Surviving the Dangers of Working from Home - Freewrite Store

Surviving the Dangers of Working from Home - Freewrite Store The Dangers of Going Freelance The advertisement reads: Day job got you down? Why not branch out on your own and make your mark? This is what I call ‘the fantasy.' If you want to branch out on your own, you have to be realistic. Yes, you get to work from home. You get to decide what projects you’ll work on. You get to monetize your chosen skill. There’s a lot more freedom of choice. But there are also a lot of dangersthat you must be aware of. The Dangers of Going Freelance So you get to work from home. Great! But what does this mean? Option 1) You get up, have a shower, and sit in your office at home. You may have a hundred different projects to get to work on. You eat a quick snack at home in your kitchen when you’re hungry. You take a break at home in your living room. You decide you’re too tired for work, so you have dinner at home. What to do this evening? You could watch a film at home on your own. Now it’s bedtime. Noticing a pattern? Everythingyou do is at home. Option 2)You wake up at midday and lounge in bed till 1 pm. You finally drag yourself into the shower. You spend two hours choosing your outfit and making breakfast. You sit on your sofa with your laptop and stare at the screen. Okay, just one episode and then you’ll work, right? It’s now 4 pm, and you haven’t done any work. Not hungry - why bother making lunch? Feeling guilty, you do something that makes you feel like you’ve done a lot. 6 pm, time to cook dinner. You could watch a film while eating dinner, why not? 10pm...well now it’s too late to do any work. Working from home is a lot harder than it sounds and the day-to-day routine can be worse than the humdrum office commute unless you combat it early. With a lack of routine comes boredom, loneliness, procrastination, low levels of motivation, bad health, and, as a result, low self-esteem. You cannot build a good business when you’re unhappy. But it’s not all doom and gloom if you do it right! Combating the Dangers 1. Scheduling This sounds like the death of fun, but without a schedule, you’ll have no will to work. Make a schedule and stick to it. (I’ll elaborate on scheduling in a minute.) 2. Go out In the evenings, it starts to hurt when you realize you haven’t even left the house to go to the corner shop. Try to organize evening activities: societies and clubs, gigs, drinks out with friends†¦ It is very important to have a social life. Not only will evening activities give you something to look forward to and steer away the boredom, but it will also stimulate the mind. Try to split up your days, as well. Join a morning yoga class, a creative writing course, an evening book club. Get yourself out of the house! 3. Do your work in a cafe I considered this at first and frequently talked myself out of it, thinking I’d feel incredibly lonely sitting in a busy cafe alone. A month into my new freelance business, I was waiting in a cafe for a friend. I took out my notebook and found myself, one hour later, knee-deep into my third article. There’s something about the hustle and bustle of a cafe that makes you feel busy and keeps the mind buzzing. Despite the noisy backdrop, there’s far less available to distract you. Most importantly, working in a cafe gets you out of the house. 4. Avoid distractions. A lot of your time and concentration will be taken up by the buzzing of your phone. Ignore those notifications. Put your phone on silent and close everything on your laptop that you don’t need for the task at hand; get your head in the game. You’ll find you may enjoy throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a project. Concentration Tactics Getting yourself to start working is half the battle, but then you need to keep working. 1. Write a To Do List Before doing any work, write out a to do listand get every little nagging task out of your brain. The washing, the grocery shopping, paying that bill, writing that article, contacting that client†¦ Keep the to do list on hand because you will remember something else you have to do in that thirty-second break you take to get a glass of water. 2.  Zone Out I find it easier to work when there’s some background noise.When you’re working at home put some music on in the background. (Tip: I find orchestral music is best for this because there aren’t any lyrics to sing along to!) 3. Be Real Be realistic about the time it takes to do things. Pessimists say it always takes thirty times longer than you expect. It’s okay to take your time to do things. 4. Ease Up You need to remember to give yourself a break (though don’t overuse this excuse!). Give yourself a break every few hours, rather than just one break a day. The mind always works better when it isn’t tired. You don’t have to reach the end of your day feeling blasted. Scheduling It’s a very different thing, organizing your time around a deadline you’ve been given and sticking to deadlines you’ve given to yourself. There’s no one to penalize you except yourself. There are many different ways of scheduling your life. Try each of them and find the one that suits you best. 1. Lists List everything you need to do and make your way through it. The list will grow as you get things done because, a lot of the time, getting one job done creates another three jobs. It is very important to finish what you are doing before starting something new. 2. Planner Draw out a table with days and times of day and rigidly decide what you’re going to do hour by hour (keeping in mind the time it takes to do things). 3. Reminders Get a reminders app on your phone. It’s like a to do list, but you can set alarms for each task. 4. Move location Start the day at a desk, move to your sofa, to the floor, to another desk, to the bed, outside. Stale surroundings can spark boredom and boredom is dangerous. 5. Keep it simple Underestimate yourself; set one big task for the day and feel great when you do more than just that task. 6. Split it up Scared of the giant task ahead? Split it into lots of smaller tasks, so it feels more conquerable.    It is very important to be realistic about the amount you can get done each day - don't think about quantity completed, but time and effort spent. Things do take time. Don’t get yourself down. You’re doing something awesome. You’re creating your own business from scratch! Don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back once in a while!    Maddy Glenn has been writing fiction from age seven. Maddy recently designed and released a free creative writing course on her website.  She developed a freelance editing and writing platform, focusing on editing fantasy fiction and writing articles to help new writers develop their skills.

