Author: Muriel McClymont

IF YOU ARE anything like me, every time you have a lull, as soon as you get booked up with work again, you have instant 20/20 clarity about how you should have spent your free time!

Learning to make the most of periods of down time is an important freelance life skill. Some people are proactive and organised, and utilise down time well. Others have some nifty strategies for making sure they don’t enjoy, or use wisely the breaks in their schedule.

Here are some common displacement activities that we may have noticed other people indulging in:

1. Becoming nocturnal, spending days in bed, and nights watching rubbish television or YouTube videos.
2. Playing the pseudo busy game, where you get up as normal, switch your computer on, tell everyone you are looking for work, or are working on your book, then spend the day on Facebook.
3. Running around like a headless chicken panicking loudly about the situation while doing absolutely nothing constructive about it.

So what’s the alternative?

First of all, recognise that you are entitled to a break, so when you have free time, make sure you use it to help relax and re-energise for the next piece of work.

Plan in support work

When there is an unwanted gap in your creative work, use this to catch up on the support work you need to do to create more work opportunities in the future, e.g., telephone people you haven’t been in touch with for ages, pitch some ideas to potential clients, update your website, learn a new skill. The more efficient you are at this sort of work, the less likely you will be to have unwanted gaps in your schedule in the first place. Also, try to do this work little and often so you achieve work continuity rather than leave it until you are desperate.

Take time to reflect

Did you know that people often make the big life changing decisions when they are on holiday? A different environment, no deadlines with no expectations from anyone else for a day or two can help to create ‘thinking space’ that both allows you to reflect on your life and inspire new ideas. So, rather than spoil your free time by allowing a dozen unhelpful worries cloud your mind, use the time constructively to clearly assess what you need and want to do next. If you’re in a period of downtime because you can’t get work, it’s really important to honestly analyse why you’re in this position and what you can do to stop it happening in the future. Just grab a notepad to jot down any significant realisations or options, and go think.

If you’re not sure where to focus, start with your goals:

• Are you still on the path you want to be?
• Do you still love it?
• Are you making progress?
• What is not happening that you thought would?
• What do you want instead? And so on.

Sometimes this process will give you a gentle nudge to make changes while occasionally there will be an epiphany! Whatever happens, you will be clearer about what it is you are working towards.

Start new projects

After reflecting on your current situation, you may have come to the conclusion that you need to create some new options for yourself. You could be considering a new venture with other like-minded professionals, or have identified new potential sources of work, or even new types of work.

Perhaps your contemplations have led you to recognise that you need to acquire or brush up a skill. You may even find you have been working too hard, and need to spend time on a hobby or with friends and family.

Whatever it is, getting involved in something new will get your creative juices pumping again, and even if what you are doing is not strictly related to what you consider to be your core business, you will be amazed how often it subsequently feeds into, or leads to something much more relevant.

Do stuff

It’s a good idea to have a list of things you want to do, so when there is an opportunity you can just start working through it. The funny thing is that when we are actually in that situation, we often tell ourselves, that we can only do those things when we know what’s happening about work. Then when we sort the work out, we no longer have the free time!

We need to re-categorise the activities on this list from ‘nice to do,’ to ‘essential maintenance’. Just as you would wait for a quiet spell to have your car serviced, this doesn’t make it an unnecessary task.

Your necessary maintenance could include time in the gym, catching up with friends and colleagues, reading books, going to the cinema or theatre, visiting museums and art galleries, and filing.

Create gaps

If you are lucky enough to have a steady stream of work with no unwanted gaps, it’s important to plan some in. Let everyone know in good time, and schedule in holiday breaks. It won’t necessarily occur to anyone else to remind you to do this, so it’s important that you take responsibility for this yourself.

No breaks can all too often result in becoming stale or running out of steam. No-one would expect to employ someone to work all year round, with no breaks, no holidays and no time off for good behaviour. So don’t assume you have to because you are freelance.

Managing your client’s expectations, or being prepared to plan ahead to accommodate your client’s key dates, should allow you to organise this time off for yourself.

 

THERE ARE a few recurring themes that seem to reliably crop up when we run our Interview Skills workshop ‘You’re Hired’, and last week’s was no exception. Here are three common blind alleys and how to avoid them.

