collectiv.es

Freelancing: A few changes since going solo

Filed under Business

Since I decided to “go it alone” about 2 months ago, I’ve done a number of different things to make my life easier when it comes to focusing on what I want to do and keeping up to date with news in the online industry. Mostly, I’ve cut back on things or made decisions quicker, but here is a list of things I’ve cut back on, invested in or started doing:

I watch Bloomberg every morning

I’ve always been a fan of Bloomberg, but when working it’s difficult get into a routine of following the financial world and economics. For anyone working on their own or starting a business you should keep up to date on what is happening in the world. The financial media mostly always reports on things that don’t hit main stream media for a while (excluding what J-Lo is wearing to the oscars of course).

I’ve bought best of breed

In general, I think it’s not good practice to buy the cheapest of everything. Neither is it to buy all the gadgets when they first come out (iPad is a case in point). However, you need good technology to make your life easier, hence I’ve got an iPhone and an Macbook pro. Expensive yes, but you get what you pay for.

I’ve cut back on podcasts I try to listen to

I used to try and listen to as many podcasts as I could, but it’s not possible (just like trying to keep up to date with all the news available).  So rather than subscribe to many podcasts, I make sure I never miss an episode of my top 5.

I’ve swapped My Yahoo! for Google Reader

I used to use a mix of My Yahoo!, Google Reader and a number of other aggregation tools (web-based, mobile and desktop). I’ve quit them all for Google Reader, which I use on my iPhone too.  It’s the best and easiest to use – which is the most important thing when trying to keep up to date with news.

I’ve swapped Delicious for Diigo

When I first started using Delicious I thought it was amazing and kept using it for years.  It still is great, but as I read a lot of stats and predictions, Diigo is just that much better. Sorry Delicious, but you’re now second place.

I Tweet a lot more

I don’t think I’ve mastered it yet, but I’m trying to keep it simple. I’ve used Tweetdeck and Hootsuite in the past, but I just don’t like them. So about 90% of my tweets now come from Twitteriffic on the iPhone (again I’ve tried the Twitter app and others, but Twitteriffic wins hands down). You can follow me on Twitter here.

I’ve subscribed to even more blogs

…but I’m reading only my favourites folder every day and the rest when I can

I subscribe to 140+ blogs, so can’t read them all. However, I’ve found that creating a favourites folder and selecting a handful of subscriptions to store in the folder is the most effective way of reading the news. So far, Six Pixels of Separation is the most read blog.

I’ve created a folder of Linked In Questions in Google Reader

I find writing is the best way of thinking, if that makes sense?! And answering questions on Linked In is a good way to solidify that thinking, so I try and answer questions when I can. Like my favourites folder, I’ve created a Linked In Questions folder in Google Reader. This makes it simple.

I’ve chosen Tumblr over Posterous

I’ve been using Tumblr for a while mainly for personal stuff and pictures, but I like the “post to all” feature of Posterous. But, it has slowly annoyed me because you can do too much, so I’ve headed back to Tumblr where it it’s easier.

I now just use Dropbox

I used to keep documents all over the place – Dropbox, different folders on different PCs, Drop.io and a number of other places. I now just use Dropbox and I’ve started using it for some client work. It is awesome.

I’ve dropped Open Office and MS Office for Google Docs

I love open source products, but open office drives me up the wall. Likewise, MS Office 2007 is terrible. So I’ve scrapped the extra feature sets for the simplicity of Google Documents.

I’ve started blogging of course, and I use Wordpress

I’m still not into the swing of it, but to my mind every self employed person or small business should have a blog and dedicate time to building it. It’s a great process to go through. And there are no quick results – which normally means “it’ll be worth it in the end”! Subscribe to the RSS of this blog here. The other thing I did was jump right in. I used the collectiv.es domain name I had, but I’m soon to be changing it to something I bit closer to what I’m doing.

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In the process of making these changes, I’ve also won a couple of contracts for business, so I must be doing something right!

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