Projects started: 36. Projects Finished: 0. It’s the curse of the freelancer.
You’ve got all this time, with which you may only do one thing at once. You must apply your project management skills to finish everything you start within an arbitrary timeframe, and still designate “down time” so as to not burn yourself out.
Words of Experience
I think it’s steps one through ∞ in this scenario that I’m having the most trouble with. My personal, self-development projects end up running massively over time and often don’t even conclude.
Case in point: I’ve got one personal project I’ve been working on since the new year. It’s a pretty simple project, but it could supplement my incone by a few dollars a week. I don’t think I’ll ever recoup my initial outlay on it, but it would have been a great little portfolio piece.
I’ve got arguably the most important parts complete: The idea, the content, and the software set up, just waiting to go live. However I’ve still yet to come up with appropriate design and branding, which my perfectionist streak just can’t conclude.
I’ve got two other projects in the same state of perpetual incompleteness. Then there’s another four in a further state of disrepair, and I have a very bad habit of starting new projects on a whim.
Pixel Party
It seems as a web freelancer, your domain is the million or so pixels across the surface of the screen, and your free time is spent on devising new and interesting ways to fill them. As such, your entire life can tend to become one big project to manage, comprised of many smaller projects: personal and paid.
The problem with this model is twofold: Deadlines for personal projects are a lot more difficult to set, and managing your life so rigidly tends to get stressful. Setting milestones for personal achievements may be fine for some people, but for others it can become increasingly stressful as the randomness of life comes into play.
Mix up your management
Scheduling free time and setting realistic goals can help alleviate this problem, it but can’t do away with it entirely. Sometimes you just need some spontaneity; a day off, or a movie night.
To this end, it’s helpful to think in terms of units like “hours” or “days” instead of rigid dates for personal projects. Depending on your style, you can come up with any number of creative ways to measure the success of your non-critical projects. Using units you can see at a glance how a particular project is coming along, as well as revise your estimates as time goes by.
Using an unit-based system also has the added incentive of being able to compare the completeness of each project at a glance, so you’ll be more motivated to work on a project that’s nearing a milestone. It’s rewarding to be able to visualise how a project is coming along, whereas a deadline is a much more stressful metaphor.
If you’re a freelancer like me, and have trouble sorting your personal life appropriately, consider implementing a task management system like Getting Things Gnome, or adding modifications to your system. You’ll increase incentives, decrease stress, and notice you’re getting a lot more done.
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