1. Be clear about your achievements

Many of us don’t like to appear to be big headed, so we play down our experience. This is stellar behaviour for a dinner party, but pretty short-sighted for an interview.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve spoken to people about their work achievements, and had to tease out information that made it clear that what they did was spectacular. Problem is, most interviewers will not make this effort. Whatever you say will be taken at face value, so if you, trying not to sound big headed, say you are “quite good’” they may well think to themselves, “What a shame, we wanted great.”

Lets think about it. The people interviewing you probably know nothing about you other than what you wrote on your CV or application. They will have other people lined up who are similarly qualified. When you walk into that meeting, what you say and how you behave will be all they have to go on when it comes to making a judgement about whether you are right for this role.

If you are coy and say things like: “Well we were fairly pleased with the outcome… we met the deadlines by the skin of our teeth… it wasn’t all me, we worked as a team… ” When the whole truth of the situation was that you drove the project; major catastrophes struck, but you got the bit between your teeth, and made sure they were resolved and while there was a team, you were leading it, and you inspired people to work hard to make sure that the job got done. If you don’t actually say all this, how can they possibly know?

2. Interviews are two-way assessments

Most of us forget that an interview is a two-way process. They might be interviewing you for the job, but you are interviewing them as potential employers and clients.

Now we all know this intellectually, but when preparing for an interview, our focus is usually on whether we are going to pass muster. We worry about being asked stress test questions, or being put on the spot, instead of being comfortable with the thought that anyone who thinks that’s an appropriate way to judge a potential employee, may not be someone you particularly want to work for.

Now the truth is that often the person you are preparing to meet has little or no experience of interviewing, so on some occasions, they are quite possibly as nervous as you. I always see trick questions as a sign that they are not confident in their ability to judge people, so I start to see if I can help make their job easier by trying to raise the aspects of my experience that I think they will be most interested in.

Most important is to recognise that your CV or application got you through the door as suitably qualified. The interview is more about relationship. So prepare well, be yourself, make sure they see the competent professional you are, and go make your assessment of whether these are people you want to do business with.

3. Stay in the room

Finally, because interviews can be a stressful situation, we can mentally duck out of the interview to have a rather frantic conversation with ourselves in our head. Just don’t.

You may think this sounds like a ludicrously obvious thing to suggest, but have you ever found yourself in a stressful situation, looked up and realised that someone just asked you a question and you never heard a word?

This happens when the conversation you are having inside your own head is so loud or intense, that it drowns out, or distracts you from what’s happening in front of you.

If you are prone to this, you will know exactly what I mean. In an interview, if asked a question and you give an answer you don’t like, you can find yourself saying to yourself in your head, “What was I thinking, what a stupid thing to say, I could have said…”

Unfortunately, while you are doing this, the interviewer has moved on to the next question, and there’s a very high chance you’ll only partially hear it, so the answer to that question is likely to be unsatisfactory too!

This is what I mean by staying in the room. Even if you have given a terrible answer, stay focussed on what is being said in response to it. If it really was an awful answer, and your interviewer has any skills, they may well you ask a supplementary question so you can clarify what you’ve said. If this doesn’t happen don’t be frightened to go back to it at some point in the conversation when there is a suitable opening.

If you are having a conversation in your head, you are no longer present, and that will be apparent to your interviewer. So if you catch yourself in an intense internal conversation, switch it off and get back out there. It’s not over till it’s over, so make sure you stay in the game.

If you can steer yourself clear of these three blind alleys, you will give yourself a much better chance of success at your next interview. Good luck.

For more info, go to FEU quick tips.

The CV Holy Grail

What’s the one thing that every prospective client or employer should know about you? It’s unlikely you will have an immediate answer to this question, because it’s a bit like the Holy Grail, something we seek but doesn’t seem to exist and always feels just out of our grasp. It is possible to get close though, and once you do, it should be the core, essence and focus of all your self-marketing.

So what is the CV Holy Grail?

Some will say it’s your unique selling points (USPs), and of course that’s true, but then the question is, what are USPs? Mostly people define them as the sum of your unique skills and experience. This is an accurate definition, but you can go much deeper. Your USPs are really the essence of you, and what you care about.

When creating a CV, you can gather up your experience, layout your qualifications and add some juicy stories about how you delivered exactly what the role you are currently pursuing requires, but how do you find and highlight the heart of your CV, or rather the heart of you?

Where should you seek it?

On our CV workshop, we attempt to make a start on this task with an exercise we do where we ask participants to interview each other to identify some of their achievements. We ask for two examples - work and a non-work. This tends to be a magical part of the course, and people have come up with some amazing experiences, many of which they thought they had forgotten, and most not mentioned on their current CV’s.

