Admit it. Freelancing hasn’t done any favors to your health.

You’re working more hours than you were working in your 9-5 job. Worse, sometimes you don’t even realize that the weekend is here. There is no ‘off’ mode for you anymore and it’s all just a blur of assignments, pitches, and deadlines. 

Say what? It’s not all that bad? Dude, you’ve so got to read on!

Drinking countless cups of coffee

Let’s see if this sounds like you. The first thing you do is brew coffee and take a sip of it as you sit down to start work. You don’t wake up till your second cup of coffee kicks in, it doesn’t register how many cups you’ve drunk throughout the day and all you know is that lack of coffee makes you cranky. Does that sound like anyone you know? Yourself maybe? Wait, is that @menwithpens I see hiding in the back? 

Sleeping late

Ah, yes. The bane of most freelancers. It certainly is mine! Sleeping late means waking up late. No matter how much you deny it, your body needs certain hours of night time sleep to function properly. Sleeping during the day is just not as effective.

I’m a night owl – always have been. Apart from my bathroom brainstorming trips, I tend to focus best at night. The problem is that I’m also a morning person. I love sunrises- so much so that I sometimes go to bed after it

Eating meals while working

Pick up your keyboard and turn it upside down on a clean surface. Be prepared for an avalanche! All right, so I’m being a drama queen, but you can’t deny the fact that your keyboard is probably dirtier than your kitchen sink.

It’s just so easy to get into the habit of eating at your desk. Munching on your sandwich while you work, check email, tweet or browse. Break the habit and take a break for your meal. Relax and enjoy your food.

While we’re on the topic of meals, another bad habit that’s super easy to pick is of continuous snacking. Ditch the snacking habit and save yourself a few pounds worth of weight gain.

Excessive smoking

Granted, not all of us are smokers. Those who are find themselves smoking more and more while working. The closer their deadline comes, the more they puff. I’m not going to go into the health hazards of smoking because we all know them. The smokers among us also ignore them.

However, I will suggest different ways to not smoke so much while working. 

• Get rid of your ash tray. 
• Every time you feel like smoking, step out.
• Make sure your stash isn’t within your arm’s reach.

If you’re going to have to make an effort to light a smoke, or step out to do it, you might want to wait till you’re done with what you’re working on.

P.S: Just so we’re on the same page, I’m talking about smoking tobacco – not *insert substance of your choice here*.

ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder

Yes, it’s a disorder we can acquire. Constant browsing, emailing, and twittering leaves us with short attention spans. So even if we didn’t have clinically diagnosed attention problems before, we tend to get them after we start freelancing and spend most of our time online.

We need a response to everything. If I don’t get a reply to an email in a couple of hours I start fretting. God forbid if an entire 24 hours pass without a response, I’d worry if the other person was even alive!

Performing under pressure

Freelancing turns us into pressure junkies. It’s a deadly habit if you let it become so. We thrive best under the pressure of an approaching deadline and secretly love how creative we can be when we’re scrambling to meet a deadline. 

I’ve found two ways to deal with my pressure junkie ways.

First, the minute I get a project, I get done with all the research. Then I let it cook in my head for a while before getting started on it. I find writing much easier this way. 

Second, I’ve trained myself to set my personal deadline as 2 days before the actual one. I’m weird that way. My first thought on a deadline is the one I adhere to, no matter how much I try to work with another one.

So let’s have it. Do you agree? Disagree? Or got any more bad habits to confess to?

Technorati Tags: Clients, freelance business, Freelancing, Writing

Warning & Disclosure: This post contains too much information.

I have a special place where no matter how big a mental block I’m facing, my brain just clicks and goes into over drive coming up with amazing ideas and words. I call that place my throne. My pot of ideas. My seat of zen. My… you get the drift. 

It calls itself my toilet.

Warming my zen seat

Every time I face a blogger’s block or say yes to a project that I have no experience of, I grab my notebook and head to my loo. As the seat of my throne (literally) warms so does my brain and within minutes I’m well on my way to coming up with ideas.

Take today for example. I’d spent all morning trying to come up with a post. I wanted to blog, I had the topic but it just wasn’t the right topic for today.

So I picked out my moleskin, went to loo and sat on my seat.

After 30 minutes I came out with 18 new blog post ideas. 18! Almost ten of those ideas were detailed into how I’d write them. I also had the perfect topic to write about today.

