This is a guest contributor’s article by Kashyapi Prajapti
There is no denial in the fact that freelancing is one of the best jobs in the modern era, but avoiding common mistakes is critical. Although freelancing is not new in the industry as it is being practiced by professionals for many years, but the ease of collaboration because of the influx of virtualization has made freelancing a more effective and efficient job option.
Nowadays, In the US alone, more than 57 million people are freelancers and the percentage of freelancers is almost the same in other countries as well.
Due to the flexibility and the payment, more and more people are flocking towards freelancing. What can be better than working from home for different clients and managing your timetable on your own instead of sitting in the office 9–5. But just because freelancing looks enticing, it doesn’t mean that it is very easy.
All those people who don’t have self-management or self-control, go haywire while doing freelancing. So, if you are a new freelancer then you will need to master some important skills and what could be better than learning from the experience of others by avoiding common mistakes.
Let’s take a look at how new freelancers can reap the advantages from the experience of others by avoiding common mistakes.
Learn How Others Manage Time
One of the main things to learn as a new freelancer is time management and the best way to learn it is by keeping tabs on how others manage time. When you are freelancing, you don’t have anyone sitting on your head and pushing you to complete the task. In addition to this, you are also not bound to start working from sharp 9 AM in the morning and sit in front of your desktop and keep working till 5 PM.
As a freelancer, you are the master of your own time and that’s why mastering the art of time management is very necessary.
You can look at other experienced freelancers and learn how they manage their time. Experienced freelancers have dedicated hours in a day for the work and they stick to that just like attending office. Proper time management will allow you to complete your task on time and you will also be able to keep things away from getting haywire.
Build the Passion to Learn
One of the best ways you can reap the advantages offered by the experience of others is to build a passion to learn. You must be aware of the famous quote ‘When you stop learning, you stop living’ and the same thing applies to freelancing as well, especially if you are a completely new freelancer.
There is no denial in the fact that your education is surely going to aid you in your freelancing job but there are many things that you will be able to learn from your own experience only and for that, you will need to build a passion to learn.
You can see how excited others are to learn new things as it will not only add up to their skillset but will also allow them to complete the task more effectively. You can learn how others are taking new challenges and how they are considering as an opportunity to learn instead of an alien subject.
Master the Art of Communication
One of the biggest reasons why so many new freelancers fail in making it to even their first year in the industry is the lack of communication or poor communication. You should know that when you work as a freelancer then you are not going to sit with every client in a personal meeting and discuss the blueprint of the plan.
Everything will be done digitally and that’s why communication is the key to success in freelancing. Lack of communication can also lead to no reliability and that can hamper your profile. You can look at other experienced freelancers and learn how they communicate with their clients and how they maintain 100% transparency with them.
Most of the experienced freelancers never keep their clients in dark as they keep on updating them about the progress of the work and how they are keeping up with the deadline. This is the most important thing that you can learn from an experienced freelancer.
Know How to Deal With Stress
You might be thinking that if you will start working as a freelancer then words like stress will become meaningless in your profile but that’s not true. It is true that you are the one who will be controlling how to work and when to work but at many points in your freelancing journey, you will have to through stress just like any office job and for that, you will need to have proper stress management skills.
You should know that experienced freelancers have already gone through many such instances and they have learned how to deal with stress. This is where the stress management skills of an experienced freelancer can work like a magic wand for you.
You can learn from an experienced freelancer how they deal with a situation that makes them stressful. Many a time, you will have a long list of things to do in a very short period of time. In such a situation, you will see that experienced freelancers will always make changes to their time schedule instead of panicking and complete the work successfully.
As you can see, experienced freelancers can surely be a pool of skills and expertise that you will need to take advantage of. It is true that you will learn many things as a freelancer with your own experience but looking at other experienced freelances and learning from them is also very helpful.
From learning which communication channel to choose for better interaction to mastering the art of time management, there are many things that you can learn from the experience of others. This way of learning has one big advantage; you will never have to commit mistakes and go through the hard way of learning.
Author Bio
Kashyapi Prajapati has been involved in the world of accounting software, SEO and cloud computing from a very long time and currently, she is working as a lead content writer with Cloudwalks, a QuickBooks cloud hosting which offers cheapest QuickBooks hosting. Cloud computing and SEO is what she eats and drinks.