Achievements uncovered in this exercise range from the extraordinary, like climbing Everest (yes, really), playing rugby for England, interviewing the Dalai Lama then finding the funding to have it broadcast and writing about religion in a country where it was illegal, through to the seemingly more ordinary, like winning a prize at school, gaining a journalism qualification and overcoming a personal setback.

I say seemingly ordinary, because when we hear the whole story, what people have to do to achieve these things is often incredible, and I always feel privileged to hear these stories. The person who gained the journalism qualification did so while raising her young family, looking after a parent with Alzheimer’s, and holding down a full time job. Her study time was in the early hours of the morning when everyone else was asleep.

The prize at school was the first time this person’s writing ability was recognised, and they had to overcome great shyness to stand up in front of the whole school to accept the prize. That feeling of achievement and pride has stayed with them, and made their current career choice a possibility.

The person who overcame the personal setback realised because of this exercise that his great personal achievement was how he conducted himself throughout his divorce. In spite of huge emotions and the potential for real damage, he kept his head, and made sure that things went as smoothly as they could, so that in spite of everything, his good relationships with his children was maintained.

As you can see, all of those examples are exceptional, and the more time I spend working with people, the more I come to appreciate that everyone is exceptional in some way.

What this exercise is really rooting out are values. Your values are the things you really care about right to your core. If you went to the effort of climbing Everest, then your probably have strong values around endurance, or testing yourself, or reaching untouched parts of our planet. If sacrificing three hours a night of your sleep to gain a qualification is important to you, there’s probably some value about not giving up, goal setting, or moving towards a better future. If sucking up huge emotions for the sake of future relationships is worthwhile to you, there is likely a strong value around commitment, connectedness and self-control.

Our values run through us, like the word Blackpool runs through Blackpool rock! We don’t leave these at home when we go to work. They inform our choices regarding the work we seek, and if you hate your job, they will undoubtedly have a part to play in that too. So identifying your values is a great place to start in learning how to stand out from the crowd.

Note: If you do this exercise, do it with someone else, so you’re not so able to dismiss your achievements as something anyone could have done. And once you pick the things that make you feel proud inside to have done, look deeper beyond the experience to find the values behind them. What motivated you, what made it important, why does it still matter to you? What sort of things do you admire in other people?

How do we use the Grail once we’ve got it?

Once you’ve identified the values behind your achievements, you have the first building blocks to start weaving essence of you into your CV. Get the person you worked with on the exercise to help you write a few sentences that combine your values and experience together to make you stand out as someone exceptional. It’s always easier for someone else to do this for you. Then you can take those away and work on them.

Use this exercise to get back in touch with the things you really care about. Because, the one thing every client or employer should know about you, is what your core values and strengths are, and for most of us, these two are usually welded together. Then see how close you can get to finding your CV Holy Grail.

Learn more about using your skills to expand your work potential in our ecourse Diversifying your Portfolio.

IF YOU OWNED a brand new, top of the range Ferrari, would you let your neighbour’s 17 year-old drive it, just because they asked nicely? I imagine you would want to know if they’d passed their driving test. You’d probably even want to assess what driving skills and experience they have. Would your insurance cover them? Chances are you would think long and hard before you handed over the keys to your pride and joy.

Similarly, imagine you’d taken that same car out for a run, and parked in a quiet street. Then, a bit later, you wander past and see that a builder is mixing concrete beside it, and some kids have made a skateboard run right next to it. Chances are you’d pop across and move it to a safer parking space, wouldn’t you?

All sounds like common sense? However, when it comes to making decisions about our own life, many of us behave as if we don’t have this degree of control. Many of us regularly agree to do things we don’t want to, and which we know aren’t good for us, then we stick with them as if we have no right to change what we’re doing.

There are two really important things to know about your own life:

1. You are in charge of who drives your Ferrari!

2. You can move your Ferrari anywhere and anytime you want to!

And we all know I’m not talking about cars here, right? It’s your life. Where you are right now, and where you are going to next is entirely up to you. Of course, there are external influences, and constraints, but people are good at overestimating these, and underestimating their own freedom.

You are in charge of who drives your Ferrari!

Most of us have people in our lives we want to please - parents, partners or friends, i.e., people who we know love us, and want what they think is best for us.

