SweetSimpleJoys

It has to be distraction. And it comes in many forms.

When I was still working in an office, people in our household seemed to handle everything by themselves pretty well. They can decide on what meals to cook, they can manage the home business that we have, and they can carry out almost anything on their own without having to consult me. But since I started working at home, they suddenly seemed crippled. Even when I would specifically tell them that I can’t entertain distractions and that I will be busy working inside my room. Even if I spell it out to them that what I’m doing is real W-O-R-K. Still, my day won’t end without a knock on my door and someone asking me ‘What are we going to cook for lunch?‘, ‘Dinner?‘. Or without a call or visit from a friend or a relative and who would say ‘Oh great, you’re at home. Can you help me with…‘

After all, I am just at home, how busy can I get?

On some occasions, distractions are rather self-imposed. During afternoon breaks, I would casually wander off to the living room and watch my favorite lifestyle show every 4 p.m. It’s only a 30-minute program and decided that it’s a good way to relax my brain muscles for a while. But the 30 minutes would usually stretch to 4 hours as I flip channels and continuously find one interesting show after the other. By the time I finish watching TV, it’s already nighttime and I only have a few hours to work before another distraction, one that I often can’t win against, comes in. Sleep.

Actually, bed is also a diversion even more tempting than TV. Working on or beside your bed or anywhere within a close proximity to your bed is courting distraction. Some people encourage taking power naps. But if you’re like me who feels sleepy for every 2 hours that I’m close to my bed, it’s not empowering any more than it is disrupting my work.

Another form of distraction, at least for some, is food. Normally, on my super-productivity mode (as my client would call it), I can endure to skip lunch or dinner just to avoid breaking up the momentum. But lately, whenever my boyfriend would open a bag of chips or a pack of biscuits in front me, I can’t resist not to eat. I hate to get my keypad dirty so I would really have to step away from my laptop and empty that bags of chips no matter how big it is.

Finally, one great source of distraction, something that we don’t usually notice, is the very platform on which we are working-the Internet. Opening multiple tabs or windows, peeking in your inbox, checking up on your social network pages, browsing sites under the pretense of research, among others, can open up a vortex in the information highway where all your attention and focus can get sucked in. It always happen to me and often, I would end up all wrapped up in something I’d seen from the web and loaded with a bunch of tasks left undone.

There is just too much distraction at home.

One of the struggles of a freelancer is to learn how to deal with them. As I progress into this field, I learned that being a freelancer doesn’t mean I have more free time now than before. What it means is that, unlike being employed, I can now choose and control my own work schedule. It’s up to me to find my stride, my productive timezone, and create a balance between my work and my personal life. And also up to me how I handle distractions. When you’re already cruising on top speed with optimum energy and inspiration levels, getting distracted can literally throw you off the track. And you’ll find it hard to pick up where you left off and get to that kind of momentum again. Sometimes, it will take you twice as much time as it took you the first time to re-establish focus. You’re lucky if it doesn’t ruin your day.

Do you have some thoughts about freelance distractions? Kindly share your comments below. Fly high freelancer!

A few months ago, I was feeling a bit restless bordering on panic mode, having just resigned from my regular job. Although I was able to pocket a lump sum, I don’t have a job anymore and however big the amount of money I have, it can only last for so long.

How will I able to sustain myself? How can I buy my stuff? How about my shopping and dining out?

Those were the thoughts that raced through my head whenever I allowed myself time to reflect on my situation. Although I did eventually got into online freelancing, my income was still much leaner than my salary as an employee. It entered my mind that I may have made a wrong decision letting go of a job that was supposed to give me financial stability, but I held fast to it and tried to find something valuable in the experience than wallow in regret.

Until recently, a beautiful realization came to me when I was at the shopping mall. I haven’t gone shopping for a while so I thought that maybe it would be a refreshing treat after beating myself with a lot of freelance work online. I had a good look around, stopped to admire some lovely pieces-clothes, bags, shoes, the usual stuff that filled my shopping bags before. Summer had just began and there were a lot of cute summer dresses on display, some nice pair of shorts and slip-ons. But no matter how charming they were, I simply didn’t have the desire to buy them.

