“Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses, and they talk like victims.”
These are the words of Carlos Santana, thought of as one of the best guitarists in history.
Breaking bad habits and forming new habits takes work. And if you don’t buy into this now, you should put this book down and think about whether you want to achieve freelance autonomy or are happy with your current setup.
Unless you’re a friend who bought this book to support me, I’d wager you do already realize you can be more productive and change your work-life balance. So, for those sticking with it, here’s what you must do to empower yourself.
Turning a new thing into a habit apparently takes 66 days. So there really is no time like the present.
While writing this book, I started learning Portuguese. By day 12, I could recall common phrases, name loads of food, and tell you that an armadillo reads the newspaper (seriously).
However, to learn a full language using Duolingo, Brianne Huntsman—a freelance blogger— found you will need to spend a minimum of 130 minutes per day for a full 180 days. That’s commitment. Commitment to forming a new habit.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of habits, it’s not just cracking your knuckles (guilty) or picking your nose. Habits are “small decisions you make and actions you perform every day.”
That’s the definition from James Clear, who authors Atomic Habits, which has sold over 3 million copies.
I read this in 2019 and it did not change my life.
What it did do was reinforce all the good habits I’d picked up in my full-time employed career and confirmed I was ready to go it alone as a freelancer.
How to use habits to empower autonomy
Habits are the things you do without thinking. When something becomes a habit, it is literally your body working autonomously. You do it without realizing and it becomes a natural part of your day.
There are both good and bad habits freelancers develop.
The bad ones restrict autonomy and become a drain on productivity. These are things like saying yes to meetings without knowing what you’re walking into, overworking to meet imaginary deadlines, and taking on work with little value (monetary or otherwise).
The good ones empower autonomy. They change how you go about your working day. They happen on autopilot without you taking time out of your day to decide whether you do them.
Examples of these range from tiny things like turning on your laptop to power up every morning as you get into the shower (separate tasks!) to understanding when you’ve hit a stale patch during deep work and being comfortable to go do something else.
If your office space is en route to the bathroom, why not turn your laptop on? You might only save a minute as you no longer have to wait for everything to boot up, but if you work 260 days per year, that’s over 4 hours saved. That’s a half day off.
In the middle of the scale, I’m going to reference the 5S methodology introduced in the Lean Six Sigma principles. In short, this means keeping a tidy workplace to declutter your mind. Your workplace reflects your work.
Lucy Rose wrote in a guest blog for Carl Pullein, “A Princeton University study found clutter makes it harder for people to focus on particular tasks. Specifically, the researchers discovered that the visual cortex is easily overwhelmed by task-irrelevant objects, making it difficult to allocate attention and complete set tasks efficiently. A clean and clear workspace eliminates distractions and can therefore help employees better concentrate on the task at hand.”
The 5S’ are:
- Sort
- Set in order
- Shine
- Standardize
- Sustain
By sorting your workspace into an environment without clutter, you minimize the chance of distraction. This doesn’t mean you have to remove everything. Personal touches are associated with comfort rather than productivity; however, nobody is productive in an uncomfortable environment. But it does mean removing unnecessary paperwork, unused devices, and general clutter. My regular workstation includes a stand-up desk, laptop, podcast mic, lamp for video recording, and a corkboard on my wall. That’s it.
When you’ve sorted what you do and don’t need, setting them in order means making them accessible when you need them. In a traditional office setting, this means moving the printer to the department that uses it the most and displaying sales stats in the sales office rather than the team having to get up to check the figures. In your workspace, use this to store your most-used devices nearby, keep the books you reference most at the top of the pile, and hide anything you use less than once a week. Make putting everything back in the right place a habit and cheat your way to optimizing your workspace.
Shine includes the act of keeping everything clean. For obvious reasons like bacteria and dust, yes. But it also includes the psychology behind working in a clean environment. Tidy desk; tidy mind.
Standardize is most appropriate in large organizations but you can apply it in the freelancer or remote worker role too. By creating standard processes (with regards to your workplace), you stand more of a chance of making what you’ve worked on a habit. If your standard process is to return your reference book to your shelf when you’re done with it (as opposed to leaving it on your desk for the rest of the day), then you will stick to it. If your standard process is to leave it on the desk, you will fall into the trap of thinking it’s okay. Untidy desk; untidy mind.
Sustain is the hardest of the 5S’ to achieve. But, by Standardizing, you help yourself form good habits that make sustaining your new working environment all that easier. Unless your workspace is really, really bad, this is a lot less effort than it sounds. Just remember that it’s another cog you’re turning that helps you in the long run.
