Freelance graphic and web designer, Andi Farr, writes about how to avoid the scary world of ‘hermithood’ that some freelancer find themselves falling into…

Many people believe that a freelancer’s life is one of flexibility and control – being able to arrange your work schedule around your life, rather than the other way around. Happily, most of the time this is true. However, it’s incredibly easy (especially when starting out) for that flexibility to be a double-edged sword, and if you’re not careful your workload can easily edge your life right out of the equation. Suddenly, you’re a Freelance Hermit – cut off from friends, family, and outside events by a seemingly-infinite expanse of client work. Hopefully, these tips will help you avoid this situation, and make your schedule work for you (and not the other way around).

Taming the wilderness

One of the things that attracts many people to freelance life is the chance to work hours that suit you. Sadly, this is something that’s hard to get right, and the first time you get swamped with client work, you can find yourself working every hour available (and wishing for more). Working a 9am-to-4am day seems a funny story to tell in the pub the first time, but if you get trapped doing it for any length of time, the chuckles dry up pretty swiftly.

Learn to say no: Admittedly, having too much work available is not the worst problem a freelancer can have, but that’s often what makes it so difficult to turn down. If you’ve ever been through one of those lean periods where projects are nowhere to be found, it seems like you should always find ways to force incoming work into your schedule, no matter how stacked it is. Sometimes, however, you need to just tell the client that your schedule doesn’t allow it, and perhaps suggest some other freelancers who could help them on this occasion. This goes double for that client who has a ‘two minute job’ that needs doing right now – perhaps not coincidentally, these are often the clients whose projects always bloom into epic week-long nightmares.

Know when to stop: Again, this is difficult when you can’t see how the project is ever going to end, but it’s important to set an end point for your day, and to try and stick to it. Putting in a 15 hour day is fine if you’ve only got 15 hours of work to complete, but if you try that with a longer project, chances are that your subsequent work is going to suffer – as far as time management is concerned, it’s false economy.

Know when to start: Lots of freelancers I’ve spoken to – developers in particular – prefer to work late at night on specific work (this is something I like to do too). As a freelancer, you do have greater freedom to set your working hours in this way – with this in mind, be aware that some of your clients may also work unusual hours. If you respond to requests or queries from them during ‘out-of-office’ hours, it might be wise to point out that you may not always respond at these times. I once woke up to an email request (from a client who I had previously replied to late at night) for a quick artwork amendment sent at just before 2am, followed by increasingly irate follow-up messages spanning several hours wondering why I hadn’t replied. From conversations with other freelancers since then, it seems this wasn’t a unique situation. Getting hijacked as you’re just about to hit the hay is a great way to destroy your schedule for the rest of the week – it might be best to leave that reply until morning.

Returning triumphant

Even when your schedule is under control (for a freelancer, at least) it can still be easy to slip into the ways of the hermit. On more than one occasion, I’ve pressed commit on a project, wandered across the road to pick up some milk, and been hit with the realisation that I haven’t been outside for several days.

Take it outside: Being a freelancer can be a lonely existence, particularly if you work from a home office (or just from the sofa / dining-room table). If you find you miss the human contact of your previous job, then you might want to grab a laptop and get out of the house – spend a day (or even a morning) each week working in a café, for instance. Certain venues will attract groups of like-minded workers and students – Twitter is your friend if you’re trying to find out where and when people gather in this regard. If this isn’t enough, you could see if any local companies are hiring out desks in their offices (these are usually pretty reasonable) or even look at purpose-built ‘hotdesk’ offices which are set up for freelancers and other sole traders. Both of these are great ways of being around people working in similar industries, and can lead to partnerships and new leads on work.

Make the time: It’s really important to plan things other than work into your week. One of the biggest traps you can fall into as a freelancer is to have all upcoming social or ‘extracurricular’ activities marked as ‘maybes’ – this makes it all too easy to schedule incoming work over the top of them, or decide that you’re just too busy. Beware – this is a sure path to hermithood! Make sure that you set aside a specific block of time each week that work can’t touch – doing this means that you won’t tell clients “I could probably fit that in on XXX night”. For example, some friends and I have a regular weekly poker game that I never schedule work over – and if for any reason the game gets cancelled, I’m still guaranteed a few hours away from the Mac.

Get out of your cave: As a freelancer, you need to be out and about as often as you can be – mixing with others in the industry is a much needed sanity-check, helps you to keep learning, and is the best way of finding leads on new work. Get to as many good local events as you can – again, keep an eye on Twitter for some of the quieter ones which might otherwise fly under your radar. If they are not the sort of event you’re looking for, then start one yourself – get the word out using social media and your friends, and people will lend a hand (I did this with The Geekest Drink, and it’s been an amazing source of new colleagues and friends). Alternatively, you can set some time apart to help out with existing local events and projects – there’s always loads of new stuff out there which could benefit from a few hours of your skills, and they’re a great way to gain new contacts and get away from your workload without feeling guilty about being unproductive.

Hopefully these tips will help you keep your freelance life balanced and flexible, as it should be. And if you do find yourself stranded in the middle of a seemingly insurmountable schedule, remember that civilisation isn’t as far away as it looks.

Andi Farr is a freelance graphic and web designer based in the North East. You should stop by his website and check out some of his work and you can also follow him on Twitter.