Author: Frances Dredge

I admire anyone who sets New Year resolutions and actually sticks to them. In my case, my main priority at that time of year is reaching spring without slitting my wrists!

Dramatic I know but, a sensation seeker to the core, the post festive slump combined with the 'starless and bible-black' nights can have a S.A.D. effect on my oh so creative sensibility – leading to too much navel gazing and not enough action. At least I know myself.

This is why I choose autumn to review what I’ve achieved and what I want to do next. Perhaps because of that lingering ‘back to school’ feeling, I find this is a great time to assess the old and plan the new. Advantageously, it also means that I am well into the journey by the time January is upon us and can just switch back into work mode rather than waste time cranking up the gears of possibility.

Whatever the timing, goal setting is a powerful success technique as most higher flyers will tell you.

Simplistically, if you know what you want from life, you have much more chance of getting it! Alternatively, you can let others take control, which is fine if that’s what makes you happy. However, if you’re taking a laissez faire approach to your ambitions, don’t get bitter and twisted if you end up with what others want and not what your heart desires.

If you’re about to take a shot at defining some new goals, using the S.M.A.R.T principle will help you focus on and achieve the prize.

Specific

Clearly define each of your goals so that you have specific targets to aim for. This sounds obvious but how many times have you vaguely thought you’d like to do something in your life but never got around to it? “I want to change” is not a goal – think about exactly what you want to achieve and what actions this will entail.

Measurable

Quantifying your goal ensures that you can assess your achievement levels as you go along and know when you’ve achieved that goal. For example, I want to be rich is too vague while I want to earn £100,000 by the end of year gives you a measurable target to work to.

Achievable

Goals need to be within your reach so that you are motivated enough to commit to achieving them while being challenging enough to change your life in the way that you foresee.

If you set yourself a big challenge, make sure that you also set interim goals along the way. Also, to stay motivated, your goal needs to have true meaning and value to you as opposed to being something that you think you should or could do, perhaps because society tells you so.

Realistic

While dreams can come true and you should never be discouraged from aiming high, it’s important to be realistic in both what you’re aiming for and the resources you have to achieve this.

Self-belief, confidence and persistence are all marks of successful people but so is the ability to recognise when you’re aiming for the wrong goal and to re-assess and change direction when necessary.

Timely

Setting deadlines is a great way to get and stay motivated. If you don’t achieve your goal by the set deadline, you can either extend it or re-assess the situation asking yourself why you didn’t meet the deadline and what else you will need to do so next time to ensure a more favourable result.

Remember, being motivated to achieve your goals is a consistent effort in which you will be continually evaluating and adapting what you are doing and sometimes what you want to achieve.

For more information on goal setting, go to the FEU Training digital learning centre.

Picture this: as a hardworking freelance who spends most of her time writing at her desk or standing in rooms delivering workshops or classes, I try to keep fit. Cycling is a passion of mine. It also helps me think clearly, often about work, as I coast along through beautiful countryside. Most pleasing.

Now picture this: a tricky bit of off-road. I falter. Bang! I have broken my wrist, which means a plaster cast for six weeks. My first thought within seconds of falling and knowing I had done some real damage? Will I be able to type? If I can’t, I can’t work, Disaster.

As it happened, luck had not completely abandoned me. I broke my left wrist and I am right-handed. And after an initial short period, I was able to type with both hands even though wearing a plaster cast. Basically, it could have been much worse!

However, the whole episode has got me thinking about the importance of contingency planning. Given the law of averages, at some point in our freelance careers, many of us will have a mishap – accident or illness – which could keep us out of the working loop for a considerable amount of time. What would you do? What can you do? We can’t see into the future but we can plan for such things happening.

From analysing my recent experience, talking to fellow freelances and looking at some of the advice and experiences I’ve read online, there are a few important elements to consider when putting together a contingency plan:

• Finances/cash flow
• Insurance cover
• Support from colleagues
• Client relationships

Finances – keeping afloat

Cash flow, chasing invoices, getting paid and then paying our own bills can be challenging at the best of times! But effective contingency planning is a lot about money. Will I have enough money to survive if something goes wrong and I can’t work for a while?

In an ideal world, the rule of thumb is to have at least three months’ money set aside to tide you over if you have to take a break from work. So, do a thorough and honest budget about what you spend on a monthly basis, bearing in mind that this needs to be kept under review as costs e.g., of food/groceries keep changing.

