All Posts Tagged: Freelance Psychology
When You’re Not Getting Things Done, You Are Doing *Something*–What Is It?
When I first started coaching, running events, corralling writers for a website, and interviewing a lot of people for positions in a short period of time, I felt like a high school teacher.
I was receiving excuses right and left, insignificant and grave, for all sorts of things.
Event space managers delay getting me contracts because they’re sick (and apparently have no one else in the office of the major hotel they work at?), sponsorship chairs for conferences aren’t available to get me a sponsorship contract for months, and writers get me overdue in two weeks rather than two days because… well, I don’t think they actually even bother to explain themselves (and correspondingly aren’t due to be receiving any new assignments).
How to Be Your Own Unerring Sounding Board for Any Freelance Problem
What is up with the mismatches between our to-do lists or our freelance goals and what we actually spend our time doing?
I personally hate when I get to the end of a day or week, look at my three MITs (“most important tasks”) and find that I didn’t do them, because I did other things that matter that I’m glad that I got done.
On most occasions, I don’t regret swapping the goal line, and I’m happy with the things that did get done as they were necessary, but there’s feel this twinge like, “Why couldn’t I forecast this better? Why is it so hard to know what the right things are at the beginning of the week?”
It’s typically much easier to see these situations with some clarity when they happen to someone else, though, am I right?
As Sherlock Holmes Says: When Inconvenient, Do It Anyway
There’s a Sherlock Holmes line that gets repeated in nearly every adaptation verbatim. It’s a note from Sherlock to Watson:
Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.
They always find comical ways to make the letter arrive at the most inconvenient times. And Watson does always come right away, out of loyalty and curiosity (though often tempered with a fair amount of annoyance ;)).
What “Impossible” Things Can You Do Next Month?
What do you tell yourself is impossible?
I don’t mean the quite difficult things, like base jumping, becoming a competition-level ballroom dancer, or learning a new language in one week.
I’m wondering more about the things that you just don’t allow yourself to imagine as possibilities. The things that stop you building a flourishing business.
Sometimes they hide in the places we haven’t travel, the activities we haven’t done, or the way we describe ourselves.
The Incredibly Simple Secret to Successful Pitches
Successful pitches are the single biggest way to completely up your publishing track record.
But the sad thing is, it’s also the biggest area in which most aspiring, struggling, and even working writers with flourishing businesses flounder.
Never Say “I Just Couldn’t Get Anyone to Publish My Story” Again
It breaks my heart when I see writers go on a trip, come home, spend months waiting to hear about one story idea pitch to one magazine (and waiting for far too long to follow up with that editor) and then say with a sigh:
“I went on this great trip, saw this festival that only happens once every seven years, and got great photos. I know it’s a great story, but I just can’t get anyone to publish it.
We All Had to Start Somewhere: A Podcast Interview on Gabi’s Travel Writing Origins
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a friend from a small business conference I attended who also happens to produce several podcasts and wanted to include me in one on travel writing.
Vegemite. Waste. And How Real Companies Think
Have you heard of Vegemite?
It’s the descendent of Marmite, if that rings more bells.
Both are classed by most people as disgusting, but something you need to try at least once when visiting Australia (Vegemite) or the U.K. (Marmite) for the first time.
But aside from being a seriously acquired taste (or mouth-puckering, depending who you ask), most visitors don’t really know what they’re putting in their mouth–or why it’s the perfect example of the gap between successful and struggling freelance businesses.
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Is Your Freelance Writing Career Closing Its Eyes and Hoping for the Best?
A while ago, my husband finally got his cholesterol checked out. Every since I’ve know him, he’s said that he needs to get it checked, because Indians always have high cholesterol.
Sure enough, the numbers came high. Rather excessively so.
And the first thing the doctor did was ask him to keep a food diary for two weeks and scheduled a follow-up appointment to review and see if anything in his diet was contributing to the condition.
This is the first step doctors take to diagnose so, so many ailments–gather concrete, detailed, real data. They don’t rely on the patient’s description of their habits.
How Many Opportunities Do You Have With Your Travel Writing?
There have been times when I have attended, back-to-back-to-back, a number of writing conferences either as a speaker, a sponsor, or a normal attendee.
With that kind of pace, it can be hard to reflect, to pull out the big picture that emerges when the puzzle pieces of many sessions, conversations, and observations are assembled into a view of what is going on with the industry.
One thing that is always exceeding clear to me, even before getting out there and doing all of the mingling.
The redux version: in terms of opportunities, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be a travel writer.
But there is something deeper that I’ve noticed, a thread underpinning so many conversations I’ve seen and conference sessions I’ve attended.
It is so easy to be held back by the ceiling you are told exists on the number of types of opportunities for travel writers.