Working at home is a great thing. It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting in my garden wondering what I’m going to do for the rest of the day. I consider this to be a privilege, but if you’re not careful it can be a curse. Stuff happens, things get in the way. Here’s 5 time wasters and ways to avoid them.

Constantly checking email

You’d probably want to know if you’d won the lottery, but do you really want to know what Amazon is recommending straight away? Determine what is important and filter your email. Have a mailbox for clients for example, one for email newsletters or whatever you consider important. Then designate times in the day to look at email. Do you really need it to be on ALL the time?

Crashing IT systems

Admittedly this doesn’t happen very often and, without going down the smug Mac users path, it’s only ever Windows that crashes. Make sure your systems and backups are up to date. Tests your backups as well. Many people think that just because they’ve got back up software, they’re covered. Then they realise they’ve forgotten to include essential work files or worse, it doesn’t work at all.

The coffee pot and the biscuit barrel

In order to finish big jobs, I set myself deadlines, often hourly. An hour’s research for example or so many words written or translated.

While I’m not a complete coffee junkie, I like peppering my day with the odd cup. This involves leaving the office and spending the best part of 10 minutes making it. That’s 10 minutes out of an hour. 12.5%. And I’m not even going to think about the effect on my cholesterol!

I’m not saying don’t have a coffee or eat a biscuit. Just be aware of the time it takes from your busy schedule and allocate specific time for breaks.

Work expands to fit the time

Are you one of those people that, when given seven days to do a one day project, will do it on the sixth day? That’s fine as long as you don’t get asked to do a rush one day job on that sixth day. Will you be wishing you’d done the first job earlier? It’s always better to start (and finish) a job earlier because you don’t know what the future holds.

Worrying about things

Like most freelancers, I spend my life worrying about things that might not or never happen. Am I going to finish the job on time? Will this client ever pay me? What if the phone never rings again?

Now, a bit of worrying is probably a positive thing (you don’t want to get over confident do you), but no-one was ever successful because they worried all the time.

Worries and their twin brother fear are part of life. They are often irrational and prevent us making the right decisions. So here’s a tip. Imagine your worries or fear as a little boy (or girl) that is constantly with you. Then tell then good and firm. “OK you. I don’t mind you coming along for the ride, but here’s the deal. You just sit in that corner, shut up and let me do my work”. That way you’ll get things done.

We all have things that get in our way and stop us from being productive. What’s yours?

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Here’s a question for you. If you’re self-employed, do you think you don’t have a boss or are you the boss?

The difference is quite important. Not having a boss means you work when you want doesn’t it? It means you set the agenda, there’s no-one to tell you what to do and what not to do.

Does that suit your customers? Do you turn up for work when you feel like it or when your customers expect you to be there? Do you deliver your work when you get the time (and invent an excuse as to why it’s late) or do you deliver on time or even early?

I came across this video today, via chrisbrogan.com. The subject matter isn’t important, but have a look, the message is.

Clever isn’t it? There’s no more slouching for us now. We’ve got to deliver.

If you want to be bought by Amazon (or anyone else for that matter), get up early, be on time and BE THE BOSS. As Pete Townshend said (yes, in a different context), “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.

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It’s amazing how time flies. It seems like just five minutes since Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher each contrived to miss a penalty against Portugal in the 2006 FIFA World Cup (c) as we must now call it to send England crashing out in quarter final glory.

Now it’s already South Africa 2010 and we’re ready to go through the whole thing again. For at least the first two weeks there’ll be three games a day to distract freelancers and home workers and prevent them from getting anything done. If you hate the whole jamboree you’re lucky, just turn the television and the radio off and you you can ignore it all. If you’ve more than a passing interest, you’ll need help combining work and distraction. And getting some work done.

I’ve seen every game of the last three World Cups and have developed some stategies to combine working well and keeping up to date. And yes, I know this is tongue in cheek, but for some it’s a real problem!

1. Use a second screen or a second computer

During the World Cup 2006, Internet TV was just getting going. To be quite frank, the quality wasn’t great, it was jumpy, grainy and slow. Four years later, both BBC and ITV channels broadcast over the Internet and even a half-decent 2MB connection should be enough to get streaming that you can watch games without getting that spinning ball that means the connection is buffering every 2 minutes.

2. Do the boring tasks

You can multi-task! We all have boring tasks to do in our businesses. The World Cup is the perfect excuse to get on with them. So, if you have a backlog of filing, accounts or simply organising your workspace (a fancy word for tidying up), you can go ahead and do those tasks AND feel virtuous.