For some, the commitment to those people has provided the strength and impetus to go for and achieve great things. Sometimes their criticism works as our driving force becomes: ‘I’ll show them.’

The danger is when your wish to please others takes you down a path you don’t really want to go, or when what other people think is right for you, is really not what you want. Then, if you let it, you become constrained and divert your energies from what you want, to doing what you think everyone else wants.

Or to use my analogy, you polish your Ferrari every week, you pay the road tax, and keep it serviced, only to stand back and let everyone else take it out for a spin. Don’t you want a turn at the wheel?

You can move your Ferrari anywhere and anytime you want to!

I was working with a client recently, and he told me that he couldn’t move where he wanted to, because it would disrupt his family. He couldn’t change his job because that would mean he was committing to not moving. He couldn’t content himself where he was, because he desperately wanted something to change. Check mate! He had created a brilliant set of conditions to keep himself completely stuck and unhappy.

The truth is, he could do any of those things, but he chose not to. I’ll repeat that, HE chose not to. His Ferrari was stuck outside his house, getting old and weathered, and nobody was driving it. In fact, it was getting close to being pushed out into the nearest ocean, to take its chances with the tides. Inactivity is a choice. Bowing to what you think everyone else wants is a choice.

We all constrain ourselves at times with the thought, ‘I can’t’, when we actually can. There may be consequences, sometimes those may be traumatic and challenging, but you could do it. When you recognise that you have options, and realise that you are choosing to stay where you are, then it is easier to content yourself with what you have, or if this is not possible, to take the plunge and deal with the fall out.

Just think about it. If you have £700 in your bank right now, you could go on line and book yourself a ticket to fly to Australia next week. I’m not saying you should, I’m not saying you would even want to, but you could. If you did, you might lose your job, not have enough money left to pay your rent and confuse the heck out of your friends and family. Not to mention what you would have to do when you got there, with no place to stay. But the point is, if those funds are available, the choice is a possibility. You probably won’t exercise this option. But that’s a choice you are making.

How many much more minor options are you overlooking because you just haven’t defined them as plausible options?

It’s your Ferrari. As long as you’re not breaking the law, you can move it anywhere you like.

I’m not advocating that we all throw caution to the wind, and disrupt our lives without any good reason. I’m just saying that you only have one Ferrari, so make sure you have some fun with it before you lose sight of the multitude of places that you could go in it.

More info

For help in overcoming the barriers that most freelances experience at one point or another, whether it's confidence building or keeping motivated, have a look at 'Overcoming Freelance Challenges' at our digital learning centre (free to members).

LEARNING TO NEGOTIATE, and standing up for what you want or need will not just help you professionally, it will help you to do more of what you want at home, with friends and in all areas of your life.

However, at our recent negotiation workshop, many of the discussions were around confidence. People understood negotiation strategies and tactics but were still apprehensive about how they would actually find the nerve to try them out.

So how do you get yourself into the right frame of mind to negotiate? Consider the following:

You have the right to negotiate

You have the right to negotiate. That is a fact. But do you believe it? If you can always find reasons why other people deserve it more than you, or have more power than you, or who’s needs are more important than yours, then this might seem like a difficult concept, but each and every one of us is entitled to stand up for ourselves.

Think about the people in your life that you care about. Who should they always give in to? Who should they always accommodate, regardless of how unfair the request? Who’s needs should they always give into before taking their own needs into account?

I’m hoping you are struggling to answer these questions, because when we think about our friends and family, we usually think they have every right to stand up for themselves. Yet some of us put ourselves into a special category that somehow deserves less than we think those around us do.

So, step one is to believe that you have every right to ask for what you want. We’ve all heard the phrase, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” That’s not to say that if you do ask, the other party has to agree. This is where the other tools and techniques of negotiation come in, but you certainly have the right to ask, and you have the right to walk away if what they can do, isn’t good enough for you.

Be your own best friend

If you find it easier to see how your friends and family should be able to negotiate for themselves than you can for yourself, then imagine being your own best friend. What would you do differently? Would you accept having the price pushed down for your work or the working hours being extended for no extra fee? As your own best friend, at what point would you tell yourself to walk away?

I once met an actor who had struggled to negotiate for themselves, and who came up with the idea of negotiating as his own agent. He could then think about himself in the third person, and find the distance he needed to negotiate effectively, without making it too personal. It worked for him, and might be worth you giving it a try.

