Helping To Protect Freelancers From Harassment
Specialized independent work is growing in this country, from coast to coast, but with that growth has come some growing pains. From healthcare to retirement planning,
We live in the age of distraction. One second you’re checking your email, the next second you’re glancing up at that episode of Game of Thrones you have running in the background, the next you’re picking up your iPad and trying to come up with a great six-letter word on Words With Friends, and the next…wait, what was it that you picked up your iPad for in the first place?
Oh yeah, work. You’re a freelancer, so there is no boss walking past your desk every once in awhile to check in and to keep you on your toes. There’s no one to keep you from distracting yourself except for you.
But, fortunately, there are great tools like Freedom, which comes with a 20% discount with your membership to Fiverr Workspace.
Let’s be honest: Most of the time that we spend being distracted, we’re not even really conscious of the fact that we allowed ourselves to become distracted. We almost instinctively pick up our phones and check for messages, or dig into those articles we have had tabbed for weeks in our browser without even realizing we are doing it. When there is work to do, though, distraction will not only allow you to waste time—it will hurt your bottom line and it could hurt your relationship with clients.
The sooner you finish a project the sooner you can go on to the next one, or the sooner you can try to land a new client.
With Freedom, you can:
- Block specific websites and apps, or the whole internet. If you’re like me, you find yourself scrolling through social media far too often—so just block it until you’re done with what needs to be done. You’ll thank yourself later.
- Use Freedom across multiple devices.
- Quickly create and edit lists of what you think needs to be blocked.
- Schedule “Freedom” sessions ahead of time. Maybe you know that you’re most productive between 9 a.m. and noon. Set-up your Freedom to block all your distractions during those three hours ahead of time. You can even set it up to block out that time for serious work every day! Make it a habit and you’re more likely to focus during those hours. You might even find yourself looking forward to your distraction-free creative time every morning.
So just how bad are distractions? For freelancers, who only earn money when they deliver, they can be quite bad. Some people have a job that earns them an hourly rate just as long as they show up. You, freelancer, do not have that luxury. You have to deliver to be paid. So consider the following.
Why Every Freelancer Should Use Freedom
It’s an often repeated statistic: After being distracted, it takes the average worker 23 minutes to get back on task. But, wait, it gets worse—according to an article in The New York Times, not only does being interrupted waste time, but it makes a worker (or student) perform up to 20 percent worse on a task. As a freelancer, this is, quite simply, not a risk that you should be willing to take. You want to be on top of your game—your clients will expect your best work and you should expect the same from yourself. Not only will always doing your best keep your clients happy, but it will lead to more work, or perhaps one day to better paying work, but not if you’re only operating at 80 percent. If someone said you can make 80 dollars an hour by working at 80 percent capacity or 100 dollars an hour by giving it your all, which would you choose?
The great thing about being a freelancer is that you get exactly what you put into your career. By cutting out distractions, not only will you complete more work, but your work will be of a higher quality—and you’ll have more time for important tasks like landing new clients, or working on side projects, or just taking a walk and clearing your mind. Try it now. Use Freedom to block out a time for highly focused work. You might not even realize how often you’re distracted until you see what happens when you aren’t.
