Close your eyes and imagine days you no longer live repetitive days, wake up on time, and go to the office. You can freely decide how much time you spend at work today, how much time you spend with the people you love. You can work anywhere, just with a laptop and the internet.

Being a freelancer, you are free to decide about your life, where you live. You are free to choose the projects you would like to work on and say “no” with unfriendly clients.

But “There is no road of flowers leading to glory”. To achieve a great freelance life, you have to face a lot of challenges in day-to-day life.

1. You have to do everything
When you work a 9-to-5 job, you only need to do your own professional work well. But when you choose a freelance life, you have to do everything – like a small business.
You must perfect a variety of your own skills: from excellent expertise to sales, customer – competitor – market research, customer services, negotiation, time management, project management, outsourcing, personal branding, …
Are you ready?

2. Laziness and feelings overwhelm you
Self-discipline is the biggest challenge a freelancer has to face and overcome. No one pushes you to work for exactly 8 hours a day. No one controls whether you are working or not.
Laziness makes you want to bury yourself in warm blankets on winter days. Too many “fun” activities are beckoning you. And unnamed emotions take over your body, making you no longer want to complete unfinished projects. Only when customers “ask” do you realize that the mess is still there.
When you work a 9-to5 job, if your heart breaks or your mood down, you still have to wake up and go to work. Your job will take you away. But when you work as a freelancer, that sadness will take over you, occupy your mind. Are you strong enough, rational enough to overcome and control yourself? It depends on you.

3. Unstable income
In the past, whether you did a good job or not, your paychecks poured into your account every month. Now, you only have money when you complete projects that meet customer requirements. Sometimes, you have lots of projects, but sometimes you can’t sell any. Financial planning for such phases will help you settle down on your own.

4. Dealing with loneliness
No more jokes with colleagues every day. Sometimes, you feel lonely and lack social communication. You make lots of coffee dates to broaden your network, but sometimes the real motivation is just to “avoid loneliness”.
The tips are you can make connections with other freelancers or make a friend group at the Co-working space. Talking to other “peers” who understand each other will help you keep motivated on this path.

5. Projects overlap projects, deadlines overlap deadlines
As a freelancer, you usually never have only one project at a time. You have multiple projects and deadlines at the same time. It requires you to create and manage your schedule closely and accurately estimate the time it takes to complete each work item.

Freelance life is not for lazy dreamers.
Overcoming these thorns, the spreading roses destination awaits you.

– Flav –