Three months sounds a lot but think about it. One month is very risky – even a relatively straightforward broken bone like mine could have put me out of work for six weeks; two months does not give that practical and psychological comfort zone while three is a decent enough time for getting better and finding or re-establishing work.

It can be hard to make ends meet let alone save but it is sensible to plan for the unexpected (it doesn’t have to be an injury, it could be that one of your major clients goes out of business so you lose a large chunk of work and need time to find more). So try to start building up a 'just in case' fund now. Even if it’s just a few quid a week siphoned off into a dedicated account - one less packet of fags, one less bottle of wine, one less takeaway, one less cinema trip a week will soon add up. In no time, you will feel very satisfied as you see your financial lifeboat increase in size and grow ever more buoyant.

It’s not a saver’s market out there but try to find the best interest return for your money without locking it away. And remember, if you save your tax money in a savings account, you can always transfer the interest to your ‘lifeboat’ account.

(Also, ask your union if they have any benevolent/hardship funds you could apply to in the event of being unable to work through accident or illness. It’s worth knowing what might be available as if you were to have a mishap, it’s unlikely that you’d feel like looking around then.

Insurance – is it worth it?

Many of us will have taken out some professional insurance: to cover equipment, public liability, professional indemnity and suchlike. Some cover can be secured through our unions and it is always useful to know what you can get through your membership. Equity, for example, offer accident and backstage accident cover as part of membership benefits.

However, in the case of accidents away from work like mine, you need to consider what cover, if any, you might want. But before any further consideration of insurance cover, comes the question: Will I be able to get insurance? The truth is (speaking as the daughter of a former insurance underwriter, so the subject is in my blood!) you can always get cover from someone. But it may not be straightforward and the cost may be exorbitant.

Let’s look at the likely cover that you might be looking for. The main policies are: personal accident/injury cover; critical illness cover and income protection cover. The latter, in particular, can be very challenging to find for the self-employed but it is worth seeing what may be available.

There are a handful of insurers who handle schemes for creative professionals and they tend to already work with some of our trades unions. So, I would always recommend talking to the person at your union who deals with insurances and ask if they know of anyone covering the three areas mentioned above. The advice from your union is free and objective.

If you don’t find what you need through this route, don’t worry. From my own and other freelances’ experience, using a recommended insurance broker could be the answer. The ‘recommended’ part is key. Start asking colleagues if they know of anyone. The right broker will be able to get you a bespoke insurance package and answer questions about eligibility, etc.

Final warning

If you do find affordable insurance, be extra vigilant that it will do what it says. Think worst-case scenarios and check that the cover will protect you in the way that you will need and expect.

In the next blog, I’ll look at other areas of contingency planning apart from finance.

Want to learn more?

FEU Training is running a number of free workshops around the country this autumn. If you would like to attend, look out for updates for workshops coming to your region or register your interest at [email protected] (if we have sufficient demand, we’ll come to you).

By life coach Muriel McClymont

If we want to achieve our dreams, being optimistic is important but it's not quite enough. If we look at our idols and think, “I could do that,” but take no action to achieve whatever it is, we’re unlikely to get very far.

To give yourself the best chance of making your dreams come true, you need to be optimistic but you also need a plan. Or as comedian Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder says, “a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”  Well… perhaps not that cunning.

Seriously though, your dreams will remain in the realm of fantasy, if you don’t take the time to put a plan together. An effective plan includes:

• Goals, objectives and targets that excite you
• Motivation to do what it takes
• Resilience to keep trying when there are setbacks
• Means to measure and assess and reward your progress
• Flexibility to make any necessary adjustments
• Deadlines
• Hard work
• Optimism

Goals and motivation

First of all, if you are going to spend time and energy chasing your goals, it’s worth making sure that you really want them. Find somewhere comfortable, sit down, and imagine having all your plans work out just the way you always wanted. Now take a moment to ask yourself these questions:

• What’s it like?
• What’s great about it?
• What are you enjoying?
• What have you had to give up or lose to get there?
• Is there anything you don’t like about it?

It’s essential to ask these questions because, if you charge boldly ahead, harbouring secret fears, for example, none of your friends will love you anymore if you get where you’re aiming for, you’ll sabotage yourself (probably subconsciously) to avoid arriving at your destination and having to deal with imagined negative consequences.

It’s also essential to ensure that your goals are really what you want rather than those that others want for you or those that you think you should want.

Motivation comes from being sure about the path you are on and being eager to do what it takes to get there.

