A round-up of simple ways for freelancers to stay on their A-game: from making the bed every morning to downloading a background noise app…
A common question I get asked as a freelancer is “how do you stay motivated?” and it’s a good one. Sure, being your own boss is great and a five second commute to a home office has its perks, but it also requires serious dedication and focus. Admittedly it’s not always easy, so I’ve rounded up some simple tips for staying ‘in the zone’. And they don’t just apply to freelance writers, but anyone who works remotely. So please read, get motivated and get your butts to work!
1. Make your bed every morning
Let’s start with this from Admiral William McRaven, author of “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe The World”:
“The idea of making the bed is it’s the same sense of discipline. It’s the same sense that you’re going to get up and do something, but it’s an easy task to undertake. You roll out of bed, you just put your bed, you make it straight. Again, you get it right, too. It’s not just about kind of throwing the covers over the pillow. It’s about making your bed right and walking away and going, “OK, that’s good. That looks good. I’m, as simple as it sounds, I’m proud of this little task I did.” And that is really what I think sets the tone for the rest of the day.” - source: uk.businessinsider.com
2. Get ready. Even if you don’t plan to leave the house!
If you really are set to work from home all day, it might be tempting to simply roll out of bed and straight onto your laptop, bed hair still in tow. But ‘getting ready’ has more psychological benefits than it’s perhaps given credit for. Not much makes me feel more ready for the day than choosing an outfit, getting dressed, brushing my hair through and putting my face on (except maybe coffee). Different things work for different people of course, i.e. you don’t have to put makeup on. It’s simply the psychology of getting ‘ready’ for the day. If your body is still in your pj’s, your mind will be too.
3. Reflect on each day
Make a note of how you feel after a productive day and after an unproductive one! Getting things done can make you feel accomplished, relaxed and deserving of reward. Yet a day of procrastination and distractions can spark feelings of stress, regret and inability to unwind. Look back on what you’ve achieved at the end of each day and write it down along with how you feel. Leave the notes somewhere around your workstation ready for the next day, it will remind you that productivity leads to positivity and vice versa. Now that’s the kind of cycle to get yourself stuck in.
4. Keep a tick-list
Don’t put too much time into it, or it may become more procrastination than productivity, but keep a simple tick-list of everything you need to get done; work, emails, errands, chores, texting your bff back, the lot! Everything you tick off is another achievement, but be sure to prioritise and not leave the big tasks until last; it’s often tempting to do the small, less important things first, but if you get them all done it can feel like an excuse to put the big things off for another day. Use the smaller tasks to break the heftier ones up, you’ll be surprised at how much you can get done in a day.
5. Stay in a routine (including taking breaks!)
Set your alarm for the same time each morning and GET THE HELL UP. It’s tempting not to when you’re the only one watching the clock, but work is work. Get up, have breakfast, get ready and be at your desk by 9am (or 8.30am, or 8am). Breaks ARE allowed and are important for concentration; have your coffee at 11am and take yourself away from your desk for five minutes, take some time out for lunch - find what works for you and stick to it as often as you can.
6. Use your breaks to exercise
Exercise is great for clearing the mind, re-fuelling focus levels and maintaining energy, so I try to go for a walk or a run around lunchtime (even if just for 10 minutes) and eat when I get back. On the days I plan to run, I put my exercise gear on first thing so I’m ready to just go. It makes me less likely to duck out and means it takes even less time out of the day. If you’re not a runner (trust me, I hardly am) then a brisk walk in the fresh air will do the trick. Mental and physical well-being? Check!
7. Embrace a change of scenery
Lacking focus? Get out of the house. I prefer to work with some “buzz” going on around me, which you just don’t get in the comfort of your own home, so I often sneak out to a coffee shop with free WiFi to give myself a change of atmosphere. It works like a charm every time. But pick somewhere that suits you; if you prefer quiet, find your local library. Like your own space? Find out if anyone you know could do with a free house sitter. If it’s warm and sunny (and WiFi isn’t strictly necessary), take yourself out to a park and drown out the world around you. There are plenty of options, it’s just finding what works best for you.