Everytime I held a T-shirt or a pair of sandals in my hand, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘Do I really need this?‘ or ‘Where will I use this?‘. Surprisingly, being a compulsive shopper that I was, asking these questions was enough for me to let go of the item. And as I put more and more items back into the rack, I realized I really have so few things that I need to buy. Unlike the time when I was still working in a physical office, when it seemed that I needed a new batch of clothes every month, or that I needed another pair of shoes to go with the new dress I just bought, or that the leather of my bag had cracked and I needed a replacement. I was in a frenzy cycle of habitual spending, all the while thinking that those are necessities I can’t live without.

But now, all the things inside my closet are at least 6-month old and I don’t feel like they need to be replaced any time soon. I have streamlined my shopping list to the bare essentials and have cut not only my expenses, but the number of trips I make to the store. The less I go there, the less opportunity for spending.

Why the sudden change in my behavior? (which only confirms that yes, shopaholism is curable).

One big factor is because I’m not going out as much anymore, which brings me to another realization that a lot of our supposed needs are being dictated by the environment and the lifestyle that fills our everyday life. They are not really inherent need, but rather a desire to fit in and not be left out.

Case in point, in an office full of pretty, smart-dressed co-workers, you would feel out of place with your lousy shirt and outdated jeans. The need to belong is often satisfiable by purchasing articles like clothes, gadgets and accessories that make you look more current, more fresh. Funny how a complimentary remark such as ‘Hey, you look good in that new dress” can strengthen the desire to  buy some more new dresses. If you’re not careful, being current and fresh often whips up a habit of thoughtless shopping.

And that’s how I was until I decided to quit my regular job to try freelance work.

They say that you’ll only learn the value of something when you no longer have it. Ironically, I realized how non-valuable were the items that I was spending for before, thinking they were the most important things, now that I don’t have them. Having the money to buy whatever you want can actually mislabel the things in your life and trick you into spending more for what appears to be your necessities at the moment. But I’ve found out as I learn the essence of working to enjoy life, most of these things you won’t even miss when they’re gone.

Working at home put me in a different perspective and redefined the way I value my income. All it really took was to ask myself how much do I really need. And if you can answer it honestly, you’ll be surprised to know how little and how few your needs really are.

I would often see this question get asked in a local forum discussing about oDesk:

“I really have no talent at all. What can I possible do as a freelancer? Do you think oDesk will work for me?“

Firstly, oDesk will not work for you. You’ll have to do the work yourself. (Horrible joke, I know. Please forgive me, hahaha.) But seriously, for those of you who feel you have nothing whatsoever to offer as a freelancer, don’t despair. I’m sure there’s a job out there, whether inside  or outside of oDesk, that will perfectly suit whatever skills you have.

Below, I’ve listed a few common administrative jobs that can open the door of freelancing for you.

1. Data entry / Copy-Paste. There’s a lot of clerical, copy-paste or cut-paste type of jobs in the internet. I guess, it’s just a matter of how accurate you are and how fast you can go.

2. Site Registration. Many buyers need to sign up to a number of membership sites for marketing purposes and most usually outsource this tedious but easy task to providers who can work fast.

3. Forum posting. Join forums and discussion boards, build some reputation and post or reply to threads relevant to the buyer’s product or website. Often, you need to find a discreet way to leave a link pointing back to the buyer’s website.

4. Blog commenting. Find blog posts that are related to the product or the topic that the buyer would like to promote and leave a comment with the URL of the buyer’s website.

5. Blog dropping (via Entrecard). If you’re familiar with Entrecard, then this is piece of cake. All you need to do is find the Entrecard on a website and click the Drop button.

6. Research. If you dig research, then this type of job is for you.

7. Data mining. It often involves finding names, email addresses, phone numbers and other details about a group of people or companies.

8. Database/Directory creation. This task is often paired with data mining where the information that you gathered will be compiled in a spreadsheet.

7. Site keyword extraction. If you know where the site’s page source is, then it’s simply copy-paste.

8. Picture extraction and simple editing/resizing. How do you obtain pictures from the web? Right-click then Save as?

9. Social bookmarking. You need to have a basic understanding of social bookmarking. Once you do, all there is to it is submitting URL to social bookmarking sites.

10. Article submission. As long as you’re not the one writing articles, this is as easy as social bookmarking.

With the influx of unconventional businesses thriving in the great world wide web, there are a myriad of odd jobs available where you can earn a few dollars from. And they don’t really require any special skill to perform. But if you’ve developed a wonderful technique to carry out a simple task with speed and accuracy, then you may already have an edge over the other jobseekers. So if you think that freelancing is only for highly-creative and technical-skilled individuals, you’re actually limiting yourself from infinite possibilities and it’s definitely time to think again. You’ll be surprised how a little googling can go very far.