Once you’ve clarified your dreams and ensured that they are truly meaningful to you, it will be easier to set clear, achievable goals and milestones. The specific actions you need to take will almost write themselves!

Resilience

Resilience comes when you understand it’s not personal. All criticism is invaluable feedback and enables you to do better next time.

You stay resilient and motivated by nurturing your passion and keeping in touch with what inspires you. Find ways to remind yourself why you are on this track, and why you care about it so much.

Measurement and reward

As management consultant Peter Druker said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” There are all sorts of things you can start to measure including the amount earned doing what you love, number of days per month/year doing what you love, number of followers on twitter, number of good contacts in the industry, number of invitation, etc, etc.

You need to keep track of where you have been and where you are going, so you can recognise and appreciate your progress. Then, instead of comparing yourself to the best in the business and coming up short each time, you can compare where you are now to where you were six months ago, and celebrate your progress.

If you need some help planning or feel there is never enough time, check out this link, where coach and entrepreneur Scott Dinsmore explains his five step planning process.

Flexibility

Your plan is not something you follow blindly. Consider all feedback. Assess where it has come from, how much you rate the people giving it, how often you have heard the same things. Then use your own criteria to evaluate it, and, if it has merit, adjust your plan accordingly.

Keep close tabs on your progress, check out why you aren’t making the necessary headway. If there is a good reason, fine, keep monitoring, if not then it’s important to try something else, not just keep banging away with the same strategies that are not working.

Hard work and optimism

Finally the key success factor in any good plan is the persistent hard work and optimism that this plan can and will succeed. It’s the combination of this optimism and taking practical steps to make it happen that make this optimism realistic.

Your plan doesn’t have to be as cunning as Black Adder’s, but you definitely need to have one.

“I keep jumping from one task to the next and just can’t finish anything.” Sound familiar?

We all put things off (procrastinate) sometimes and it’s not always a problem. However, procrastination can creep up on you. You defer one thing (“Oh, I’m not sure how to do that so I’ll do it later”). Then, it happens again and again. Before you know it, you feel like a ‘rabbit in the headlights' - frozen into inactivity with tasks pilling up all around you.

If you are worried that procrastination is having a negative impact on your efficiency and productivity along with your morale, motivation and stress levels, it’s important to do something about it before it gets out of control. Also, it's crucial to take some positive steps now rather than say you’ll do it later!

Be honest with yourself

The main thing is to recognise that you’re procrastinating and it’s becoming a problem. Classic signs include:

• Vacillating over and re-jigging ‘to do’ lists and priorities
• Working half-heartedly on bits of work
• Inability to concentrate on pieces of work and see them through to the end
• Having to cram everything in at the last minute because you’ve delayed starting
• Jumping from task to task without completing important ones
• Avoiding certain types of work.

Once you’ve recognised that you’re getting into bad habits, you now need to uncover the reasons as to why you are procrastinating and work out what you can do to get yourself into motion again (you might want to ask a confidant to help you to do this). For example:

Are you bored?

If you rely on a mix of interesting core work and other less interesting 'bread and butter’ work as many freelances do, then, yes, not all work will be great fun. But you need to get on with it.

Try building in small chunks of the boring stuff around the work you enjoy. Also, reward yourself when you finish something that you don’t like doing – remind yourself of all the positive reasons of why you are doing it.

If you decide that you are bored with a high percentage of your work, it might be time to seriously think about where your career is heading and what you could do that would be more interesting.

Do you lack the ability to prioritise?

Learning to prioritise is important. Do you have ongoing lists and deadlines? If a deadline is too 'fluid’/distant, try to do some work on it on a regular basis rather than leave it to the last minute. Here are some tips to help you prioritise and get organised:

• If everything seems overwhelming, break the tasks down into smaller ‘bite size’ chunks
• Feel the sense of achievement as you tick off each task
• Pinpoint how you work best. For example, if you know that you are more creative in the morning leave the admin side of your work (invoicing, etc) until later in the day. One of the upsides of being freelance is that we can, to some extent, choose how we work. Take a long look at yourself and how you work and try and carve out the best way to do it for you that leaves you feeling as happy and balanced about work as possible
• Plan in ‘playtime’ to help with your psychological and emotional well-being. By allowing yourself this kind of reward, you may be able to be more focused and less distracted in your work time.

Do you lack confidence?

If so, think of ways to improve that. For example, list down all your achievements to help you remember how talented you are.

Also, assess your weaknesses. Are there new skills you need to learn that will make you more confident? Do you have a colleague who is good at this type of work who you could talk to or learn from?