8. Download a ‘background noise’ app
It’s twenty-eighteen, there are a plethora of apps out there that offer various background noises depending on what gets your head down and your mind focused. From the serene sounds of the ocean to the bustling buzz of city transport or just simple white noise, there are plenty of options. My favourite (not surprisingly) is Coffitivity, which turns your home office into a virtual coffee shop. To really set the atmosphere, I connect the app to a wireless speaker and place it elsewhere in the room. It works better than you might think. Small, black Americano please barista! Oh, wait…
9. Do it for the love
Of course you need to have money on your mind to an extent (we’ve all got bills to pay), but if it’s your key motivator you may end up lacking focus and creativity, especially in the early stages as you’re building up your portfolio. Try not to get stuck into churning out content for peanuts and focus your time on projects that excite you. I mean, don’t snuff every smaller opportunity - just weigh up if the money is worth your time and if the work will be a welcome addition to your portfolio. The trick is patience; quantity is a slow earner, quality is what will pay in the long run (and you’ll have more fun doing it!)
10. Just Keep Writing (or whatever you’re doing!)
My last tip is really an extension of number nine; just keep writing. If you’ve got a slow day or two with not much on, just write for the fun of it. You could keep your own blog or find out if any of your contacts want a contributing post, schedule yourself some social media content for the next few weeks or simply note down some new feature ideas and start pitching away. Read newspapers, magazines and blogs galore for inspiration, just remember you’re still at work. It’s easy for those empty days to become an impromptu 'day off’ but in any other job someone will always find you something to do. The same goes for us freelancers, only we have to find it for ourselves.
So there you have it, 10 simple things that keep me going day-to-day, I hope it’s been useful. I would love to hear how you keep yourself motivated when working from home. Comment below and let’s continue to support each other on our freelance ventures!
These are great tips for anyone working from home.
you can be racist to people of any skin colour. dont let tumblr tell you otherwise
I’ve heard some otherwise very nice people tell me that it’s impossible to be racist against white people. Then, as we’re watching commercials, the nightly news, random YouTube videos … you name it … they’ll start calling people “vanilla”, “cream”, and other slurs. If we flip the script for a second and white people were referring to Chinese people as “bananas”, “lemons”, etc., you don’t think Tumblr would descend upon them and label them racist?
As a POC female, I believe none of us are exempt from the consequences of bad behavior. Using a history of oppression to justify the right to bigotry and racism is the height of hypocrisy.
Hi. I’m a teen. A Pakistani Muslim teen raised by Pakistani Muslim feminist parents. I am a Pakistani girl privileged enough to be born to a family that can afford to send me to an American school, and a family that believes their only daughter is worth a thousand sons. A few years ago, I realised there was a name for the notions I was raised with: feminism. I found feminism on the internet, in cheery pink-hued articles that told me I was beautiful, that I could do anything a man could do, that my body wasn’t something to be objectified.
And while these twee posts were enough to quench my thirst, in time I began to hunger for something more. I found essays on the evils of manspreading, mansplaining, and cis straight white men. This was feminism, then? The idea that men were in fact, inferior to women? I found this belief in webcomics, listicles, joke sites, even TV shows. In comment sections I watched battles unfold: how dare a man suggest these mentalities are toxic? How dare a woman agree with him?
On twitter I’d find women sharing anecdotes about Joe from work, who’d sit sprawled across his chair in a show of dominance, and how in doing that Joe was an oppressor. How the old white man across the street was probably a racist misogynist homophobic Nazi because he was white. How they were oppressed because the man in the meeting talked over them.
Here’s the thing about that. You are not silenced because a man dared to interrupt you. You are not objectified because a man had the audacity to hold a door open for you. You are not oppressed. You are not oppressed.
Spend a day with me. Walk the streets with me. I’ll show you what oppression is. It is a father forcing his daughter to cover her head, instilling in her a hatred for her religion. It is the teenage girl crying tears of mascara as she is escorted to her marriage and given into the hands of her betrothed. It is the transgender woman fearing for her safety because she lives in a country of homophobes.
Suppression is the woman whose husband forbids her from having a life outside her married one. Objectification is the girl sold as a sex slave because her family couldn’t pay their debts. It is not a man beating a woman in a foot race or performers at a strip show. Accompany me to rural Kashmir, where it’s commonplace for girls to be married off at ten, eleven years old. To the village from where our cleaner hails, where the bodies of young women wash up on the shores of the canal.
Talk about how Dave from IT mansplained programming to you to the women who never received an education because their fathers believed it unnecessary for them. Discuss internalised misogyny with the girl who has to listen to people telling her that her brothers are worth more than her. Please try. Debate the gender binary with my parents, who took years of garbage from relatives and friends on why they chose to have a single daughter.
