1. Distractions
I happen to stay in a neighborhood that has other people. The children at times really make lots of noise as they run along while playing. I love kids so I am always happy when they shout and run around but being the introvert that I am, the noise and the movements always distract me. I love to work in a quiet environment. I always move to a café in town – we have many cafes that give a very conducive environment for fellows like me. Café Pap in town is one of them.
2. Easy lane kind of life – so people think
Some colleagues of mine think that freelancing is working half day and having fun the rest of the day. They believe I spend time watching movies and soaps. I don’t even watch TV let alone soaps. This is a challenge because friends and colleagues just call at any time and expect you to run an errand for them or keep you on the phone for long since for them, they think you are as free as they are. I have always informed them politely that I cannot do errands during certain hours of the day. I even tell others that I will call them back. Then there is chat!!!!!! Now due to my kind of work, I have to ensure that I am accessed - chat, mail, phone and even facebook (Not really a fan of facebook but still I have an account) but most people think that because someone is logged on onto chat, so they can talk about all fashion and politics. To some of us, chat, is a tool for accessing clients, getting feedback and troubleshooting – not for discussing daily trends in prices of beans and situations in Libya! Chat is still a challenge for me. I tend to chat with all but maybe will soon start shielding.
3. No Space for Meetings!!!!!!!!!
 |
| Having such a place for meeings is one of my biggest challenges |
This one is really driving me nuts. How do you tell a client that you have no office?? That means you are a briefcase company and you don’t deserve to do any business with any serious company. When clients ask me where my office is, I always give them my home address. Truth is that I am a freelance developer working from home – but working hard to have office space – just for meetings and those times when I get distractions while working from my home. My home is more of an office than a home. As mentioned before, I always try to schedule meetings at the clients’ offices or in a restaurant that is desirable.
4. Professional Environment is missing
Well, at times I would love to ask a colleague what their opinion is about a product before I send it to the client and none is online. In a professional environment, someone would have a look at it before the client looks at it and makes comments. As a freelancer, you may develop and the client does not like it and gets a bad image of you. I have resorted to always letting the client know that I am more than willing to have the product changed so that it meets their needs.
5. Equipment – desk phones, inventers, routers – name it
Anyone living in Uganda today knows the agony of power cuts. The whole day you have no power. What does a freelancer like me do? I need to have an inverter, have a wireless link for my entire house and maybe a landline desk phone. But many of us cannot afford such equipment. We are just freelancers with a skill and a dream to make it BIG in this world. I have managed to overcome the power issue by getting a laptop that has at least 8 hrs of battery so even if power goes, I can work on my battery for a minimum of 5 hours before relocating to a café where I can get power. As for the wireless link, save for the days when my internet subscriber is down, my modem works wonders. However, I would still love to have a redundant link at home for backup. The desk phone?? My mobile is always on - +256 772 680 158 – try it and see!
There are other challenges that I am still facing but the above have been the most common of all. Hope to hear from you guys.
1 comment:
So you seem to have been off for a while! I like your blog.
As you think about shielding some chatter boxes on your chat client... i hop i'm not one of them. A weekend chat about girlfriends is healthy because i know you don't go out that much(or i'm i wrong?).
one other thing i know about freelance is that you easily forget your life and think about the business' life alone. Like they say. All work with out play... can get you a stroke. freelancers often get dangerously busy
Secondly, when it comes to getting your pay. Some times nothing tests ones patience like this!! Anyway, all in all, once you've taken this path which IMHO is a better path... better not to look back.
Post a Comment