3. Get up early

The World Cup always takes place in June and July. In Europe at least, it’s daylight at 4 or 5 in the morning at that time of year. It’s also quiet with nothing but chirping birds to distract you. As it’s often too hot at 3 in the afternoon, why not get up early and change the way you work?

4. Turn the sound off

A little way of trying to kid yourself you’re concentrating on your work is to turn the sound of and watch out of the corner of your eye. Well, it works for me!

5. Use live blogs or a live updates service

Are you really interested in North Korea against the Ivory Coast? (yes!) Technology now exists to enable us to keep up to date almost in real time without going anywhere near a television screen. You can get scores pushed to your phone or computer and not be distracted by screaming commentators. The BBC also has a live teleprinter service that will tell you when and where all the goals are going in. Personally, I find these more distracting than watching a game out of the corner of my eye, but of they suit you, go for it.

6. Don’t try to work whilst watching the television

After years of trying, believe me, it doesn’t work. Sit in front of the television with a beer, not your laprop. Relax and enjoy.

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Like a lot of blogs and sites, this is a one contributor affair. I come up with the ideas for the content, I write and maintain it and I do the Wordpess and Thesis customisation.

Whilst doing that, I give it my tone and personality. I like to write in what I think us a relaxed but intelligent style because that’s how I perceive myself. I write about things I like again because they reflect my business and to some extent my personal life. I am however discreet because it would be easy to put off potential clients and buyers by being too touchy-feely or by moaning too much.

Really putting personality into a web site

I came across Be Awesome Online today whilst reading Copyblogger. It’s not often I click through to a particular contribtor’s web site, but this time I did and I’m glad because it got me asking questions of myself.

At first look, Catherine Caine’s site is a well-designed sales engine. That’s not a criticism, on the contrary, it shouts load and proud what it is and does it in a pretty engaging way.

When you dig a bit deeper though into the blog pages, she reveals far more. She’s (probably) not yet a six-figure blogger and has trouble getting to the end of the month sometimes. She also suffers from energy sapping depression in the winter months with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

She is refreshing because a real person shines out from under all that writing that she says she loves doing.

Honesty as a sales tool

Now I’m no advocate for Catherine. I’ve never met her and in fact until a few hours ago, I’d never even heard of her. What I like about her is that sales blurb is saying, “Come on guys, we all feel the same way about this. We’re all a bit scared sometimes, we all doubt our abilities, lets just be honest about it”.

There’s arguments for an against calling one or two-man bands a “brand”. It doesn’t matter whether you call it a brand, an identity or a personality, if it isn’t distinct and doesn’t show up, something’s wrong.

Have I been doing it wrong?

This site reflects was I am and when you call me, email me or just make a comment (because you will, won’t you?), you’ll know exactly what or who to expect. The picture at the top is really me, in my office in front of my Jackson Pollock, staring into the webcam on my iMac.

I have fears and there are times when I don’t think I’m going to make it. I have days when everything goes wrong and I just want to give up. Freelancers don’t have an awful lot of support networks and it would be good that sometimes we could use these “social” media to be a little more ourselves than what we would like to pretend to be.

Like Catherine, we just might come over as more personable, more approachable and in the final analysis, more fun.

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Earlier in the month I compiled a playlist for the car that was unashamedly 1970s. It was full of stuff I could turn up loud and sing out of tune to with no fear of reprisals. I can’t tell you how good that drum section and Herbie Flowers’ bass sounds on Nilsson’s Jump into the Fire on Nilsson Scmilsson sounds flying down the motorway. Or Led Zeppelin’s Rain Song or anything by Bad Company or Free. Old hippies never die I suppose, they just get nostalgic from time to time.

But just to prove I don’t live in a time warp, this month’s playlist of music I work with is rather electronic. And thanks to Stuart Maconie and those great people at emusic, the month has been at bit expensive as well.

Darshan Ambient - The Zen Master’s Diary: very close to ambient. One reviewer on emusic says, “This is how I start Sunday morning, along with coffee and the paper. Masterful and mellow”. There you go.

I Monster - Art of Chill EP: part of the 2-disk Art of Chill Volume 6 put together by I Monster. We’ll have to forgive them a dubious version of a dubious song, Tina Turner’s The Best, the rest is a gem. Part Air, part psychedelia, three short(ish) tracks. Just fresh.

The Lickets - Journey in Caldecott: An apparently elusive duo. Hypnotic, melodic and and somehow elevating.

Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons: Not at all ambient, call it chill, down-tempo or whatever you want. Unchallenging, pass the day away with it.

Rhys Chatham – A Crimson Grail (for 400 electric guitars): 400 electric guitars and the Sacré Coeur cathedral in Paris. Epic, mad and it works.