Since the seat’s taken, find another place for yourself.

Taking my example, it’s safe to say that you’re not the one who picks out your spot. Your brain does. Mine picked out my toilet and yeah, lets not got there.

Your place of focus could be your garden, the love-seat by your window, the swing in your backyard or even your shower. It’s the place where you find the focus you need. It’s where you come up with some of your best ideas. You can go there everyday or hang out there on weekends. It your spot. You get to decide how to use it to gain maximum benefit from it.

Me? I wait till I have a problem to head to my seat for the sole purpose of brain storming. Don’t want my brain to get too used to it y’know? It would be a little difficult to explain why I set up my office in my loo.

We all have our zen seat. But I bet none of yours is as cool as mine

Do you have a place where your brain starts working without you having to force it to concentrate? Can it challenge mine?

Picture Source: rossbr

Technorati Tags: Blogging, writer's block, Writing

My vacation meant that my Google Reader had more than 1000 items collected for my reading, uhh… pleasure. I’m only just beginning to catch up on all my favourite blogs. It doesn’t help of course that they post so regularly!

This week, I’ll be linking to Copyblogger’s posts that I read word for word after coming back.

• Three Steps That Guarantee Every word of Your Copy Gets Read
• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines
• Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break
• Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words
• How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes

Those are five posts I’ve read every word of. Now if I can just use the information in them practically to become a better writer and blogger. That’s the toughest part. There’s so much information at the tip of our fingers that we leave the advice we just read in favour of reading some more.

I’ve rarely been able to put what I’ve learned into practice. Is it the same with you guys? Or am I the only failure?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, link love, Writing

I’ve been using title cases on The Base. I thought that’s how titles should be. They look formal and official to me. After all, newspapers use them too! 

Until I came across a post on Snappy Sentences, I never gave it much conscious thought. While reading “Sentence case v title case” I had my response ready from the second I read the title. I was going to reply with all the reasons title cases are the way to go for a blog after I finished reading the post.

Then I read this: 

Sites that use title case often use it inconsistently. Sometimes You Get This. But Sometimes you Get This. 

The above two sentences blew all my arguments away. How many time have I wasted time trying to decipher which word to capitalize and which to not? There’s been so many times I’ve gotten it wrong too!

There’s nothing wrong in using title cases, they’re just not as reader/writer friendly as sentence case. Goes to show that just because I thought something should be a certain way, doesn’t mean that it has to be. 

Still not convinced? Read the post over at Snappy Sentences, come back and debate away.

P.S: As convinced as I am, I still think title cases are better to look at! Too bad sentence casing makes my life as a blogger easy.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Writing

April has been a month of ample triumphs and trials. Without any further ado:

Triumphs

My first post for another blog “12 Places To Get Business Cards Online” got syndicated by ComputerShopper.com which receives around 200k visitors per month! Many thanks to Chris Cairns of Smart Life Blog for telling me about it.

It may be unprofessional and weird to write about, but this is my highest earning month so far. This is the first month I was able to meet my original, modest earning goals. The fact that i also took a 2 week break this month makes it incredible!

Work wise, I learned countless new things this month. I’m also gaining experience as a ghost writer. Surprising, but inevitable I suppose. So if you want blog posts, articles or e-books ghost written, you know where to find me

Trials

Work wise things are fine Alhamdolillah. The only problem I seem to have is with The Base. I’m struggling to find a balance between the kind and frequency of posts. I’ve tried scheduling posts and maintaining weekly blog columns. So far doesn’t feel right.

I’m adding another subheading to this report titled:

News

Things seem to be picking up speed in both my personal and professional life (knocks wood). 

I finally got a work table!!! It’s nothing fancy – just a flat surface. A very cool, smooth flat surface. I’m off the dining table and into my own corner which I’ve set up in my bedroom. 

I went to India for my break this month and had a blast! My husband has family there and a couple of cousins were getting married so I got to attend an Indian wedding as well. Cool huh? I was the typical tourist and took pictures of EVERYTHING. Got about 1k pictures in all. 

I’ve enrolled myself into a writing course. Since education is beyond expensive in UAE and considering the current financial climate, we decided it would be unwise to invest a substantive amount of money in my Masters. Therefore, I enrolled in a diploma course. I’m hoping this will help me in my career.

Can’t remember anything else at the moment. Until next month!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, news, Triumph & Trial Report, Writing