Natalia M. Sylvester

In freelancing, it’s totally possible to be swamped even when you’re not swamped with work. Allow me to explain.

We’ve all heard of the ebb and flow cycle. The way it basically works is that when things are ebbing we run around trying to make them flow, and when they finally flow they usually overflow, and we end up wishing we’d appreciated the downtime when we had it.

You know, it’s the whole “grass is greener when you have no time to lie in it and read a good book” theory.

So really, there is no downtime, even in times when work is slow, because when work is slow I pick up my marketing efforts. I go to more networking events, I schedule more meetings with potential clients and spend time researching publications and pitching them.

When I don’t have a lot of work coming in, there’s no end to how much I’ll do to bring the work back in. And since networking and sending out proposals and pitches aren’t the kinds of things that show instant results, nothing ever feels like it’s enough. My time management skills pretty much disappear and I become swamped with the non-work work.

Until that one contract gets signed. And then another, and another…and poof! Suddenly I’m busy again and I have a set schedule. I’m the type of person who’s so deadline-driven that if I forget to write something on my to-do list I’ll still write it in after I’m done, just to get the satisfaction of checking it off the list.

The only thing that doesn’t end up making it onto the list is some downtime. And really, I’m not sure that it should. Downtime outside of work is one thing, and I’m all for that. But when there’s downtime in my freelancing, I remember my internship at an ad agency my freshmen year in college. At one point, I thought I had nothing to do, until my boss saw me doing nothing and gave me the task of archiving their entire stock of digital images.

Lesson learned: There’s always something we could be doing.

There’s an old episode of Sex and the City in which Carrie is called in for jury duty and tries getting out of it by saying something like: “See, I work for myself, and if I don’t come in to work one day, there’s no one to cover for me.”

I’m reminded of this every time I get ready for a vacation. When a freelancer leaves the office there is no alternative contact to include in your Autoreply emails; there’s no one you can leave an unfinished project with to finalize the last details. And even though I CAN take my work with me wherever I go, the point of a vacation is to unplug a bit, right? Since I’ll be skipping town for a few days over the upcoming holiday weekend, I thought I’d share how I prepare to leave my office unmanned. It’s kind of like those wedding to-do lists you’ll find in magazines.

1 to 2 months before the big day: The first step is to determine just how unplugged you’re going to be while you’re out. For the purposes of this trip, I’m okay with receiving emails on my phone, but realistically I know I won’t have time to write. So as new work comes in, I make sure to schedule all deadlines for the week before I leave or a couple of weeks after I return. Personally, I prefer to have as much done as possible before I leave, so that I can really unwind and not worry about all the unfinished business I have to take care of the second I return. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll keep this short because it’s Friday and I like to start winding down on Friday. What I mean by this is that I set aside Fridays to do work that doesn’t feel as much like work.

Today, for example, I have a networking lunch, which is nice because I’ve noticed that people are usually a little more relaxed and social with the weekend approaching. Networking has become a huge part of my work, but it doesn’t feel like work at all. I get out of the house, meet some great people and get my name out there so that I’m not working in a vacuum (which, admittedly, I did do for a while when I first started freelancing, when my shyness just got the better  of me).

Other things I set aside for Fridays are small things that just have to be done, like if I need to update my profile on LinkedIn, upload a new picture onto Gravatar (which is the plan for next Friday, since I’m waiting on my pictures) or tweak my resume to reflect my latest work. I brainstorm ideas for new work. I let my curiosity loose and indulge in some aimless web surfing for an hour or so to see where it takes me. And I read. A lot. I read blogs and websites I’ve been meaning to read all week, I read magazines that have arrived in my mailbox and books that are just so well-written they make me want to write. I love that reading is such an important part of my job.

What about you?  Do you wind down on Fridays?

It’s hard to vent about your work anxieties when there’s no watercooler in your home office, or when the only semblance of a co-worker at your job has four legs and doesn’t really talk much.

But recently I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several work-from-home freelancers and was so happy to hear I wasn’t alone in my pet peeves.  It’s true that we don’t deal with some of the more typical office problems like having a tough boss, clashing with co-workers, dealing with bad parking spots or disappearing red staplers (I love Office Space, can you tell?). But our unique working situations can lead to dilemmas that only other freelancers could understand. Here are just a few of mine:

People assume I’m not working since I work from home: It took some time and conditioning before family and friends got the hint that I can’t take personal calls at all hours of the day or hang out at their house to wait for a UPS delivery while they went to work. Just because we don’t have a typical 9-to-5 schedule doesn’t mean we don’t need time to work. A flexible schedule is not the same as an open schedule. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a post mainly about freelancing but also a lot about my Boston Terrier, Maggie, who is just so cute that it was only a matter of time before I tried incorporating her into this blog. It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but it’d make a great spin-off: Marley and Me for Freelancers. No? Not so much?

Anyways, Maggie seems to think she’s a person, like all dogs do, but I suspect that person could be a freelancer. In that case, here are a few lessons we could learn from her:

Don’t pounce too quickly: If the wind blows a leaf across her path Maggie will pounce on it, thinking it’s a lizard. Sometimes she’ll chase her own shadows. If she’d only take a second or two to take in the situation I’m sure she’d waste a lot less of her energy. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I’ve been having a tough time separating my work life from my personal life. I can’t say I’m too surprised–when your office is just a few steps from your kitchen and your writing is sometimes shaped by experience, it’s not easy to put up that invisible wall. Problem is, if I can’t balance work with enjoying the times that I’m not working, I’m defeating one of the main reasons I started freelancing: I wanted my time to be my own, and I wanted to be responsible for the outcomes of my hard work.

What’s worse than a boss who never acknowledges your efforts? Probably one who never lets you quit, who’s never satisfied that enough is enough, even when you’ve checked off all your to-dos for the day.

So in other words: me (does that sound like you, too?). What’s an overworked freelancer who can’t catch a break from herself to do? Read the rest of this entry »