See it from the other side

As someone who has hired a lot of people in different roles, I can say with confidence that I have never objected when people want to negotiate some aspect of their contract or role. Usually there is some room for flexibility, sometimes there is not. If agreement is not possible at this point, this is definitely the right time to know there’s an issue.

The fact that they are willing to negotiate suggests that they are experienced and know what they are doing. I have never walked away from someone trying to negotiate something thinking, “How dare they!” Often there has been a benefit, for example, my understanding of the situation from the ensuing conversation has been expanded, and I am happy with what we have agreed. Or, I am thinking it’s a shame we couldn’t agree this time but I know more about what they do now and will consider them in the future if circumstances change.”

It’s OK to agree to disagree

Not getting what you want isn’t failure, it’s an outcome. They wanted one thing, you wanted something different and when there’s not enough common ground for a compromise that suits you both, sometimes you have to walk away. The objective isn’t to get an agreement at all costs but to get an agreement that will last and works for you both. This is true in business, and it’s true in your personal relationships.

As in all areas that involve building confidence, the more you do it, the easier it gets. If necessary, fake it ‘til you make it. By which I mean, you don’t have to wait until you are confident, you just have to act as if you are. Then, over time, the gap between what you are pretending to be, and what you actually have become will get smaller and smaller till one day you will realise that you are truly confident.

Learn online

If you'd like to learn more about effective negotiation, try our ecourse Negotiation for Freelances - free to members and designed so you can learn at your convenience.

EVER HAD AN absolutely brilliant idea, done nothing about it, then a year later see someone else making loads of money with an almost identical scheme, and you’re left spluttering and ranting (quietly) about how you thought of it first?

What’s the difference between someone who has a good idea, and someone who has a good idea and makes it happen? Well let’s think about it. What did they do, that you didn’t?

They probably thought it through in detail, expanded their idea, talked about it with trusted friends and colleagues, made plans, worked out costs, got funding or investment, sold the idea or worked hard to make it happen. In addition, before all that, they believed it was possible, and that they could do it!

I once met a man at a training event, I’ll call him Burt. He really made me laugh. Not in the girlish, he could be the one, sort of laugh, but a real belly laugh at just how differently two people can see the same world.

He was a happy to take risks, open to challenges entrepreneur who had made and lost mini fortunes several times. I’m a play safe, work hard, hope my good work and integrity will be noticed sort of person. That’s not to say Burt didn’t have integrity. He did, he just didn’t see it as something that should stop him trying new things.

We discussed how he took his ideas and made them happen, I was trying to learn what his secret was, so I could do this too. However, I found myself coming up with all the reasons why I couldn’t do it. I had endless inspiration for potential obstacles, and why other people were better placed than me. He, on the other hand, wasn’t going to let a small thing like lack of experience, or no funding or no obvious route stop him.

What made me laugh, was that the more we talked, the more I was seeing, by the extreme contrast with him, just how different our maps of the world were, and how much I hampered and hindered myself when it came to taking risks. I say risks, I actually mean just trying new things!

At one point he was looking at me so incredulously, when I was fretting about what might happen if it went wrong, and he finally said, “What’s the problem? They’re not going to shoot you!” It struck me how true this was. Not that I was concerned my life was at stake, but I did worry about things going wrong, as if each mistake was going to have a catastrophic effect on my entire life. Yet his attitude was - you make mistakes, learn from them!

It’s a fact of life that some people see problems, and others opportunities. Meeting Burt, I realised just how much I held myself back, and at that point I decided to be bolder. I imagine if we were to meet again, I would still be timid in comparison. However, nowadays I am much more likely to give a new idea a run for it’s money, and not give up after just contemplating the first hurdle.

So if you have had an idea, and you are good at thinking of all the excellent reasons why you can’t do it, you too can take a leaf out of Bert’s book, and maybe you’ll discover that perhaps you can.

So what do you need to do to make a good idea become a reality?

Talk it through with people you trust. Put some meat on the bones of your idea. Work out what specifically you want to achieve? Take time to really expand your idea. Literally draw yourself a picture. Once you have a solid, vibrant image or defined scope of where you would like this to go, you are ready to take it forward.

Work back from the vision you have created to see what has to happen before this can be achieved. Make a plan. Who do you need to speak to? Do you need resources? If so, how are you going to get them? Do you need other people to get involved? If so, who, and how are you going to persuade them? What are you actually going to have to do? Make a list, then start doing it.

Once you take your idle daydream down this process, you increase the chances of it happening exponentially. You also enthuse other people, who then don’t let you lose heart and give up.

