Letting things slide is however only one aspect that can go wrong. Here are five tips for full time freelancers that helped me tremendously in my day to day work routine.

Set work and spare time

When I began working I basically worked 24/7. There was no balance in what I did and this turned out to be very stressful in the end. A far better solution was to set specific times for work which helped me find a balance between work and spare time. I did for example decide to work less on the weekends partially because there were not that many news anyway but also because I needed some rest from the five work days.

Take breaks

It can be really tempting to work eight hours straight and it happened more than once that I felt totally exhausted after spending 10 hours in front of the computer monitor. I usually did not feel well afterwards which was the turning point for me to schedule regular breaks. I try to do several shorter breaks during the day and one larger break to eat something proper. Breaks for me mean to leave the computer and do something else, usually relax with my eyes closed on the coach or going for a walk.

Eat and drink enough

I used to eat and drink little while working which reduced my ability to concentrate and work over the course of the day. It is of utmost importance to drink enough. I have water, tea or coffee standing by all the time now so that I drink enough during the day. I also make sure to eat occasionally during my breaks.

Setting up a proper workspace

A proper workspace is essential. Some users might think that all they need is a computer and a table but that’s far from it. You need a good computer desk, an even better computer chair (remember you sit in that chair 40+ hours a week), a computer monitor with a good contrast that is not hurting the eyes, a computer keyboard and mouse that you feel comfortable with, a phone, router, printer, scanner and other equipment that is necessary to work from home.

Take care of your body

Your body is pretty good at notifying you about problems. It can be eyes that are hurting, body ache or any other symptoms. It is important to pay close attention to this. It could mean that the equipment and situation is not the ideal environment.

It is also important to find a balance. Doing sports, this can be anything from football to cycling or walking, can really benefit the body and mind.

Do you have any other tips that might help users in my situation? Let me hear them in the comments.

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Task Solvers are users who can complete a task posted by a Task Poster in a given time frame. The service is brand new and dubbed Tech Preview at the moment. This means that it was released as is to receive user feedback to improve the service in the future.

A job posting includes a title, a description, a deadline, price and category. Additionally files with a size of up to 10 Megabyte can be uploaded, keywords added and access restricted. A Task Solver will be paid after the job is completed and needs a PayPal business account to receive payment.

The service will most likely gain momentum simply because it’s a service by Microsoft. It currently has only a few jobs posted which will surely change in the coming days and weeks. It lacks several features that established websites like Get A Freelancer are offering, for example Escrow services. The need for a PayPal business account will furthermore reduce the amount of freelancers who will join the Task Market site to offer their services to businesses who are looking for a task solver.

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Each project consists of a name and a color. That’s the minimal constellation. Additional data like contact names and email addresses can be added and sub projects can be created. Each project and sub project is listed in the left column and can be accessed with a double-click to change data, add sub projects or write comments on previous time entries.

The time of a project will be tracked when the user drags the project into the Currently Working On area of the application or by clicking on the Work On button in the project’s detail view.

Instead of tracking the time in real time it is possible to drag projects into the weekly view and edit the time manually. A double-click leads to that option which also offers access to the comment function.

Automatic time tracking cannot get better than this. The application is very responsive and it is easy to create new projects or sub projects. Reports are saved in Excel format which is also excellent.

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The project creator can then pick one of the freelancers who responded with an offer. It is possible to use a private messaging system to communicate on site to get the details right before a deal is closed. The website offers an Escrow service that will withhold the money until the project has been finished.

Adding a new project costs $5 which are subtracted from the money that is being paid to the freelancer if one is selected to finish the project. I think that this website offers some nice opportunities for freelancers as well. Just take a look at the average bid amount for certain categories to know what I mean. The price range for most projects lies between $100 and $1000.

While the website concentrates on brokering IT deals it does have several other categories that are related in a way or another. You can find and post offers for Accounting, Translations, Photography, Legal Advice or Copywriting on the website as well.

I like to post projects there because I know that my money is safe until the freelancer completes the product to my satisfaction. A rating system that has been implemented makes it easy to analyse a freelancer by previous works that he has done on the site.

I’m not using the website as a tool to earn money but I guess you could be highly successful if you are an expert in any of the categories that are offered on the website.

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Before you can start tracking the time you need to create some project names so that you can distinguish between them. A good way would be to use client names for example or project names instead. You activate the counter from the system tray for a specific project. That’s the manual way of tracking the time but it is also possible to let the program track the time automatically.

That feature is called auto move. It assigns the time to certain projects depending on the page title of certain applications. Let’s assume that you use Photoshop for one client only. Simply add the Photoshop title to the auto move feature and it will track and assign the time spend in Photoshop to the right project.

The software is a little bit confusing at the beginning and it takes some time to get used to it. You can automatically assign hourly rates to each project so that your earnings are calculated automatically as well.

The homepage of the program mentions hotkeys as well which can be used to switch between projects but I was not able to find reference about them in the program or on the homepage of the author. Hotkeys would make it even easier to switch between projects.

Another nice feature is the export feature. You can export data as csv or xml files providing clients with a detailed listing of the time that you have spend on their project.

PC Fare Meter [via Pimp my work] is an excellent Freelancer Software. The author needs to provide a documentation though and probably some tutorials to make it appeal to a broader audience. A better help file and tooltips in the application would also be helpful for the user.

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