The Advisory Circle - Other Channels: Retro-synths and public information films. What’s not to like? Like the rest of Ghost Box‘s output.

Sylvain Chaveau – The Black Book of Capitalism: This is an elusive record, a mix of electronic and acoustic. It paints scenes, creates atmospheres.

The Jellyheads – Filthy Mechanoid: Downbeat/down tempo (what the hell is the difference?). Basic guitar, bass and drum supplemented with all kinds synths, software and kitchen utensils (apparently). A glorious smorgasbord.

Inch Time – As the Moon Draws Water: I’ve seen this described as “slow dance music for melancholic robots”. I’ll leave the dancing to others, another electro-acoustic affair with a whole variety of influences, jazz, world and techno.

Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express: OK, this is retro-electronica, but I came to Kraftwerk very, very late. I’d liked an extract from their second album that appeared on the Vertigo sampler Suck it and See, but not all the 80s stuff that I found too mechanical. Take them out of that horrible decade and they sound they sound revolutionary. Mea Culpa, I’m catching up as I write.

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It started on a whim. I was bored one day. I wanted some fun. The rain was pelting down so I had no real desire to go out. I was a long way from my deadline for the work so I found myself meandering across the Internet. I don’t know what inspired me to play the lottery. I don’t do it very often and in my more lucid moments I think of it as a tax on the aspirations of the poor. But then again, I’m a money tart just like anyone else.

I filled in the numbers on the “lucky dip”. That sounds so tacky and fairground. I paid my money. Electronic money but real money nevertheless and went on my way.

Then I forgot about it.

They next morning I turned the computer on read to work. It’s the same old ritual. E-mail, news and a look at the to do list. I’m organised and methodical like that. I had a quick look down the 50 or so messages that were dropping into my box. One had a subject line that said “Good news about your ticket”.

Oh no. So this is what it feels like. That moment of anticipation. They normally send me messages like “Don’t forget to buy your ticket” which is a way of saying “oh shucks, you’ve lost, better luck next time” or “Make your life a little easier”, as though it was that simple.

But this was the real thing. I felt a shiver down my spine. I wanted to hold on to that delicious moment of torture. But I also had feelings of guilt.

“Give it away? Why?” “Well, what would I do with all that cash?” “Where do I start? You’ll never have to work again” “I want to keep working. What would I do with myself otherwise?” “Never heard of sea, sex and sun?” “What have I done to deserve it?” “Oh, that’s great, you’re getting a conscience now”

I stared stupidly at my screen for quite a while as though I wanted time to stop just there.

£8.10 on the euromillions.

A relief. No need to feel guilty.

Oh well, better luck next time.

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I’m part of a generation that didn’t learn to type as a teenager. There were no computers around and typing courses were for secretaries, exclusively girls (disclaimer: we’re talking 1970s here). I  ”learnt” on a Hoverspeed VDU in a previous life as a travel agent. I then fumbled through a few years working in travel on reservation systems that didn’t really require typing skills, just a few lines of commands that never changed. I didn’t do any word processing so I could get away with it.

Useless typist

So my typing is useless. Let’s be generous and say I use three fingers (OK, perhaps four). On a good day I’m slow and I’m very grateful for the spell checker because I can guarantee a typo rate of one a sentence.

When I came to translating in 1996, I was “typing” with 3 fingers. I thought that was quite adequate at first and used to spend hours slaving away at my machine to do the most modest of jobs. I only had me to support but looking back I used to spend hours working for only a modest income. The days, unfortunately, are only 24 hours long.

Is voice recognition the answer?

More recently my 3 finger typing skills have been replaced by a microphone and a voice recognition system. That has enabled me to dictate up to 10,000 words on a good (long) day. The problem is that it’s not always very accurate. Not only is it sensitive to computer speed and performance but also posture and fatigue in the voice.

It has little idiosyncrasies. There are some words that it won’t recognise like “dimension” and it’s useless at acronyms, especially of they have more than 3 letters. Once you’ve spent a day with a microphone wrapped around your head, believe me, it hurts. I sympathise with call centre operators across the world. Although not with call centres, they’re annoying, pesky things

Mavis Beacon is my muse

So I’m learning to touch type. Voice recognition software is a false friend. It gives me the illusion of productivity but it makes errors that I have to correct and on a bad day I don’t even see.

I’m not sure what to make of Mavis Beacon. Her product is a bit of a roller coaster, she talks to me every time I open it up. She hectors and patronises me a bit. When I do really badly, she says I should practice and she’s a stickler for accuracy. But for now, she’s my only muse and I and will come out of the experience with a new skill.

