Web Worker Daily

Like a corporate career, web work can also be prone to seemingly irreparable damages. Whether it’s personal problems that affect the quality of your work, difficult clients who give you bad publicity, or the lack of strong business sense, you might get hurled down from your planned career ladder.

From personal experience I know what it’s like to have your own teleworking practice come tumbling further and further down. (I even considered turning my back on my work and becoming a video store clerk, but I suspect I was just being a drama queen.) When you get this low, is there a way to go back up?

I believe there is, but it requires some serious introspection.

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“Gee, that looks complicated.”

This was what I said when I looked through a friend’s project proposal, which included a mind map of madness.

She replied, “It has to be, if I want it to look professional.”

As a fan of living a clutter-free life, I had to disagree. With web workers being more prone to information overload and cluttered inboxes, it’s even more important for us to simplify our work.

So how do we keep things as simple as possible?

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Teleworkers who miss the networking and collaboration that happens in a typical corporate environment have resorted to coworking. Because of this trend, several coworking opportunities are showing up all over, and you’ll find that Average Web Worker Joe setting up his own coworking space with some friends.

But mixing friends with business has always been tricky. Even if you’re just coworking, you still run the risk of having your friends interfere with your business - or worse, having the business ruin your friendship. However, there are still some ways to establish a professional coworking space with friends.

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Whether you want to take your web working career into a different direction or you simply want a refreshing distraction from your regular web work, it’s likely that you’ll consider changing your niche market at least once in your career. What are the consequences of changing your niche? Is that even advisable? Also, how do you go about it?

The first thing you need to do is to understand how this affects your personal brand. If you’ve already established yourself in a particular niche, shifting to another one, whether completely or temporarily, might be confusing. It’s similar to having such a wide variety of jobs across several industries on your resume - from food service to law enforcement to art to dental hygienist. You risk looking unfocused or spreading yourself too thin.

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Many web workers talk about the benefits of larger or dual monitors. I currently have a 17-inch monitor, and although it works well, I can see how I can benefit from a more spacious and organized virtual desktop. But the truth is, not all web workers can afford that kind of workspace upgrade - including me.  For now, at least.

So how can we achieve a more effective desktop without shelling out some cash? First, I need to get as much workable surface area as I could from my existing setup and find a way to use it better.

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“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
- Douglas Adams, English Humorist

During my first years as a web worker, whenever a client would ask me “When can I see the finished product?” I’d estimate the deadline in my head and give them an answer in 5 seconds.

Apparently, that was a colossal mistake which led me to miss more deadlines than I can count on both my fingers and toes.

After losing a few clients, I realized that I had to shape up and change the way I’ve been setting deadlines. Now, the process takes me much more than 5 seconds, and missing deadlines has been rare since.

So how can one set a better deadline?

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There’s this Chuck Close quote that I immediately recall whenever I need to work despite my lack of inspiration or motivation: “Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.”

Of course, I don’t want to be an amateur. Neither do you, I’d wager.

So how do we ‘get to work’ when our hearts aren’t in it?

Know your peak hours. Some of our work hours are more productive than others, and it’s important that we find those peak hours and make them the focal point of our schedules.

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I confess: my body clock is broken. My ideal workday usually starts at 3:00 am and ends three hours later - which means that I have the rest of the morning to do chores and run errands. Now, because I’ve spent the entire weekend reading until late in the afternoons, I wake up at 4:00 pm, which means that most establishments close an hour later, and the sun will set soon - leaving me unable to go out and perform errands. Plus, by the time 3:00am comes, I am already too tired to work.

Not an unusual predicament for web workers. Especially since we own our time. Although we don’t necessarily have a boss who prefers that we start at 9:00 am, waking up late in the afternoons isn’t ideal either.

So how can we fix a broken body clock?

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