Freelancing and Lifestyle Design
bucketlistjournal.comI've been freelancing since 1997. It has its perks, for sure, but it's not simply "become a freelancer, work two hours a day, fulfill all your dreams!" That's as much of a stereotype as "become a freelancer, work in your underwear, never take a shower!"
Making a good income as a freelancer requires work. And clients. And paying attention to clients' needs. And spending much more time organizing your financial and business life. And dealing with work/life boundary issues. It's something I like to refer as a "job."
And he's certainly not "retired," as he seems to claim, if he's paying the bills freelancing. It kind of sounds like he's decided to take a major income hit in order to have more lifestyle freedom (aided by living in a place with lower costs of living). Which is totally fine! Especially when you're young. But that's a major trade-off, and not one that should be taken lightly.
Spot on. I will add that freelancing is a business. Thus it survives or thrives on the marketing. If you suck at marketing or hate to do it, you won't do as well. That's why I sell a marketing system for freelancers. Most are simply lost when it comes to it.
I have actually written about the pros and cons of freelancing in a previous post, showing that it's not all rosy: bucketlistjournal.com/post/46601822485/pros-and-cons-of-freelancing
(and P.S. - I personally did not relocate, so my living expenses are still high)
You seem like a good guy and I agree that balancing work and lifestyle is crucially important -- especially in an industry like ours that tends to like to grind people into the ground with mirages of fame and fortune. [Edit: Mixed metaphor. Sorry.]
But. You come off as someone who has just barely started thinking about these issues. You're being wildly overly simplistic about how freelancing works in real life. And using the skydiving billboard as a trigger makes it sound like "living your dreams" means doing extreme sports and hanging out on the beach. Which is fine, but kind of shallow and definitely not the end-all be-all of a well-lived life.
I didn't get that sense at all. What I took away from the post was a) in sad of packing your days with work now so you can do the things you want in 20-40 years, structure your life so you can do those things now and b) freelancing could be an option (but its not easy).
It makes sense if you take a step back and see this as a play for the ol' "blog to book deal" business model. Jumble up your thoughts and experiences, slice and dice them into a couple hundred posts and maybe it'll look like sales-in-waiting to some acquisitions editor.
In one of my upcoming posts, I’ll be giving concrete tips on how to actually start freelancing and get paying customers.
This submission has zero content.
It gets better when you look at his "about" page. All his startups failed, yet he still thinks he has something interesting enough to say that he needs a blog to put all this amazing content he's going to write in the future.
Most people start with freelancing then move on to start ups when they get sick of playing client roulette. He went the other way around. There's probably an interesting story there, something way more compelling than rehashing Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi in the most schlocky way possible. But it doesn't look like he'd know how to tell it.
I'm actually not quitting the startup world. But I'll probably won't return to the same classic routine of working full-time until raising VC money and then hoping to get acquired. More in the realms of bootstrapping an online business with a concrete business model that grows slowly.
By the way, what didn't you like about the way I wrote my post(s)? I'm honestly interested in hearing your feedback, since this is my first blog.
Your blog posts need to actually say something. I've read 4HWW, nothing you've written has anything new to say about the subject of lifestyle design, even though his book came out 5 years ago.
But it could have. The main problem I've found in doing this global arbitrage thing is that freelancing is actually hard to do remotely. I mean, you could go on eLance and Mechanical Turk and do boring-ass work for annoying clients for pennies, those types of gigs are easy to get and do remotely. But to do actual serious work that way?
There's plenty to discuss on this topic, but you managed to avoid everything that's interesting about lifestyle design and then promise only the most uninteresting content later. "How to start freelancing and get paying customers" is not a worthy HN post. Most of us, if we freelance, have already been doing it for awhile.
You need to decide who you're writing your blog for. I wouldn't necessarily choose the HN audience, you might be better off serving the legions of kids just out of college who want something better than the choices they have in front of them. If you're going to target that audience, then target them, don't write generally and definitely don't self-submit to HN just to get eyeballs.
If you want to target us, then you'll need to bring a bit more substance to the table.