If I missed on other administrative jobs, feel free to enter your comments below. Fly high freelancers!

One of the hurdles of working online jobs is file sharing. Of course, if your task involves only one to a couple of files a day, any good email can handle that. But if the job entails 20 or more files, you should consider another solution.

I was introduced to DropBox by a client who hired me as a Virtual Assistant (VA). I’ve used a few online drives before. But the problem always come up when it’s time to sync the drive to another computer (that of my boss). My PC would always freeze and the only way out of it was a reboot. We found out later that we’re having conflict with the OS. Apparently, we need to have the same OS version for it to work seamlessly. Okay, that’s crap.

But DropBox is on a different league. Configuring to share a folder to another computer is as easy as sending an email. Once it’s shared, the dropbox folder acts exactly like the other folders in your local drive. Sync time is relatively fast depending on the number of files that you’re sharing and the size of each file. And best of all, the free account gives you 2GB of online storage. Ain’t that neat?

I suggested this to D which he then mentioned to his client who hired him to edit thousands of images to be used on a book. Before DropBox, D would download close to 300 image files from a private server everyday. After he’s finished editing the batch, he would divide it into small groups, upload them using large-file upload websites and give the download links to his client. The client will then download and unzip the files before giving Darrel the next batch of pictures to edit.

Upon learning about DropBox, his client immediately purchased a Pro account for roughly $10/month which gives her 50GB of space. She enrolled D’s computer as one of her own so he can share with the 50GB also. Now, all they do is drag-and-drop pictures into their DropBox folders. Due to a sheer number of files being shared, they use a text file to note how many pictures are contained in each folder to make sure that they have the same numbers. Alternatively, you may also log on to the DropBox website and check the recent updates on your shared folders. The DropBox website also allows you to undo changes made and even restore deleted files to your folder (Note: Folder owners are the only ones who have access to this feature, which means that if the folder was just shared to you, you cannot unchange or undelete files).

How do I use DropBox?

Easy. Just go to the DropBox website, download and install their client application. Afterwards, register for a free account and start enrolling computers to your account or inviting friends to share files with you. You can also check out this screencast for a visual tour inside DropBox. Hope this makes your freelance life a bit better. Fly high freelancer!

I’ve taken a variety of jobs as freelancer. I’ve been a writer, an SEO/virtual/marketing assistant, a blogger and a product reviewer to name a few. But there’s one job that stands out among all these, the one job that I kinda regret that I let go of.

It’s being a Google map marker.

I think the job was specific to the client that hired me, but basically what I needed to do was to mark all the parking lots in a particular area or city via Google Map and note if it’s an outdoor or an indoor parking space. It’s really easy and for someone who’s never been outside of the Philippines, traveling and seeing some of the cities in the US via Google Streetview could be the next best thing to physically being there. Around the time that I was doing this, I was also juggling 4-5 jobs in a week, and this assignment was my stress-reliever. It was the kind of job that could get you lose track of time.

But I came to the point where I realized that it’s nearly impossible for me to take 5 jobs via oDesk and still be able to deliver a decent quality of work for each of them. I was also brewing a project in my head and I figured that I can only have 1 assignment at a time so I can focus more on my project during its infancy stage. I was able to trim down my job assignments from 5 to 2, a virtual assistant position and this Google Map marking, but still I needed to choose just one.

The virtual assistant position was my obvious choice. I was being paid twice as much as the marking job rate, being exposed to some cool technologies, learning a lot of new things, plus it has the proverbial potentials for career growth. Whereas the marking job maybe as easy as PPC ads clicking, but it can be pretty stagnant .

Where will marking parking lots lead me?

The practical and career-smart person in me argued that while it was fun, I have to think of long term goals.

I was aware that the client had hired 15 providers for this job, but said that he’ll only take 2 to the finals. He intends to expand his online business globally and the final 2 will take on the challenge of marking some of the largest cities in the world, not just the US. There was only 4 of us left, out of the original 15, and I believed, based on his feedback on my work, that I was a strong contender for the most coveted final 2 positions.

