Photo Credit: Janos Richter via Unsplash

What do the most successful freelancers know that you don’t?

The biggest problem that freelancers have is complexity.

Before I unpack that statement, I want to share statistics from two studies on freelancing.

Contently published a study called “The State of Freelancing in 2015.”

643 freelancers weighed in, and 34% of them said that “securing enough work” was their “biggest daily obstacle.” The second largest group of 26% cited “time management.”

Another study, “Freelancing in America: 2016,” published by Freelancers Union and Upwork, surveyed 6,002 freelancers, eighteen years or older, in the United States.

That group gave the following as their top three concerns:

• “Being paid a fair rate”
• “Unpredictable income”
• “Debt”

Let’s throw more statistics from “Freelancing in America: 2016” into the pot.

• Full-time freelancers work, on average, 36 hours per week.
• 46% of freelancers saw increased demand for their services in the past year.
• 73% said that technology has made it easier to find freelance work.
• 66% said that they got more work online over the past year.
• Nearly half (46%) of full-time freelancers raised their rates in the past year, and more than half (56%) plan to raise them next year.
• 79% of full-time freelancers said that they earned more in the first years of full-time freelancing than they had at their previous jobs.

Yet, 57% of part-time freelancers reported that they hadn’t quit their day jobs because they worried about “income predictability.”

These stats reveal two storylines:

1. The thriving freelancer who makes more money with each passing year; and
2. The struggling freelancer who cannot manage his or her time effectively, cannot secure enough work, and is trapped in a perpetual cycle of feast-or-famine.

Which storyline is true?

Both. Some freelancers prosper while other freelancers struggle.

Okay. That’s true of businesses in every niche and industry. The real question is this one:

What do thriving freelancers do differently than their peers?

They reduce complexity.

The freelancers who reduce complexity are the ones who win.

What does this complexity look like?

I’ll give you one quick example. In the late 1970s, a client or colleague had, at most, five ways to communicate with you:

1. Phone
2. Fax
3. Memo
4. Mail
5. Meeting face-to-face

Forty years later, people can send us messages in hundreds of ways:

• Dozens of different social media platforms
• Thousands of different web apps
• Online groups and forums
• Slack
• Project management platforms
• Video conferencing apps like Google Hangouts, Skype, Crowdcast, and Zoom
• Text/SMS
• Push notifications in mobile apps
• Live voice messaging apps like Voxer

Don’t forget email. And don’t ignore those contact forms and meeting requests!

We live and work in a cacophony of messages, and the people who win will be the ones who silence the noise.

In Zero to One Peter Thiel writes about the monumental effort required to take a startup from 0 to 1.

For freelancers and founders, the underlying challenge of building a business is personal productivity. We must reduce our focus from 100 to 1.

Why does simplicity matter?

If you cut out the distractions, you won’t waste time on them. You will have the clarity and brain space to focus on a single task.

With fewer distractions and more focus, you will finish each task more quickly, and finishing more tasks in less time will, in turn, boost your productivity.

Complexity is the real enemy of time management.

If I picked a priority from your to-do list, and I locked you in a quiet room, and I promised to give you $1,000 if you finished within the hour, then guess what? You would finish. You would get the $1,000.

“But it’s not that simple,” you say.

Of course it’s not that simple. We live in a modern world where we face an incessant deluge of distractions and advertisements and information.

The people who put up umbrellas to keep off the deluge win. What you ignore is just as important as what you pay attention to.

You don’t need more time.

You always have enough time to do what’s most important.

• For example, if you spent less time consuming content on Instagram and Snapchat, you could spend more time creating your own content, connecting with more new people, and asking more clients for referrals.
• If you spent more time filling up your pipeline, you’d have less trouble securing new work.
• If you had a surplus of work, you could ratchet up your rates every six to twelve months. (The value-conscious clients will stay and pay, and the price-conscious clients will leave.)
• If you maintain your pipeline and ratchet up your rates, you will eventually eliminate your unpredictable income and debt problems.

Replicate what happens on vacation: space.

Why is it that the path forward becomes more clear when we’re on vacation?

Because we have stepped outside of the complexity.

Space brings clarity, and clarity naturally translates into decisive action.

When you have abundant clarity, you will find it easy to focus on the right tasks at the right time.

With growing wisdom and discernment, you will notice that you are off-task, and you will do a course-correct more quickly.

To eliminate complexity, you must seek out simplicity.

That’s why you hear about highly productive people who aggressively eliminate distractions and take more breaks.

They stop multi-tasking too. They mono-task. They focus only on tasks that matter, one at a time.

Paul Rulkens, author of The Power of Preeminence and president of Netherlands-based Agrippa Consulting International, believes that “80% of what you do doesn’t matter.”

So what is your 20%? What is your 80%?

What single step can you take today to cut out part of that 80%?

Here are eight ideas to get you started:

• Unsubscribe from an email newsletter you never read. Do that again tomorrow.
• Delete three apps from your phone.
• Clear out the desktop on your computer.
• Pick a couple of ninety-minute intervals during your work day when you will commit to turning off your phone. Schedule a reminder so that you remember to turn off your phone.
• Reward yourself with a short break after each interval. Go for a walk, or if you want to cruise your socials, set a timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, close that app or browser window.
• Stop reading all the books, and pick one to finish.
• Whittle your closet down to 30 items.
• Turn off push notifications. For everything.

To Recap…

The biggest problem that most freelancers have is complexity.

To eliminate complexity, you must seek out simplicity. You need simplicity in order to focus and finish. The people who can focus and finish consistently for weeks, months, and years will win.

Simplicity is your competitive advantage. The most successful freelancers know and practice this.

Do you want to restore simplicity and sharpen your focus?

Click this link to share your name and email address, and I’ll send you the download link for my Simplicity Checklist with 48 ideas for eliminating the insanity in your business.

It will change your life.