The beauty of being a freelancer is that more often than not, you may choose where you work from. The key to successful freelancing is finding productive spaces, whether you are coworking, working remotely, in your own home, in your own office or even working temporarily from a client’s base.
Productive spaces are, quite simply, places that you can get work done efficiently. Despite what the social media memes may show, freelancers rarely manage a full day of productive work from their sofa, wearing PJs, with Netflix on and accompanied by a mountain of cake and *coffee.
*Ok, yes, often freelancers are usually made up of 80% coffee.
If you are looking to maximise your freelance efficiency wherever you work from, these handy hints and tips might be useful.
Encourage Healthy Working Practices
Occupational therapists and physiotherapists throw their hands up in horror when they see how some freelancers work. When office desks are permanently placed, it is easier to adopt an ergonomic working station for your entire working day. When you remote work or jump from place to place, this becomes something of a challenge. When freelancing, try to adopt these healthy habits:
- Ensure that your workspace is ergonomically designed (as much as possible). Raise your computer screen and/or laptop to an appropriate eye level (stacked up books and an external keyboard does the job).
- Take regular breaks to avoid eyestrain and to move around.
- Take hydration breaks.
- Maintain effective posture, no hunching over your laptop.
- Make sure you have enough light, this is important for your eyes and your wellbeing.
Adopting a healthy working space goes hand in hand with encouraging productive spaces to work. When you are well and comfortable, you are more likely to be focused.
Set Your Office Base Up Correctly
When swinging from coffee shop to client base to library to a client’s own office it can be difficult to find the perfectly productive space to work in. Instead of trying to shape all of these places to your own ideal, start with your own office base. Whether your base is a desk in your bedroom or the kitchen table, you need to make sure that you set this space up efficiently.
A dull, cluttered corner with poor light is never going to be one of the most productive spaces. Hands up all reading this who has a *Pinterest board of awesome-looking office spaces and who has been known to search the productivity and desk hashtags on Instagram. Be honest. You don’t need to colour coordinate your office stationery in rose gold to get work done but working from a space that inspires you is a great way to boost productivity.
*A fabulous quote that has made many of us here at Calibre Office Furniture chuckle may be found in Graham Allcott’s How to Be a Productivity Ninja book. He states that “Collecting productivity porn on Pinterest is not productive”. He’s correct. We like it though, and that’s fine as long as we put some of what we find into practice to help build productive spaces.
- Make your home base somewhere appealing to work.
- Research office chairs before buying, to find one that will support you physically as well as one that looks good.
- Invest in effective online and offline storage in order to keep files and paperwork where you need them, making it easy to get to and saving time looking.
- Invest in a shredder, get rid of unnecessary paper securely and recycle it.
- Ensure that your PC or laptop is secure and always up to date.
Have a Grab Bag
As a freelancer, you may find yourself jumping from workspace to workspace and leaving the aesthetically pleasing and ergonomically sound office base to go to meetings, to networking groups or to coworking sessions. If you want to be productive wherever you go, make sure that you can grab what you need and go without forgetting anything.
- Have a decent bag, easy to carry, waterproof and with plenty of space for everything you need.
- Look at office storage cabinets as magical places to store vital information effectively so that you may locate the notes, contracts or other paperwork you need quickly and easily before shooting out of the door.
- Keep a reusable coffee cup and/or water bottle handy (hydration is healthy, reusable coffee cups are good for the environment and often save you money in many coffee shops when you use one instead of a takeaway cup).
- Snacks, always have snacks in your grab and go bag. When you’re away from the office it is more expensive and harder to find healthy food so make sure you have this ready to grab and go.
Whatever you need to take with you when remote working, you need to ensure that your base office set-up allows for you to have everything to hand, from a spare phone charger to your paper diary or notebook. This saves time and ensures that your time away from the office is productive.
Reducing Noise
Some people can work with noise around them and others adopt a huffy old-school librarian stance, shushing people and giving chatty people “the look”. If you want to be productive when freelancing away from your office space, be this in a coffee shop or around a conference table in a coworking space, find a way that works for you.
- Consider noise cancelling headphones. These rarely block all noise but can dull it sufficiently in order to be productive.
- Set up music playlists that spur you on and block out less productive noise. Some like to work to classical instrumental playlists while others like to hammer out work to hard rock, whatever floats your boat.
- Tell people not to talk to you. No really. Tell people around you that you’re on a deadline or need to focus and to please not talk to you. Make it a rule that if you have your headphones on, people aren’t to speak to you.
In Summary
If you want to enjoy productive spaces when working from your home office or when out and about, doing your freelance thing remotely, you need to think this through. Everyone works differently however some things are constant, one being the need for a healthy workspace. Search for office furniture in London on the internet for some great examples of ways to make your home office a great space to work in, be organised, don’t spend too much of your working time browsing striking desk decor and make sure that you identify decent sources of caffeine in advance.
What are your thoughts on this? Drop us a line and share your thoughts in the comment box below. Oh yes, please also feel free to share this post on your social media channels!