One of the easiest, as well as most painful lessons for a freelancer is lessons in procrastination. You may be reading this thinking, how can it be easy and painful? Well, consider the fact that we all lead busy lives, we have kids or pets or want to hang out with friends and family so we put things off that could be done right now. Because we decided that the 250 word article that would have taken all of ten minutes to write could wait until tomorrow, the project expired and someone else snapped it up. This is where the painful part sets in– now, you are out $10 that could have been a Taco Bell dinner for two because visiting your neighbor was more important.
Often times, lessons in procrastination are hard to avoid, but necessary to learn. Because you work at home, you feel that you have more free time because you don’t have a set schedule to work. Although this is true, you still have deadlines for every article, blog post, and piece of content that you accept. When you don’t do them, you are not only hurting the client by not delivering the work that you accepted, but you are hurting your paycheck and shorting yourself on money that could have been an upgrade in software for you to work quicker or even a new pair of shoes.
Another hard lesson in procrastination that can only be remedied by you is friends and family assuming that you are free because you are home. Although you work from home, if you have a set schedule that you have given yourself, you are not free to drive the neighbor to the grocery store, babysit your sister’s kids, and you don’t have time for friends to drop by. Only you can fix this by putting your foot down and letting people know that you are working and your work is from home.