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When I first started translating, I was told that there were two types of translator. The specialists and the hungry. The reasoning being that, as individuals, we can’t be expected to cover all subjects and specialisms. This applies to all types of freelancer. Major corporations often have problems when they overstretch into areas they don’t master and then have do embarrassing U-turns to focus on their “core” business. So us poor freelancers have no chance!

Jack of all trades

I soon found that attacking subjects about which I had no idea was complete folly so my first paid translation was also my last medical one. Subsequently, machine tools, construction and anything vaguely scientific were crossed off the list as well. I started learning by default what I was interested in and what I was good at.

I enjoyed marketing, culture and (strangely enough), IT. I was familiar with the vocabulary and terminology used and I enjoyed the creative side of texts like that rather than the mind-numblingly dull and usually badly written engineering texts.

When I started copywriting a few years ago, I was far less naive. Applying the same rules, I started translating geek into English. That presented its own challenges! I wrote newsletters for accountants and advertising for all kinds of small business and not a single machine tool crossed my desk.

I’d made it, I was a specialist and I wasn’t hungry.

Specialists don’t work in isolation

Specialisation is fine, but we don’t work in isolation. It’s very easy, especially if you work for large organisations, to finish a job, send it off and never think about it again. Of course, our work doesn’t fly off into a vacuum to be sucked up into a corporate black hole. It has a life after it goes down the email pipes.

Translation agencies are, wrongly, particularly prickly about allowing freelancers contact with their end clients because they’re afraid of being undercut by their service provider. This rules out any real dialogue between the service provider and the end client.

So, there is no collaborative process and the only time there’s any feedback is when there’s a problem. The result is that freelancers can feel or actually be a small part in the big corporate process.

We have little or no access to the really big juicy work that we could actually do quite well because we are perceived as lot big enough.

A network of specialists

On the one hand we have to specialise to build up any kind of expertise but on the other we loose out because we can’t do all the related things. As a copywriter, I can’t design the web site that goes around my prose, I can’t code it either, but I know a man who can.

So how am I more powerful? Writing for my clients, coaxing them into social media and advising them about marketing or providing a full range of services from a network of trusted partners that give them the benefit of an agency – adverting, marketing or whatever – at a reduced cost?

We are never stronger than when we work together in groups, collaboratively, and now is the time for freelancers to come together and start bidding for some big work.

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This is not a list of greatest ever books, just a selection totally subjective one from my bookshelf.

John Simmons – The Invisible Grail: How Brands Can Use Words to Engage with Audiences: This discusses how brands use words to engage with their audiences. It takes examples such as Innocent Drinks and Lush to show how they create not a visual identity but a narrative.

A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some Things We’ve Learned: Not strictly a business writing book but a great example of how to write for and about a business.

Jonathan & Lisa Price – Hot Text: Web Writing That Works: a mine of information.

John Simmons – Dark Angels: How Writing Releases Creativity at Work: Is this a John Simmons love in? Probably.

David Ogilvy – Ogilvy on Advertising: This worked in a different age but so many of the truths in this book hold today.

Stephen King – On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: Rightly or wrongly, I’ve never read a Stephen King novel and this is definitely not a business book, but it’s one of the best books I’ve read about writing generally.

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I was contacted a few weeks ago by a web company in Cyprus, or more specifically Turkish, northern Cyprus. They asked me to quote for some travel writing for a new site they were building.

I have to admit to being very wary about being contacted out of the blue by people I don’t know about work. Or anything else actually. Nevertheless, I replied to the email and after a couple of exchanges I got the job.

I mentioned it to one or two people I knew who were all very sceptical and one even said I should demand payment up front because it was the only sure way of getting paid.

I decided to take a chance and went ahead. If nothing else, it was more interesting than the jobs I’d been doing recently and I could always just use it as a piece for the offline portfolio I’m building.

I completed all but one of the files but I had a question for the client. I sent them off and waited for the answer. The first day nothing happened, the second day, nothing. By the third day I was beginning to think my mates were right. Bye-bye pay cheque. I was ready to put it down to experience.

I’m generally a believer in the goodness of people so I e-mailed a reminder. “Oh, I didn’t get the files!” he said. “And by the way, when you send the last file, don’t forget the invoice”. Too damn right I won’t!

I sent the file and the invoice the next day. Separately, I think it’s really tacky and smacks of desperation to send them together. Less than 24 hours later I had a notification from PayPal to say he’d paid. I thought he might have waited a few days, but that’s the fastest I’d ever been paid by anyone (all you people that think it’s OK to pay at 130 days, take note!).

Surprises like that are some of the reasons why I love my job. Just have a little faith in people and it’ll be OK.

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