos in bed on my mobile phone.
Wrapping up..
There so many distractions which can disrupt your workflow it’s important to keep focused upon the tasks which are needed to be done. The internet can be one the biggest resources for a freelancer and at the same time can be one of the largest distractions. It’s important to find a good balance how you can do stuff online which you enjoy while working on freelancing projects at the same time.
