Freelancefolder

5 Tips to Kick the Perfectionist Habit

Posted December 12, 2011 in Inspiration

Hello. My name is Mike. And I’m a recovering perfectionist.

For a long time, I believed that being a perfectionist was a good thing. I was proud of my compulsion to work and rework even the smallest assignment until it was faultless. What did it matter that it took me hours more than it probably should have? I was a perfectionist. All that mattered was that I nailed it.

When I became a freelancer, however, I realized that my perfectionism wasn’t the big pat-on-the-back that I thought it was. In fact, it was just the opposite. With my eye now always on the clock, I saw that my relentless quest for perfection was making me inefficient. More often than I care to confess, I undercharged clients because I didn’t want to admit the true amount of time it had taken me to complete the assignment. (Note: this is not a good way to run a business.)

Frustrated and anxious, I knew I had to beat the problem or kiss my career goodbye. But how? I was afraid that if I devoted any less time to my projects, I’d make some hideous mistake and ruin my career. I also afraid that being even a smidgen less meticulous might result a failure to meet–no, exceed–my client’s expectations. How could I alter my work habits without sacrificing my high standards?

Well, it didn’t happen overnight, but I did eventually come up with a workable strategy. If you suspect you might be a perfectionist too, consider these five tips to bring your obsessive tendencies under control.

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Stuck in Your Tracks? How to Get Unstuck Today

Posted November 30, 2011 in Inspiration

Freelancing can be a great lifestyle that offers many benefits. However, sometimes even the best freelancers get stuck.

There are many ways a freelancer can get stuck. They can get stuck in the rut of working for low pay. They can get stuck creatively where they find themselves doing the same unchallenging work over and over. Or, they can get stuck when they fall behind technology and current trends.

If this is you–if you’re a stuck freelancer right now, don’t worry. There are ways to become unstuck. In this post, I’ll provide some of those ways to help you get unstuck.

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Capturing Your Creativity

Posted November 1, 2011 in How-To, Inspiration

We freelancers are a creative bunch. If you’re a freelance writer, you need to frequently come up with fresh ideas for copy. If you’re a designer, you must continually come up with fresh design ideas. Even freelancing fields that are supposedly “less” creative require freelancers to come up with new and innovative approaches to solving problems.

Freelancers are constantly on the hunt for new ideas. Is it any wonder that creative folks sometimes complain that they can’t think of any new ideas?

Where, exactly, do ideas come from? In this post, I’ll look at some common sources of creative inspiration that can help you capture your own creativity.

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The Holistic Freelancer

Posted October 17, 2011 in Getting Started, Inspiration

What makes you the freelancer you are? (Hint: it’s NOT what you think it is.)

While it may be tempting to look for a simple, single factor that always leads to freelancing success, the real truth is that all freelance success is due to the sum of many parts.

There’s no single path to freelancing success (and this can be frustrating). As I’ve said before, what works well for one freelancer may totally bomb when another freelancer tries it. That’s because every single freelancer brings something different to the job. Who you are, as a whole, contributes to the freelancer you become.

Holistic means looking at the parts that make up the whole and that’s just what I’ll do in this post. I’ll take a look at the whole freelancer and examine how who you are impacts your freelancing business overall. Here are some of the factors that we freelancers bring with us into our freelancing businesses:

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