HN has progressively become more and more negative, so I wouldn't worry about the negative responses here. That's not to say your blog can't improve, but obviously what you wrote must have hit a nerve judging it's on the front page, so make no apologies for that and keep writing! You don't need to address every complaint.
hearing from someone who made a lot of mistakes can be more insightful than someone who won the jackpot on their first try
Sure. But he's not talking about his failures or sharing the insights he learned. Just promising the same pot of gold Tim did and glossing over the obstacles that most of us found insurmountable.
What I'm actually trying to say in this post is that you need to change your way of thinking about working hard, retiring and only then doing what you'd like (i.e. lifestyle design). If you're already familiar with this concept - this post won't provide you any new insights. I have thought about writing the practical tips right there, but these could actually be spread across several posts.
I suppose so, but you have to consider your audience here. Most/all of HN is familiar with the 4 Hour Work week, and your post was basically just its back cover description.
I'm interested in what you have to say, but you're gonna have to be more detailed and less hand-wavy to keep people interested.
I guess you're right, but I'm trying to build this entire blog step-by-step, with "intro" posts like these as a prelude.
You can probably skip posting teasers to HN. Also maybe consider writing a post on knowing your audience.
I think he forgot to mention that you need to try the freelancing route when you have saved some $$$ buffer, for me it was about a year worth of free falling.
It is going to be bumpy and you need to have the peace of mind to focus on the present.
Moving to a foreign country to save money could be a good idea, but only if you would like to live abroad. If you do it only for the money your life will be miserable. Also the cost of leaving your local network behind might be very high
I completely agree. I'll address specifically this issue in one of my future posts (on how to get started).
"Don't wait 40 years to book a skydiving lesson. Wait until you've managed to save a $20K rainy day fund."
Not really much content here. It's been a while since I've read the 4HWW but I'm pretty sure freelancing wouldn't fit in with LD. For example, it's pretty hard to make any money freelancing when you're not working. I thought the point of LD was to generate recurring income that will continue to generate even if you do nothing.
I see some negative responses to this, and I understand what people are saying, i.e. that people here are already familiar with 4HWW concepts so this is nothing new.
However, there are many people out there who are familiar with these concepts, and want to act on them, but keep putting it off. So seeing this kind of thing hit the HN front page once in a while, because reading it again rekindles the idea in the minds of those who are interested, but haven't yet acted.
Several people apparently did have their interests piqued by the title before coming back here to say the post sucks. Is this a "silent majority" type argument? "No no no...the other people..."
This is such depressing reading — it's all about "me" and doesn't give a damn for anybody else. I guess on a spiritual level this is why I hated the 4 Hour Work Week cult: It was all a sort of cult of being self centered. And on the flip side I think this is why I admire Bill Gates: Because he's taken the money he has and is actually trying to improve the world. There needs to be a bit more of that in the tech industry...
I don't understand this. When you work in technology, the very work you do is a contribution to the world. It's not like finance where 90% of the money is in scamming the less-savvy by trading on the big name of the company you work for to inflate the price of crap.
Even if it's just making websites, you're increasing the size of the pie, not just trying to take other's slices. So why place this heavy moral burden on success?
Bill Gates is certainly an admirable figure, but really in spite of his philanthropy and not because of it IMO. He advanced the state of the art and made markets where none before existed. The "developers first" culture he created made it possible for regular people to make real livings in software, bringing tech out of the nerd boondocks.
Software is just a tool and can be good or bad like any other tool: You can do something very positive like create a website that educates people on health issues and may save lives — but on the flip side maybe you're writing code to guide nuclear weapons.
But I'm not objecting to that: What I am objecting to is the sort of "me first" mindset that you see in that page. Granted I'm not saying that not everyone needs to be a saint, but you do need to be aware that there are other people out there.
He only started giving away money and doing good once he was absurdly wealthy and had financial freedom. How does working a normal full time job do more good for the world than freelancing and pursing your own interests?
You don't save for retirement to do fun things. You save so that you can live when you have no ability to work.