5 Tips to Improve Your Freelance Lifestyle

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Life as a freelance creative definitely has its perks. Being self employed means you get to do what you want when you want right? Well this is not really the case. A freelance lifestyle requires a lot of time and dedication towards the work you do and it can often be challenging to get everything done. The following tips will hopefully help you improve your freelance lifestyle and give you ideas on how to make things run smoother and more efficient when it comes to your freelance career.

Create do-able to-do Lists

Only include your most important tasks and rank them by what needs to get done first. By creating a to-do list that is actually possible to complete, you will feel more accomplished. This is because you will be able to cross things off and won’t constantly have a list chock full of things you need to be doing. You can write or create this list on a piece of paper, in an agenda, on an app, or whatever you think would work best for you.

Do Quick Financial Checks

Whether it’s once a day, or once a week, a quick check to make sure your finances are in order will make you feel much more in control of your business, sales, and revenue. Whether it’s calling a client to check about their unpaid invoice, or cashing checks, any small financial actions done daily will help you avoid a pile up.

Don’t be Afraid to Say No

This will save you time and energy when you eliminate projects you feel will not help you grow. By setting limits and scaling down your work, you will decrease your stress, and will have time to focus on the important projects, rather than making yourself crazy over a ton of not very significant projects. This means your work on larger projects will be higher quality which will get you more work in the future. People will appreciate your attention to detail and time spent on the project you choose to complete. Evaluating your commitments and cutting back on only a few things can allow for an amazing sense of relief and satisfaction.

Attempt to Reduce Expenses

Create a list with all your expenses, once you have this list see where you can cut back. Keeping a small lean list of expenses means you have to do less work to cover these expenses. For example, making your own coffee in the morning rather than buying a cup at your local cafe, can save you over $20 a week. Any little thing added or removed can make a big difference in your total expenses.

Make Sure You are Easily Found

As a freelance creative you should create a brand for yourself. In order to do this you can check out our article all about building your own personal brand: Successfully Building Your Brand. You can also become easily found by being an avid social media poster. This will increase your online presence and make it more likely for someone to come across you. Along with being active on the internet don’t forget to meet and converse with people in the public as well. The combination of online communication and in person communication will help you become easy to find, easy to remember, and good to know.

Conclusion

A freelance career can be a great way to do what you love and make money from it. These 5 tips should help you improve and have a much more efficient creative freelance life and business.

Sources:

http://marketblog.envato.com/grow-improve/freelancing/10-ways-to-simplify-your-freelance-life/