Think freelance. Think freedom. Think about the 1 minute commute from your bed. Think working in your pyjamas.

Think it’s perfect?

Freelancing is often related to an improved lifestyle and work-life balance. Though the opposite often occurs. In today’s 24/7, always-connected world it’s all too easy to lock yourself away and lose track of what is important and can really make the difference.

Rosie Sherry writes about some of the pitfalls of working from home and offers some creative suggestions…

The unsocial procrastinator

I characterise working from home as being unsocial and full of procrastination.

It’s unsocial because you can only talk to yourself in the flesh. Yes, there’s always instant messenger, email, the phone (or Twitter if you tweet), but it’s not the same as working in the same space as someone else.

It’s full of procrastination mainly because there is no one around you to tell you what to do. It’s easy to say, ‘I’ll just wash the dishes’ or ‘watch this TV show’. And then what do you know? It’s lunch time and you haven’t done anything productive.

Then there’s the situation when you get stuck – perhaps you don’t know the answer or have lost inspiration…what then?

Creative space

The need for a professional, yet creative space has been growing over the past few years. A lot of this is down to the Internet, portable technology and the ability to work from anywhere in the world.

Up until recently, finding space for freelancers or remote workers has been somewhat limited. Usually consisting of long office leases, expensive serviced office space or fixed desk space.

There is now a better option, which goes by the name of co-working.

Co-working

“Co-working is a movement to create a community of café-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents.”

The trend is increasingly obvious – people that want independence need solutions as flexible as they are and need to be somewhat social as well.

Coworking has been built up by the community with a focus on the community. This is crucial. Because the focus has been on freelancers or nomadic people, the space, price and flexbility is often as free as they are.

However, the main attraction and benefit for coworking is working along side other people. Great things can really happen when people work together. Think inspiration. Think collaboration. Think opportunities. Think support.

Coworking usually comes in one of the following forms:

• a business or person with space has some space to share
• business set up as a co-working and creative space
• people go to spaces (usually wi-fi enabled) such as cafés, pubs or someone else’s home.

The co-working movement has a wiki where you can find a space near you.

Image by LoopZilla