How to Stay Focused in Freelancing

Do you have the discipline to stay focused as a freelancer? Can you say no to a party invitation with friends because you have a deadline approaching? Make sure you answer these questions honestly before you make the jump to a freelance career.

A freelancer always has plenty to see, and plenty to do. A project deadline here, a football match there; a meeting on one hand and a party on the other. As compared to people who work full-time, freelancers can have more hours of leisure to fill their day and still be at the top of their game. Or so they think. Why miss out on a rugby game when you don’t have a boss waiting for you at the office?

Well, here’s a piece of information for you. You DO have a boss; and that boss is you. You decide how best to spend your time and stay focused. For a freelancer, focus is what differentiates between success and failure. If you’re looking to make $100,000 rather than $20,000 per year as a freelancer, you know what you’re going to need in plentiful quantity: Focus!

So how do you achieve this elusive quality: Easy. All you need to do is follow these three basic steps.

Set Goals

Setting goals has always proved to be a surefire method of success. Setting goals helps you focus, since it creates an awareness of having to complete a task by a certain deadline. Setting goals can be done, not only monetarily, but also project-wise via timeline setting. It is one way of ensuring that you retain your focus.

Follow your Time-plan

Most freelancers work with time plans. It’s not a new innovation. Keeping a time plan not only helps you avoid temptations, but also serves to do you a lot of good. Every work at home freelancer should have an effective time plan to keep themselves productive. Apparently, with no boss to chain you to your desk, the mind drifts towards the better things you could be doing at this moment. Mine does too. In fact, my time plan works better if I dangle a suitable reward in front of my table.

Concentrate

For a freelancer, concentration holds the same value as focus. When you can’t concentrate on your work, it’s time to shift to a new career which will hold your interest. Some people tend to have a short attention span, and should hence make provisions for it in their time plan. Set a timer, and start it when you begin working. And then ignore the timer whilst you work. When your mind starts wandering, you’ve reached your saturation point. Stop the timer. Is it forty minutes? Fifty? An hour? Three hours? Now you know how much time to give yourself for work between breaks.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

April Boone is the owner of Global Marketing Solutions based in Foley Alabama.