Not all daydreams are money spinners, or even good, but if you set off down a path with enthusiasm and passion, you will be amazed by the people you meet, and the things you learn. You may even stumble over different options, or amalgamate your idea with someone else’s to create an even better one. None of which can happen if you just keep it in your head and do nothing.

So, how do you turn your good idea into a reality? You think like Burt and just do it!

WE HAD SOME interesting discussions at our recent Goal Setting workshop around the merits and demerits of setting goals. It got me thinking. Is it even possible to live without setting any goals? And if so, would this be a good thing?

Going with the flow

The argument against setting goals came from a concern about losing the benefits of living in the moment, and I know from working with clients, that some people really can miss out on years of their life by focussing only on the future.

Some people spend years in jobs they hate, with their sights set firmly on making enough money to relax and enjoy their old age. I know one person who did this and sadly didn’t live to see their retirement.

So there’s definitely something to be considered about not being so focussed on goals, that you forget to enjoy the main event. It’s a bit like booking an expensive meal, and being so fixated on the dessert, that you gulp down the first two courses without tasting them, only to find you don’t have room for dessert when it comes, so you end up not savouring any part of the meal!

It’s also important to remember that achieving a goal is often short lived. You celebrate and enjoy it for a brief period. Then you start to think about your next challenge. So to not enjoy the bits between the triumphs is a bit of a waste really, isn’t it?

Without any goals though, how can you make good career choices? How can you possibly know what’s ‘best’? How can you evaluate choice X against choice Y? What measures could you use to determine ‘better’, or ‘more useful’, if you don’t have a clue about where you’d like to end up?

Many people don’t realise that they set goals. In fact some of the people on our workshop didn’t think they were ‘goals’ people. However, they were all qualified and working in their creative industries. How did they know what to do to get themselves where they now are? I’m pretty sure they all had some sort of plan or broad target that they worked, and are still working towards, even if they never expressly sat down and drafted a goal schedule.

Let’s face it, if we are functioning in society, we are achieving small goals all the time. If you turn up on time for work or to an audition, it’s the result of you setting that as a goal, then turning that goal into action. Most of us have at least a general, if vague goal, which we know we are working towards, but may not have taken the time to define clearly.

It was suggested that the only people without personal goals are monks, nuns or hermits, but if you think about it, they do actually have goals. Their aims are often around living their life in the service of god, or humanity, or of withdrawing from society, finding inner peace etc. So I’m left with the question, is it even possible to live without goals?

Setting Goals

When it comes to setting goals, not all goals are equal. They come in all shapes and sizes, many are externally imposed, like sales targets set with an arbitrary 10% increase, regardless of what’s happening in the market place and economy. Some are challenges plucked from the air, without any attempt to make sure that they sit comfortably with who we are, no down sides being considered. Imposed goals are out of our control, some arising from what we think we ‘ought’ to do.

Many of us manage to achieve goals like these, but they often don’t feel satisfying and, I think, can be damaging to at least some degree, e.g., not really wanting a goal can be detrimental to your motivation and energy.

When I discuss goals, I always use the analogy of setting a compass, so we know what direction we are headed in, but have the flexibility to take detours to get around any obstacles that may arise. I personally am a great believer in not being too fixed on the destination, because some of the detours we encounter in life, and this has definitely been the case in my own experience, often end up taking us down a more attractive path than we could ever have predicted.

Also, to make rigid long-term goals, is flawed because if you think about how much technological and social change we have experienced in our lives. We can’t possibly predict what the world is going to be like in 10 years, so there’s no point in firmly nailing our colours to a mast that might soon become obsolete.

In our workshop we give our goals a full workout. We test whether we actually even want them, and we fine-tune their detail to make them appealing and achievable for us. We make sure that our goals fit with who we are and are aligned with our values.

In conclusion

So, as with most things, I am inclined to think that there is a middle path. In my opinion, having some goals is not just desirable, it’s essential, and I would argue that literally going with the flow ultimately takes us out to sea!

Being completely focussed on your goals and your future at the expense of the present is also rarely a wise path. Being too firmly wedded to your goals can make you less resilient when life gets in the way of your plans.

So neither extreme is attractive to me. Somewhere in the middle is definitely where I prefer to be. Defining a broad-brush future direction for yourself, with specific interim targets, allows you to aim for something relevant and tangible, measure your progress and adjust your course as necessary, without making it the only focus of your life. What do you think?