At the more extreme end of the scale, we see things like understanding our minds and bodies. For example, I know when I have hit the lower half of how productive I can be so I do something about it. For a while, I thought this meant starting another task. But context switching and trying to cram everything in during “working hours” often meant I just performed that task less well than when I was fully focused.
Instead, I now acknowledge that I’m not performing as well as I can and go for a dog walk. Or I drive to the coffee shop in town. Or I read a book. Or I might even turn on the PlayStation for an hour.
Cynics will say that’s time wasted.
But taking however long feels right to recharge quite literally recharges you. I can normally work for a burst of 3 hours in the morning. Then I walk my dogs for about an hour, check my social media, emails, Slack, then have lunch. My next burst of uninterrupted work is usually shorter but I achieve more and at a higher quality because I am energized.
The alternative is staring at a screen with writer’s block or creating dispassionate content. If I persisted with either of these, I’d likely have to do them again anyway.
There are so many small habits you can change that allow you to work when and how you want.
Habits worth changing if you’re serious about freelance autonomy
- Removing reliance on synchronous communication
- Work on your personal brand in your downtime
- Create templates for repetitive processes or tasks
- Productize your services where possible
- Create canned responses to objections
- Tidy your workspace on a regular basis
- Take breaks when you get stuck
- Work when you’re productive
- Say no to timesucks
Here are some more habits I crowdsourced from Twitter:
“Use comfy spaces to read so my brain feels dopamine and retains information better.”
- Helen Duffy, B2B SaaS Marketing Consultant.
“Knowing when to mix it up if things aren't working. Pause and do something else or get out for a change of scene.”
- Martin Dewar, Freelance Content and Social Media Marketer.
“As soon as a problem comes up with a client, I immediately add language about it into my contract (for future projects). Over time, this results in a contract that does a really good job of protecting me.”
- Jessie Wood, Content Strategist.
“Knowing your niche and who your ideal client/project is and being very clear and up-front about it.”
- Angie Moody, CEO & Co-founder of Ruby Money.
Sounds like hard work? It’s not really. You do most of these once and you’ve saved yourself from ever doing them again.
Take templates or canned responses. The next time you find yourself writing a response to an objection from a client, save it. The next time you need to create a PowerPoint deck with a content marketing strategy, save it.
Older generations (generalizing much) take pride in taking forever to put together work that could be completed quicker. And do I dare mention the word, shortcut?
“Short cuts make long delays.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Tolkien had a point. And he made it very well by creating rather long journeys in rather long books. Every time they tried a shortcut, several chapters appeared. But, with some context and preparation, you can create “shortcuts” that help put some of your work on autopilot.
When I worked as a business consultant, templates were the name of the game. Not only did everything look on-brand but it saved so much time. Why opt to create a new version of the same thing every time when you can save the first one as a template and reuse it each time?
Note: do actually save a template copy. Then save a new copy every time you use the template. Otherwise, yes, Tolkien has absolutely got you there.
You can apply this to almost anything you create a deck for, any sales materials like proposals and contracts, and documents you add your logo or contact details on. If you make more than one of something in your early days as a freelancer, your future self will thank you a dozen times.
All is well and good talking about habits. Forming them and forgetting them. But without the right inspiration and the right people backing you, it’s hard to execute on your proposals.
The biggest habit you can change or double down on—if you’re serious about autonomy—is to surround yourself with positive influences.
Surround yourself with positive influences
Positive influences are those who make your day better. They inspire you to be like them, they push you to be better, they help you become the best version of you. They share real stories and aren’t afraid to fail. They succeed and share their learnings along the way. They build communities rather than followers. And they have their community’s best interests at heart.
Positive influences aren’t those who have loads of followers, constantly promote their products, or push that their way is the only way. They aren’t those with the high-value products and the high-sign-up online courses. They aren’t those who shout the loudest or have the biggest budgets.
“Surrounding yourself” means in-person, online, in your working environment, and even in your mailbox.
If you work at a customer’s site, there may be toxic personalities or clashes in work styles. Online, you may feel pressured to follow certain influencers because everyone else is. In your working environment, that could be your partner who doesn’t appreciate how you work. And your mailbox is often the worst place to find negative influences. Everyone wants your attention and you feel a sense of dread if you don’t read each one.
Here’s how to turn these negative influences into positive ones.
If your negative influences are literally surrounding you, remove yourself from the environment. I did this when I was working full-time for a company full of loud and unproductive people. The most important part of their day was making sure the lunch order was right, then popping out for another cigarette and announcing it was time for the coffee run. When they were actually working, it mostly involved some form of shouting. So I left. The office, that is.
