As designers or developers, having clients and company’s come to you for your expertise and skill is a very fulfilling feeling. One that is hard to pass up especially if your day job is freelancing. When you say no to a freelance project, sure, it means the usual negative connotations (which I won’t list here because I’m sure you can think of a few already). It is so easy though to forget about the positive and most important things that affect our career as freelancers.

1. Sleep!

Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard it before from your wife or your significant other and sometimes it can’t be helped. But sleep is the number one thing that keeps you going, healthy, alert, and able. I won’t lecture about how it affects your health, I’ll leave that for the health specialists and your gym trainer (assuming you have one).

2. Family & Friends

Refusing a single freelance project means more time with those love and care for. I’m talking about quality time not working on your projects, but showing them off to your friends and family. You’d be surprised how many of them would be interested where you’ve disappeared to for past five years…they probably thought you went and died in a hole some where. I’ve already had a few questions like that since I left university and it’s not a fun one to answer as it tends to emcpass one word, “work”……Get in touch with people, they may provide those hidden opportunities to meet with people you’ve always admired.

3. Fun, fun, fun.

Having fun promotes relaxation and discussion for whatever topic comes to your mind. Go out, have a drink, spur on your creative mind. There a ton of ideas that could come out of a single conversation. In fact, it happens to me almost all the time talking to fellow freelance designers. We recently had a conversation about twitter which led to AR, to geotagging, and then to restaurants and businesses, combine those ideas together. What comes to mind?

Essencially, when you’re relaxed the mind is free to roam around and think of things it does normally think about. Creativity is about innovation and expanding ideas, so why not do that for our minds, purposefully and beneficially?

Conclusion

If my fiance has taught me anything, its that time flys and its important what you do with it. We’re only given a certain amount of time on earth to live our lives and to make it the most productive requires balance. Don’t spend your life sparing at the computer screen, it’s alot like staring at a hole in the wall. And with the rise of organic screens it might be more so in the future.

“Health is number one, next to living”. Jamie Maing