CareerFoundry offers great advice for freelancers. If you’re looking for ways to be more productive—there’s a (project management) app for that!—or if you want a glimpse of what freelance life looks like, check out CF’s blog.
For me, the best things about freelancing are the flexible schedule, the casual dress, and the work I love. The worst things are the admin tasks, the marketing, and the sitting. Oy, the sitting!
One of CareerFoundry’s tips on productivity for freelancers hit a little too close to home: Don’t die early. What CF means is that every hour or so we freelancers should get up and move because sitting for long periods takes years off our lives. We’ve all heard this advice before, but who ever follows it? Especially when you’re working from home and are in the zone.
But CF warns that sitting is a real danger. Here’s what the CF blog post says about freelancers and sitting:
Researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana studied the lifestyles of 17,000 men and women over a period of 13 years and discovered that of this group 54% are likely to die of heart attacks. The reason? They were sitting down for much of the day. When you’re sitting down for long periods your body is less able to break down the enzyme lipoprotein lipase and it instead turns into fat. Not only does sitting down all day increase your chances of a heart attack, it decreases your energy levels, which in turn makes you a lot less productive.
Andrew Coyne may joke about dying from sitting, but me, I’m done my work, and I’m off to the pool.