One day, I just stopped coming into the office. This wasn’t quite as drastic as it sounds because I sometimes worked from home or went to visit customers. But I thought everybody would appreciate my output if it was more efficient and of better quality. So I did something about it.
As freelancers, we mostly operate solo and in our own homes. But, if you don’t, you can still empower yourself to be productive. My advice of “just leave” might be caveated by chatting with your client about this first. If your work relies on working with them physically then there is an obvious red flag here too. However, I know a lot of contractors in large organizations that have done this and nobody has batted an eyelid. It’s about judging the situation and making an executive decision after weighing up the pros and cons.
Will anybody mind? If yes, explain the benefits. If no, it’s probably all in your head anyway.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, businesses have been facing a tough time trying to get staff (permanent and freelance) “back to the office”. If ever there was an eye-opener to office unproductivity and giving people a choice of working environment, it was the big unplanned and unmeasured experiment of 2020-2021.
In an article for Slate, Alison Green collected snippets of why people aren’t going back to the office—even when some companies made it mandatory. I share the best responses here:
“I have to go in one day a week but I don’t want to do more than that. It is a really nice building, with plenty of meeting space, cafeteria with good food, coffee shop, gym, etc. As nice as that is, I still prefer yoga pants and my cat as my only co-worker. I get my own bathroom, full kitchen, and no commute. They really can’t beat that.”
That’s comfort.
“I feel like single offices (we have an open plan), child/pet/elder care stipends, or honestly a factual, mathematical explanation of why on-site work is beneficial would go further toward getting people in.”
That’s accessibility.
“The C-suite at my company has been trying to bring everyone back to the office three days a week for about a year now, and my department (IT) has just collectively gone, ‘Nah.’ … Literally we just didn’t do it. Some people did at first, but when they saw no one else was showing up, they mostly stopped too.”
That’s empowered autonomy.
“My office is bringing everyone back for no reason and it is not working. We are ‘required’ to be in the office three days a week but no one is doing it except for a handful of people who like working in the office.”
That’s personal preference.
“My company actually did try pushing the issue, but honestly it just backfired. HR sent out angry emails about how we needed to be in the office, a few people went in, those people saw that the office was still empty so they stopped coming in, repeat a few times, and now we all know that blatantly ignoring the higher-ups won’t necessarily get us fired lol. They would’ve been better off just letting it go sooner.”
That’s just a bad HR team.
“My company had mandated three days a week back in the office but I moved an eight-hour drive away, so I just said I couldn’t. This is a combination of me being at a point in my career where I have the confidence and capital to say no and knowing that there is other work out there for someone with my experience level. I could easily find a job, even if the job market was slow. The pandemic has just made it so most of the jobs I see posted in my field are remote, which gives me even more confidence.”
That’s autonomy.
“What would get me back is real flexibility. I’m happy to work a hybrid schedule, but I have no interest in working a job where the number of days I come to the office per week or per month are kept track of. If I have a month where it makes sense for me to spend most of my time in the office, that’s fine. If I have a month where it’s just not necessary and I don’t feel like putting on real pants, I would hope that my employer could be as flexible with me as I’m willing to be with them. If I am doing my job to the expected standard, I hope that my employer can work with me in truly being flexible and not just worry about Butts in Seats.”
That’s flexibility.
“To me, the biggest thing is being able to clearly explain why it’s necessary. Don’t give some vague explanation like ‘it’s time’ or ‘we think it’s better’ but have a specific reason why you think it’s better to convince your employees that it’s beneficial. And that reason needs to be one that will hold up once people get there. Nothing is going to kill people’s enthusiasm about returning to the office quicker than showing up and realizing that it’s exactly the same as working from home—also known as ‘you made me commute 45 minutes for this? Why??’ “
That’s sensibility.
Overall, there’s an overwhelming consensus that the in-person, in-office, impossible-to-work environment is not favorable.
That’s why I just left (the office).
Of course, if your in-person trips are productive, enjoyable, and surrounded by positive influences, keep it up. But don’t mandate set days and times. Discuss on an ad-hoc basis when it’s beneficial for you or anyone to attend. That might be every day. It might be once a year.
If you work at home , you might be sharing a workspace with your partner or housemate. Even if you get on great with them outside of work, they may not share the same beliefs about what you do or how you do it.
My girlfriend works 8-5 Monday to Thursday and barely steps away from her desk. If I had to do that, I’d have quit a long time ago. I’m genuinely flabbergasted at how in tune with her laptop she is for the entire day. Sometimes I start a conversation and she doesn’t hear it because she’s so engrossed with her work. That might work for her (though she’s never tried anything else) but it sounds like hell to me.
