How To Drop Gracefully From Full-Time to Freelance Work

If you’re used to working full-time, it can be difficult to assume a new life as a freelancer. Working as a payroll employee means that you don’t have to manage your own finances – you’re paid every month like clockwork. It means you don’t have to choose your hours – they’re chosen for you. And it means you don’t have to find work, as it’s given to you every day by a manager. Still, if you’re excited to drop down to freelance work and to become your own boss, these tips will help you make that transition as smoothly as possible. 

Time Management

One of the widely cited issues with going from a full-time employee to a freelancer is that if can be difficult to learn how to manage your own time. You may start to get up an hour or two later in the morning, simply because there’s no office manager to shout at you if you’re late. You may choose to do the bare minimum of work, rather than pushing yourself to work as hard and for as long as possible in order to progress your freelance career. 

All of this is likely to happen when you make the shift to freelance. Of course, flexibility in when you work is a huge boon of the freelance lifestyle, but you should also operate some discipline to ensure you’re not allowing laziness to win the day over productivity. 

Finding Work

As a freelancer, the issue is never finding work – it’s finding consistent work that you can be sure will keep you earning throughout the month. It’s this stipulation that many freelancers overlook when they take on their first project, failing to line up a second project and in effect leaving themselves without work for a week or two. 

So you need to learn how to find work consistently. As a freelance trucker, you can be your own boss by finding shipping work consistently on load-sharing websites such as Shiply. If you’re an artist, building a social media presence will likely mean that you’re regularly contacted by potential clients and customers for work. Make these long-term investments to find work on a consistent basis.

Direction

Finally, freelancers often aren’t sure which direction they ought to take with their work. Should they aim to do high-value and well-paid work, but less of it? Should they work as hard as they did in their full-time job, or less hard? These questions will puzzle you for the first months of your freelance career, and it might take you some time to reach a place of clarity over them. 

You will eventually decide where you want to take your new-found freedom and the career that you’re now carving out alone. Do make sure that you take a look over your financial data regularly so that you’re aware of how much cash you’re making – and how much you may be due to pay in tax at the end of the tax year. 

Make use of these quick tips if you’re planning to drop from full-time work to a freelance career in the near future. 

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