More info

For quick tips and answers to frequently asked questions on goal setting plus an e-course ‘Overcoming Freelance Challenges’ (showing you how to stay motivated to achieve your objectives), go to the FEU Digital Learning Centre.

ON THE FIRST of January our thoughts turn to New Year resolutions and plans for the future. How often does this go by the wayside when January starts, and we get waylaid and distracted?

If you are starting to see your good intentions slip away from you, use our 3-step model to help get back on track for 2015.

Step 1. Work out where you are now

First off, you need to work out where you are now. In the last blog we suggested a process to help you assess what you did last year in our ‘Super Charged Annual Review’. Whether you use this, or have your own version, what’s important is to get that stick in the ground that marks your starting spot.

Trying to plan without knowing where you’re starting from is like trying to give directions to someone who’s lost:

“I can see a roundabout and a big building…”

“OK, are you on Commercial Road?”

“I don’t know. There’s lots of traffic and some shops.”

“What’s the name of the street you’re on?”

“Old Street.”

“Great, you need to walk down to the next junction and turn right.”

“Which direction is that in then?”

Ever had a conversation like this? If so, you’ll know it’s impossible to give someone directions when you don’t know where they are. It’s exactly the same when it comes to planning. If you don’t know where you are, or what direction you want to head in, you can’t plan effectively.

So if you haven’t already done so, get a coffee, and a seat, and work out your end of year coordinates! Apart from our Super Charged Annual Review, there are other tools you can use. A SWOT analysis is also useful. Follow this link to try it out for yourself.

Step 2. Decide where do you want to be this time next year

Once you know where you are, the next step is to figure out where you want to be. Most of us have at least a vague idea of where we want to be in the next 2 to 5 years, so the question is, how far do you think you can move towards that by the end of 2015? By asking that question you can start to identify specific targets and goals for the year ahead.

If your response to the last paragraph was, cripes, I don’t know where I want to be in the next 2 to 5 years, relax, you probably either haven’t thought about it in those terms or you’ve been so busy working towards your goals, that you’ve lost touch with what they are!

Either way, it’s an indication that you need to take some time to get clarify what it is you are working towards. Start with the long term, what’s your dream? Then break that down by asking, “What has to happen for you to achieve that?” Then chunk that down further by taking each answer you got to that question and asking, “What has to happen to achieve that?” Keep going till you start to see goals that you can achieve in the next year.

Another great way to clarify your goals is to create your own vision board. Our recent blog details how to use this tool.

Define your goals as clearly as you can, making sure that they are specific, measureable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART). Here is a guide to setting SMART goals.

Once you have your goals, take some time to work out how you will know you have achieved them. What evidence will you use, when will you know you’ve arrived and can move on?

Step 3. Plan how you are going to get there

Now you know where you are going, the last step is getting down to the nitty-gritty, where you have to create your personal 2015 road map. Or in other words, what specifically are you going to have to do to stay on track with your 2015 plan?

Here are some ways to keep your plan on track:

Make sure your plan is appealing to you

You might have literally the ‘best laid plans’, but if the idea of doing it repels you, it’s not going to happen. Your plan should excite you. You should feel connected through it, to your overall career vision. If it doesn’t, and you don’t, you need to go back a step, and rethink your goals.

The moment in our life when we actually achieve our goal is often fairly short lived. We enjoy it and are delighted we got there, then we start to look for our next challenge. So as the majority of our life is probably going to be spent working towards our goals, it’s essential to make sure we enjoy the journey.

Share your plans with friends

Talking through your plans for the year with trusted friends or family is a great way to firm up your commitment because it’s then no longer your ‘secret’ plan, and the people you share it with will likely ask you how it’s progressing.

Sharing plans can lead to constructive brain storming, where the people who know you best, can point out aspects to your plans that you had not previously considered. We all have blind spots, and our friends often know exactly where those are for us.

While this kind of brainstorming can be tough, your plan should emerge from the process more robust, and with increased commitment from you, particularly if you have had to defend parts of it.

Review your progress

In the all important plan-do-review cycle the part that most often gets neglected is the review bit. We are generally happy to make a plan, and most of us are excellent at getting busy doing but, to take time out to review what’s working or not, seems to be a step many of us miss out.

To make your plans effective, it’s vital that you regularly review your progress, see what has gone to plan, consider what you’ve not managed to do, and ask why that happened. Perhaps you’ve managed to do more of something than you expected, how was that achieved?

