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Geek alert! Tom Baranek designed an innovative Roam Research extension for better daily time-management. His Nautilus has already been approved on Roam Depot.
As Tom explains, Nautilus is an extension for stress-free task planning, visually representing tasks and calendar events in the Roam Daily Page. This flexible tool uses the present moment as a threshold to dynamically push unfinished tasks into the available time until tonight while keeping them in a user-defined order with user-estimated durations. Without AI.
"This visual approach reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed, enhances task-effort estimating skills, and clearly shows what the feasible tasks are for the rest of the day."
To better understand how it works, you can also watch the video tutorial.
Shoji Morimoto is a Japanese man who turned 'doing nothing' into a very original profession. As a rental person, he gets hired just to be present without engaging in any significant activity, providing clients with a sense of comfort. Can it work? Well, since he began his service in 2018, he has been hired more than 4,000 times.
"The client wants to do something, and I just go along. No deep commitment is expected and no personality required," Morimoto says and adds that he believes the job is a great fit for his introverted personality.
This quirky yet intriguing idea highlights the diverse and sometimes unexpected opportunities in the freelancing world and could be a reminder of how creativity can shape the freelancing career. You can read more about his atypical professional journey in the recently published book Rental Person Who Does Nothing.
Navigating the freelance world can be tricky, especially when it comes to clients. An article by writer and brand consultant Austin L. Church outlines the 3 Types of Freelance Clients You Don’t Want to help identify and avoid potentially problematic ones. These include:
Each type comes with its own set of challenges, from changing ingrained beliefs to dealing with negotiation tactics. In this article, Church presents some effective strategies for dealing with such clients.
"To win a loyal client who will keep sending you projects takes the same effort as winning one that will leave after the first project. The trick is knowing one from the other."
The international platform Freelancemap is once again preparing an excellent Freelancer Study, which primarily maps the business activities of freelancers within the EU. You can also take part.
The questions are divided into several categories, focusing on aspects such as the reasons for starting your freelance business, how you acquire contracts, the use of AI in your daily work, and the challenges freelancers face today. Completing the survey will only take a few minutes.
We will publish the main findings in our news. You can view the results of last year's survey here.
Jessica Abel is one of those rare creative-business coaches who is actually a very accomplished creator herself. For example, her phenomenal graphic novel La Perdida is one of the best works within its genre.
Better yet, Jessica has a blog and podcast for creatives. To get an idea of how good she is, read her article Get paid without guilt: 6 lessons I’ve learned. Here are the six lessons:
AI is making huge waves among language professionals. As reported by Slate, Europe’s literary translators are pushing back against AI. In their Statement on Artificial Intelligence, they express grave concern about the spreading use of the technology in the publishing industry.
Derek Sivers wrote a very interesting piece titled Walk and Talk, about his experience on a 100-kilometer hike through northern Thailand. He made the seven-day journey with a dozen people, five of whom were authors Derek had loved for years. He shared his highlights in the article:
“It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Very healthy for your brain, body, and friendships. I highly recommend it for anyone.”
American Matthew Fenton has been working as an independent consultant since 1997, and he also writes the beneficial blog Winning Solo.
A while ago, he summarized his first 25 years of freelancing in a comprehensive article, recapping 25 things he got both very wrong, and mostly right as a freelancer.
In general, he places great emphasis on playing the long game, building a good name, and stresses that he never thought of freelancing as a stopgap, a flight of fancy, or a mere hustle:
“I never take it lightly. 'Fake it ’til you make it' is one of the biggest bits of nonsense foisted upon us by the personal-branding types. Our reputations are at stake. So are our clients’ investments. Experienced people can smell a fake a mile away.”
Nigel Rawlins recorded a great interview with Elina Jutelyte, the founder of Freelance Business Community and organizer of Freelance Business Month. The interview is honest, very pleasant, and quite insightful about her ways of doing freelance business. Check it out!
Here’s a friendly reminder, ahem, article: You're Not Building a Personal Brand; You're Just Posting on LinkedIn — besides naming the downside of LinkedIn as a go-to marketing strategy for individuals, the straight-to-the-point essay written by Deepika Pundora also makes the correct distinction between a personal brand and that person’s actual reputation:
“Personal brand is how you want your audience to see you and talk about you. Unlike reputation, it’s not about what others think of you. It’s about the image you’ve cultivated and how others relate to this image.”