If that does genuinely work for you, I say crack on. But be honest with yourself when evaluating. I’d argue you’re not reading this book if you love being governed by the clock.
I mention this because when I finish by 9am and rush off to walk the dogs, work on a personal project, or just have the rest of the day off, I appreciate how she must feel. I earn more than her and, most of the time, work less. This is manageable by the right personality; and we are both blessed with similar mindsets on income and ways of working. As long as we’re happy, healthy, and earning enough money to remain happy and healthy, who are we to question how we work?
But I have heard horror stories, which increased during the coronavirus pandemic, about couples splitting up, housemates moving out, and even neighbors falling out. Remember the section on the 5S’? If you need a clean working environment and your housemate is a slob, there’s going to be a problem Sustaining that.
This might seem trivial if you don’t have this problem. But setting boundaries and expectations goes a long way when you’re operating your own freelance business in a shared workspace with someone who doesn’t appreciate how you work. I’m not suggesting moving out (though it could be the best course of action in extreme circumstances) but a frank conversation is a must.
On Twitter, don’t follow people that make you feel less important, small, or like you’re failing. Even if they have 100,000 followers and all your friends and peers follow them, you are in control of your feed.
Instead, follow people that share relevant topics, provide helpful insights, and care about their followers.
The same applies to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or anywhere you hang out online.
And it definitely applies in your mailbox.
It’s 2023 (it was when I was writing this anyway) and a huge amount of people and businesses still rely on, and are reluctant to move away from, email.
Some have good reasons. Most don’t. But, because of this, your mailbox is likely a dumping ground for unwanted messages, task procrastination, and unbilled time. On top of that, people are trying to sell you things, con you into FOMO, and steal all your money if you click the wrong link.
To combat these negative influences, apply these three habits (remember those?):
- Unsubscribe to everything you don’t want or need.
- Check notifications where they belong.
- Set up gated.com
Unsubscribing is obvious. When you’re on a list, remove yourself from it. While your current habit might be to just delete the email, all you’re doing is a temporary fix. Instead, move your cursor a little more and hit unsubscribe. At first, this takes some time to cleanse your inbox. But, I get about 10 emails a week. One I subscribe to. Then a handful from customers and some order confirmations.
This is achieved by unsubscribing but also by turning off notifications by email. If you use apps like Microsoft Teams, you get notifications in-app. The same for Trello and Slack and pretty much every app that sends you a notification. Simply turning off the email notifications will, however, lend itself to missing notifications. You must change your habit.
I wrote a post about “notification fatigue” and, while I was assembling it, realized that it’s completely our fault. Yes, technology provides the things that drain productivity. But we say yes to them by default. Change your reliance on notifications to trigger an action to checking apps when you need to. That’s asynchronous work. You stop being responsive to, and governed by, time-based beeps and notifications that don’t represent time at all—purely that someone else has completed their task.
The final habit is to do something about those emails that slip through the cracks. And, newsflash, there will be some. Only during the process of writing this book did I find out about Gated. But it’s a must-have if you get flooded by spam emails.
When you sign up to Gated, you allow the email domains you want to get through and “gate” everyone else. Gating them responds to their emails saying you don’t recognize their email addresses and, in an attempt to avoid spam, you’d like them to make a donation to a charity in order for their email to make it into your inbox.
Hiba Amin is a content marketer who was suffering from mailbox monotony. She brought Gated to my attention in her tweet:
“$12 raised passively towards Planned Parenthood so far because of Gated.”
I was sold.
So far, I've only raised $12. But I haven’t had any unwanted emails either.
I've locked strangers out of my main inbox unless they donate to charity and it's such a sweet concept.
Understanding that you don’t have to be governed by technology goes a long way to gaining control of your day.
Up to this point, I’ve introduced some small habits to form and some large changes you can make to take steps to making your freelance business autonomous.
When you set yourself up to become an autonomous freelancer, you still come across the same issues as an ordinary freelancer.
Things like pricing, getting paid, and finding work don’t disappear. But preparing yourself in such a way that they become much much easier is a great first step.
Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve never once pitched a client for work? They’ve all come to me.
Sounds pretty sweet, right?
Trust me. It really is.
I hate sales. Even selling my own services. It’s awkward, feels pushy, and isn’t over quickly enough.
I realized this would be the case early on in my freelance career. I also made the correct assumption that it would take up considerable unbillable time if I got it wrong.
So I got it right.
Want more habits and processes?