Once you have tracked your progress, and understood what’s working and what needs to improve, it’s time to consider whether you need to adjust your overall plan. Depending on how changeable your situation is, you should be doing this review at least every month.

Happy New Year!

With your plan all sorted, and your plan to manage your plan in place, all that’s left to do is to have an enjoyable and productive 2015.

As I was completing my accounts the other day, it occurred to me that even though it feels like a chore, it was actually a really useful process. The gathering up of long forgotten transactions and faintly remembered income gave me a clear overview of my year. I suddenly had 20/20 hindsight over what had and hadn’t worked.

Some advertising I’d invested in had been a complete waste of money, however the lunch I’d forked out for with the friend of a colleague, had led to a few lucrative bookings.

I dug a bit deeper, and looked at other work I’d had, where my travel and time, substantially ate into my week, and realised that this was effecting my availability for other work - all really useful information.

If doing accounts was this useful, it occurred to me that this is an ideal trigger for running a broader review of the year, a sort of super charged annual review! So, what are the other rich sources we can trawl through I hear you ask?

There are a few easily accessible places where you routinely park useful aide memoires for yourself, without even realising it. Going through them doesn’t even have to be a chore. Just pick one, grab a notepad, and browse. I say grab a notepad for three good reasons:

1. First off you want to take this opportunity to note down all your achievements throughout the year. What were your most successful pieces of work? What new work did you win? Who was delighted with what you produced? What did you really enjoy? What was most profitable?

It’s so easy to let these melt into the background of everything else that is happening, but it’s vital that you capture them. If you don’t already have an achievement file, start one. It’s great to be able to look through this file when you are producing a CV, drafting marketing materials, or for giving yourself a lift if you’ve had a bad day.

2. Note down anything that really didn’t work or things you don’t want to do exactly in that form again. You want to capture these so you can take the opportunity to learn from them. Usually we gain our best lessons from what went wrong, so don’t lose this opportunity by refusing to ‘go there’. We don’t do this to dwell or feel bad, just to see what we can learn, decide what we would do differently in future and capture anything that is useful about that experience. Then forget all about it.

3. Finally look out for any loose ends, or forgotten experiences that could come in handy. It always amazes me how much we are able to forget, just because we are busy. When you are browsing, you may be reminded that you mastered a tricky new skill that you could use again. Or perhaps you met someone who said to give them a call, but you’ve been too busy? These are all great things you can capture here.

Where will you find this information?

Your Diary

Your diary has to be one of the richest sources of information about your year. Even if you only use your diary for the barest mention of appointments or bookings, it will still prompt memories of other things you were doing at that time.

The more detail you have in your diary, the more you will be prompted to recall events and occurrences from the year.

 Time Sheets

If you are required to fill in time sheets for a client, this can be a great source of information about tasks you have undertaken over the year. You may find you undertook work, which are out of the ordinary for you, but because you didn’t repeat it, you forgot you’d learned new skills in order to do it. This may include skills or abilities you could use to sell yourself elsewhere.

E-mail

Your e-mail account is another rich source of information. A good way to do this is to review your in box, and out boxes by name order, rather than date. Then you can quickly spot any exchanges that took up a lot of time and effort. You don’t have to read them all, but the odd e-mail heading will remind you of any forgotten gems.

Remind yourself who you contacted, who got back to you, what was effective, and what didn’t work? All with the added bonus that you can tidy and file your e-mails as you go if you feel so inclined, though if combining these tasks make it too big a job, forget that bit!

Moving forward

Once you’ve got your lists, you are ready to start planning how you are going to use all this great information.

Gathering all this information together is a great way to see if there are any similarities. Perhaps it will show that there is an area where you have been doing the same thing repeatedly, and getting the same unsuccessful results. If this is the case, this may well jump out at you from your lists.

How many of your ‘never again’ items could have been avoided if you had recognised that you had a particular blind spot and needed training, or help, or just the ability to say no thanks to that type of work!

Take some time to enjoy the high points, the achievements, and the great feedback you’ve had over the year. Consider if you have been following up on those achievements, to get more work in that area, or with that employer.

See if you can identify any calls you need to make, people you need to catch up with or events you need to attend to repeat or build on the successes you have had. Get those scheduled into your current diary to make sure that you not only do them, but when you do this review next year, it will prompt you to do the same then!

In our next blog we will talk more about making plans for the coming year.