Nobody forced you to get married at fourteen. Nobody told you that you weren’t worth sending to school because bearing children was all you were good for. You never saw the corpses of murdered girls floating in the canal. You are lucky enough to never have to experience that. You are not oppressed. This is not something to be ashamed of. Please be thankful for it. Please know that there are women in the world who would die to be where you are now. You are not oppressed.
Because look at you. You are educated, you were allowed to thrive, you can do what you like to do. Nobody views you as a unit. When you were born, they were just glad they had a baby; they didn’t care about your gender. Growing up, you had access to all the same privileges as boys. Don’t forget that.
I am not oppressed. I am educated in a country where 62% of illiterate children are girls. My father never forced me to cover my head, or stopped me from having friends of the opposite sex. My mother never told young tomboyish me to be more ladylike. I attend a private school, and I have a college fund. I am privileged, and I am not ashamed, but I want to help women in my country. I aim to be a politician or a journalist and use my platform to speak about women’s issues. Someday, I will make a change. And you can too.
I have had it with people saying you can’t enjoy something that doesn’t ‘belong’ to your culture. Apparently you’re racist if you’re a white girl dressing up as Tiana for comic con. Or if you’re wanting to adapt a story from China into a blockbuster movie. Or if you’re trying to cook an ethnic meal even if you have no experience. Because according to Tumblr (and alarmingly a lot of colleges) it’s ‘culture appropriation’ to even be curious about another country. Seriously. I had to write a paper to explain that you can still enjoy Mexican food even if you’re not from Mexico. And people argued with me. My professor argued with me! They all claimed that if you enjoy food from other cultures that you were stealing from that culture! Really?
I see this kind of attitude all the time about media too. Like, people flip out when they see a black girl playing Eponine from Les Miserables. Or when a predominately white school is performing The Wiz. People just jump into blind hate and claim that these performers are racists… but most of the time these performers are doing a role or a show because they love it. Because they connect with it in some way.
Here’s a quote we all need to read:
“You don’t need to be the same ethnicity as the story you’re watching in order to identify with it. If the story is told well. It [a good story] is about relating to people that you may not necessarily think you’re going to relate to in the beginning, but by the end you’re going ‘That’s me.’ ”
The guy who wrote In The Heights and Hamilton, which did WONDERS in including people of all different ethnicities in mainstream musicals. AND in the interview he said that he was inspired from when he saw Fiddler on the Roof when he was six years old. Even though he was Puerto Rican and the show was about Jews and Russia- he related to the story about the sacrifices you make for your family. Because that’s something that everyone can relate to.
In other words, a good story can speak to anyone regardless of culture and that’sokay!
It’s okay for a Japanese cast to perform In The Heights. It’s okay for an African American to play Éponine in Les Miserables. It’s okay for people to adapt a J-Pop song into English. And it’s okay for a predominately white school to perform Hamilton or The Wiz.
If people are doing something because they genuinely love it, then there is nothing wrong with that. And this applies to everything!!!
If you’re a white girl wanting to wear dreads in your hair because you think it looks cool- GO FOR IT!If you’re a Korean man who loves listening to Latin music-GREAT! If you’re an Irish kid obsessed with learning Japanese- AWESOME! If you’re British and want to try out for Hamilton- NICE! If you’re an African American who jams out to K-Dramas- SWEET!If you’re an American who has moved to South Africa because you want to learn more about local tribes- THAT’S SO COOL!
Look:
People shouldn’t be guilt tripped into staying in their own cultural norms. I hate it when people say “you can’t enjoy this thing because it belongs to another culture.”
Doesn’t that sound a bit racist? Scratch that. IT SOUNDSA LOT RACIST!
Yo, I can kinda see where the anger comes from. I know there are people who claim to know a lot about a different culture… when they obviously don’t by their actions or mistreatment to those who actually belong to that culture. But there is a HUGE difference between those who are being “entitled” and those who just haven’t learned enough yet. Learning about a different culture takes time! Man, it takes several years just to learn a different language. Much more to learn about social norms and values.
And if they get a few things wrong… for crying out loud, show some mercy! No one is perfect. Stop with the “all or nothing” mentality. Show some compassion for those who genuinely want to know more about your amazing heritage/culture.
Because most of the time these people are trying their best to learn! In fact, 99% of the time, they’re self conscious because they know they are an outsider to your thing. But you can teach them. Share your culture. Let it thrive! Give people a chance! If you treat outsiders harshly for learning and enjoying your culture, then you’re harming your own representation.