Are you using avoidance techniques?

'Displacement’ activity is used to avoid doing what we need to but don’t like/want to do - especially if it’s because we have a negative emotion or perception related to that work. Discipline and motivation are vital. Remind yourself of what you’ll gain by completing each task. Timetable your working day. You might event want to do a time management audit. To help you do this, try the time management exercise in the 'Quick Tips' section of our digital learning centre.

You can do it!

Think again about your best working experiences when you have just got on with the job. Think about why and how to recapture that and take your first small step to stopping the rot and moving forward.

By Tutor and Life Coach Muriel McClymont

I’ve just watched a most interesting TED talk, ‘The Art of Stress Free Productivity’. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is a not for profit organisation that aims to spread 'Ideas Worth Sharing'. If you have not yet explored this resource, dip in a toe.

(One of the most amazing TED talks I ever watched is Jill Bolte Taylor talking about how it feels to have a stroke - fascinating insights into our creative brains.)

Stress at this time of year comes in all shapes and sizes. Some people feel stressed just now because they are not going to be with their family for Christmas others because they are going to be with their family for Christmas!

Freelances can be stressed because many of them will have very little work from about now until mid January, which can leave a substantial dent in the coffers. Some will have more work than they feel they can handle.

Whatever the causes, how can we deal with it?

David Allen in ‘The Art of Stress Free Productivity’ offers a deceptively simple three step plan.

• carry a notebook with you and write everything down as it comes into your head
• decide outcomes and then a first action step for every area of your life
• create an overall map of all areas of your life on one sheet of paper

At first I thought this was too simple, then I tried it out. I got a bit carried away with the writing down all the things I was holding in my head and what became my brain dump list got a bit scary in itself. The funny thing was though that I did feel lighter from putting it all down on a piece of paper.

I then grouped my list into specific key areas - work, family, commitments etc. and considered what I wanted to happen short, medium and long term in each area. Then I created a new to do list with specific first step actions to achieve all this.

What was interesting was that at this point many things just dropped off my list because, once I started to think in terms of outcomes, things either became lumped in with others or simply got dropped as no longer relevant.

Then I produced my overall map. I did this by producing a mind map with me in the middle and lines coming off for each area of my life, with sub branches coming off that, which I colour coded it to make it even clearer to read. If you prefer lists, you could make as many headings as you need, and do lists underneath - again you could colour code this to make it more striking visually. If you like drawing, you could make a picture of your life using symbols or pictures that represent all the areas that are important for you. How you create this map doesn’t matter as long as it is meaningful to you.

I have to say this was the most powerful step because I now have that map in my head and this has helped me make better decisions. When I am feeling particularly pressured in one area, I can see at a glance of my map, how any action I take will impact everything else, so, I can avoid being purely reactive and can manage issues in a more proactive, constructive and productive way. All without any angst ridden worry or stress!

I love to find new things that work and before I use it on clients, I like to try it out and work out why it works. This is my take on it:

Writing it Down

The reason this is effective is that once we write things down, not only do we give ourselves space to think, without trying to keep 30 plates spinning in our heads, but we give ourselves an alternative perspective.

By which I mean, when we hold all the information in our head, some of it we will see as vivid pictures, some will be words we hear, many things will have feelings attached. Putting it all down on paper lets you take a step back from any emotions, puts everything on the same footing and gives you some distance to think and a new viewpoint to think from.

Decide Outcomes and First Action Steps

Deciding on the outcome and identifying actions works because it gives us a positive direction, something that no amount of stressing or mulling over a problem, or trying to decide what to do next, can. Nothing is more stress inducing than sitting reviewing a list of problems and getting increasingly overwhelmed by their volume or complexity. Focusing exclusively on the problem gets you nowhere new.

I particularly liked the point made in the video that lack of time is not the problem but a symptom. Einstein, Mozart, and every other genius you might like to mention, only ever had 24 hours in a day!

Creating an Overall Map

Finally, making an overall map of everything in your life that you need to pay attention to allows you to put your whole life and what is important to you in one place which you then have a visual representation for, so you can see each component in context and prioritise effectively.

More information and questions

I highly recommend that you take 20 minutes to watch The Art of Stress Free Productivity and try out these steps for yourself. You may discover something amazing. I’d love to know how you get on. So, let me know or ask questions at our ‘Freelance Challenges’ forum.

For additional tips David Allen provides access to a great range of free articles, see this link.

Wishing you a very merry and stress free Christmas.