Don’t freelance like a full-time employee

There’s a big difference between working full-time for someone else and freelancing for yourself, and I’m not just talking about being your own boss.

When you work full-time, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a paycheck. So you seldom work the entire 8 hours. Actually, it’s probably more like 4-6. You spend the day chatting with co-workers, taking coffee/smoke breaks, browsing the internet, or other leisure things.

You can’t do that when you’re a freelance writer.

Your income directly depends on the amount of work you get done. If you have some downtime between gigs, you can’t afford to spend it perusing the internet or chatting on the phone. You have to spend your downtime doing other things related to your business - marketing, networking, organizing, and planning - especially when you’re just starting out.

That’s been the biggest change for me. I’m not used to working consistently throughout the day, so I find myself taking frequent breaks. What helps is having a to-do list and reminding myself that I have to get through it by the end of the day. It just takes some old-fashioned discipline to break the naughty habit of browsing the internet every few minutes to see what’s going on.