7 Habits of Highly Effective Freelancers

The 7 Habits are built on enduring and timeless principles that apply everywhere, and in all circumstances. As a freelancer, how these habits are impacting your life today, and how you can embrace them in new ways in our ever-evolving times?

Let's talk about the 7 habits from the perspective of an effective freelancer.

1. Be proactive.

You have a natural need to wield influence on the world around you so don’t spend your time just reacting to external events and circumstances. Take charge and assume responsibility for your life.

Successful freelancers would carefully design their careers, by being passionate, courageous, decisive, and most importantly, proactive.

As a freelancer, you have full control over business including how you position your skills and talent in the market as well as whether you have a healthy pipeline of relationships and prospective business deals. Rather than emphasizing the things you can’t do or don’t have control over, always actively find ways to get things done to move the needle.

2. Start with the end in mind.

Although working as a contractor, you may have options to select your own projects, don’t spend your time working aimlessly, tackling whatever job is at hand. Instead, have a vision for the future and align your business goals to make it into a reality.

Start by making your business vision tangible by writing it down. Then, keep in mind the direction and destiny you’ve outlined while approaching each of your day and project.

3. Put first things first.

In other words, stay organized and prioritize your work. Focus on what’s important, meaning the things that bring you closer to your vision of the future. Don’t get distracted by urgent but unimportant tasks.

Tools such as Trello, Asana, Notion, Evernote can help you stay organized at your work. Requrable can help prioritize your projects and clients.

4. Think win-win.

Successful freelancers and contractors would not only look at their own benefits, but also have good understanding of their clients’ business and think from their clients’ perspectives. Using cutting cake as an example, don’t try to get the biggest slice of the cake, but rather find a division that is acceptable to all parties. You will still get your fair share, and build strong positive relationships in the process.

Requrable can help you achieve this. By setting rules and policies upfront, you are building a clear and healthy collaboration relationship with your clients, which can help improve your client communications and productivity.

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

This is more or less associated with the “win-win” mindset. Listen to your clients need, rather than thinking about your own benefit first. As a service provider, it isn’t about what you want to sell, it’s about what your clients need that you can deliver.

The issue with seeking to be understood first, is that you will enter a conversation with an “you” filter, weighing your client’s say against your own agenda. As a result, you may miss out on some critical parts of the conversation, or jump into a conclusion that doesn’t really reflect your client’s message.

6. Synergize.

You are much stronger working as a team. Same principle goes to the freelance world. Build a network or a community where contractors can influence and learn from each other, therefore inspires better services and alternative solutions.

You can do so on Requrable. Apart from providing invoicing and booking solutions to contractors and freelancers, Requrable is also working on building a community where contractors with different expertise can work together and become a stronger team to deliver better solutions to their clients. This will help contractors achieve goals they could never have reached on their own.

7. Sharpen the saw.

The freelance world is all about having a learning mindset and a constant drive to hone your skills over time. You are responsible for your own career and development. By stay curious and keep learning, you’ll be better prepared to handle the challenges that come your way.

On the other hand, don’t work yourself to death. Strive for a sustainable lifestyle that affords you time to recuperate, recharge and be effective in the long-term.