Freelance Your Way to Freedom

5Adjusting to a Freelancing Lifestyle

Success is a sum of small efforts—repeated day in and day out.

— Robert Collier

And now for the fun part: the freelancing lifestyle. It's why all, or probably most of you, want to make this a reality for yourself. Hell, it's why I quit my job with absolutely zero plan. What's the point of living if we don't have some control over our lifestyle? People are tired of being forced into the same 40‐hour workweek structure. Can you blame them?

Once you become accustomed to a freelancing lifestyle, you will never be able to go back to any other lifestyle, I am sorry to inform you. It's an infection that has no cure. You've been warned!

At the very basis of the freelancing lifestyle is a new accountability in which you, and solely you, are responsible for waking up and meeting client deadlines. This will probably be the biggest deviation from your previous 9‐to‐5. No one is going to yell at you if you don't come into the office by 9 a.m. No one is going to monitor how long you take to get your coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. And no one is calculating your Paid Time Off to see if you still have time for a vacation at the end of the year. All of it evaporates.

But there is an exchange for pure freedom that goes on. It means that the buck stops with you. You're the one who must map out what time you need to wake up and how many hours a project is going to take. It's you who needs to adhere to any timeline a client might establish. It's you who needs ...