Until I submit my email of resignation. Bottomline, I chose to be a promising virtual assistant than a virtual traveler and parking lot mapper. I chose the one that pays more. Sort of.

But now, I feel the pang of regret. The honeymoon stage of the VA position was over sooner than I had expected. It feels a lot like work now and the pile of tasks that I have to do just drags on everyday. It has become stressful on many occasions and I often find myself wishing that I’m doing the marking job instead. And it doesn’t help to know that the client had increased the pay rates of his markers and that they are still happily marking parking lots and traveling the world.

So much for being a practical, career-smart person, I realized I resigned from the wrong job before. And also, I just recently submitted my email of resignation for the VA job. Goodluck on my career then.

Lesson of the story:

In the world of freelancing, what will carry you through is not how much money you get from your jobs but how long you can stay happy doing what you do.

Learn from my mistakes. Fly high freelancers!

Payment for an oDesk hourly job is guaranteed but it’s not instantaneous. To better understand this, let’s look at the oDesk hourly week calendar:

The hourly work week starts every Monday at 00:00 GMT (Click here to know what time it will be in your time zone.) and ends Sunday at 23:59 GMT. On the following day (Monday of the next work week), you will receive a notification from oDesk reminding  you to check your time log. This could mean adding offline hours that you worked on and/or removing idle time from your workdiary.

At 12:00 GMT, whether you check you time log or not, the final time log will be sent to the buyer for review. The buyer will be given until Thursday 23:59 GMT to go over and check the time log, approve or reject offline time added or dispute idle hours logged.

During this time, you will see a Pending Credit amount displayed on your Financial Activity page. After the review period, Friday 00:00 GMT, buyer will be charged with the corresponding amount. However, this will not be credited immediately to your account. You will now enter what oDesk refers to as the security period.

What is the security period?

To accelerate the payment process while continuing to offer our Provider Payment Guarantee, we are enforcing a 6-day Security Period on all transactions. This enables us to perform some security checks to identify suspicious transactions and maintain the integrity and security of the marketplace for all buyers and providers.

This means that if the buyer’s credit card is charged on Thursday, the amount will reflect on your account on Wednesday of the following week, or 6 days after.

How about for fixed price jobs?

The same goes for fixed-price assignments, except that these are not payment guaranteed and no review period is required. Once you’ve complete the project and the buyer approves of it, his credit card will be charged of the amount you agreed on. But like in hourly job, you still need to wait for 6 days before the funds will be credited to your oDesk account.

I hope this helps you understand oDesk payment schedule and budget your freelance income appropriately. Fly high freelancer!

Have you ever come to a point in your career where it seems, at least to some people, that you’re doing okay–earning a decent amount of money, well on your way up the corporate ladder, steady and secured for a bright future–but it just doesn’t feel right for you? Somehow, somewhere inside you is an unanswered call to do something outside your perfect 9-5 job.

So let me ask the question again: you have a successful career, but why are you still not happy?

I persisted with that thought hovering like a black cloud above my head for a few years. I used to think that I was just an ungrateful person who’s too miserable to count my blessings, especially when my family and friends would say “You’re lucky. What more can you ask for?” Indeed, what more can I ask for?

But I found this interesting presentation that could very well explain why we feel the way we do towards our ostensibly successful careers. Take a few minutes to watch, I promise this will be well worth your time (Although at first, it may seem that it’s just a book sales pitch, but after you get pass that, you’ll find gem in the succeeding slides.)

Career Advice ‘08
View more presentations from garr. (tags: career advice)

We found a note from the post office waiting for us when we came back from our short vacation on the beach and instantly knew that the pen tablet has arrived.

It’s a gift promised by D’s buyer who is very pleased with his work. Being a used Wacom Small Bamboo Fun model, we expect that it will look just like that–old and worn out. But surprisingly, it still looks new and was shipped complete with all the original accessories. There was even a note for D, which I found very sweet. If I didn’t know that his female buyer is already married, I would get jealous (just kidding, hehehe!). But she is truly wonderful and kind.

The thing with gifts like this from a buyer is that it’s very uplifting. It validates appreciation for your hardwork and it’s a great way to build up motivation other than saying ‘good job’. And often, gifts are repaid by increased productivity so it’s a win-win gesture for both the buyer and the provider.

Just want to show one of the many perks of being a freelancer. If you have one too, please share in the comments’ space below.