The Darkling Thrush Essay Example

The Darkling Thrush Essay Example The Darkling Thrush Paper The Darkling Thrush Paper In the poem The Darkling Thrush, nature has a predominantly negative effect on the poet. It makes him feel depressed and isolated. Towards the end of the poem the poets mood lifts when he sees an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, chirping. In the poem Neutral Tones nature is portrayed in a negative way, however, in this poem nature reflects how the poets relationship is failing rather than effects how he is feeling. In The Darkling Thrush the title begins to paint a negative picture. The word Darkling means, shrouded in darkness. Neutral Tones also refers to colour in its title. The word Neutral implies blandness and colourless emotions. There is a link between the two poems as both colours are unappealing and are surrounded by a dull negative aura. Throughout the poem The Darkling Thrush there is a sense of emptiness, desolation and loneliness, this also applies to Neutral Tones. The poet uses lots of effective language to convey this. In stanza one, Hardy talks about how all mankind that haunted nigh / Had sought their household fires. This enhances the contrast between the barren outdoors and the warm and inviting households. This also emphasises his loneliness and isolation compared to the rest of mankind. The land is portrayed as barren when the poet mentions The tangled bine stems scored the sky like strings of broken lyres, The stems of climbing plants remind the poet of strings of an old musical instrument. The fact that the poet mentions that the lyres are broken, implies that there is no sound therefore the land is empty and desolate. This effective metaphor paints a picture of how the poet is feeling. The poet uses pathetic fallacy to match the barren landscape to how the poet feels. The wind his death lament encourages the reader to picture an empty landscape where only the sound of the wind is to be heard, whistling a funeral song in mourning of the death of nature. The poet uses a lot of language associated with death to convey how his positive emotions and feelings have died. Hardy uses an effective extended metaphor using the theme of death to convey how his hope has died: The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon the earth Seemed fervourless as I. This metaphor also adds to the desolation of the area, the word pulse refers to life which in this case is no where to be seen, the land is dead. Hardy uses some examples of religious language. He compares the landscape to religious things to convey his search for faith. He uses the word soul and evensong and carolling to describe different aspects of the surroundings. Towards the end of the poem it becomes apparent that the poets mood has lifted. The religious language enhances the fact that the poets mood has lifted and adds a hopeful note. Words such as joy and ecstatic add a hopeful note. In stanza one frost has a capital F and in stanza five Hope has a capital H this draws the readers attention to the poets change of mood. In the poem Neutral Tones nature reflects how the poet is feeling. The poet describes how the sun was white, as though chidden of God, this portrays the sun to be weak, in the poem The Darkling Thrush we also see a weak sun it is metaphorically called, The weakening eye of day. This shows how Hardys relationship with his partner like the sun, is weak and failing. Like the poem The Darkling Thrush, Neutral Tones also has language associated with death to convey the fact that his relationship is dying. The word ash depicts how his relationship is metaphorically going to burn out. The ominous bird portrays how the relationship was doomed from the start and was surrounded by a bad omen. This is a contrast to The Darkling Thrush as the little bird in it brings joy to the poet. In the poem Neutral Tones there are several colours used throughout the poem, in relation to the landscape, such as ash, gray and white, all of which are dull and bland depicting how the poet feels about his relationship. In Neutral Tones the pond represents how the relationship is still, without ripples and nothing flowing. The starving sod, which is emphasised through alliteration, portrays how the relationship is slowly dying, has no nourishment and is no longer fruitful. To conclude, the bird in both poems is of great significance. The bird in The Darkling Thrush although so old and frail has some underlying blessed Hope, which the poet doesnt have, yet longs for. The poet conveys that a spiritual force is behind the birds carolling: So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, The birds beautiful singing contrasts with its bleak surroundings. The bird in Neutral Tones is an ominous bird. Therefore, this bird is a contrast to the thrush. Through use of effective language the poet has conveyed in both poems how nature can both reflect and affect someones feelings.