THE RELEVANCE OF CONSISTENCY AND MEETING DEADLINES AS A FREELANCER

Consistency is one of the most talked about, emphasized, most basic and crucial topic for discussion especially in the blogosphere. Its essence cannot be overemphasized enough as a budding blogger trying to carve a niche for himself/herself in the industry. Still, it remains one of the aspects most bloggers of which I am inclusive, struggle with. Nonetheless, the issue of consistency is not a conversation/topic limited to the blogosphere alone, it is also something that concerns even the Freelancing/Writing Community. In short, it’s something that affects everyone in whatever sector, industry or career path one finds him/herself.

Like Consistency, meeting deadlines is another crucial topic that doesn’t only affect our core as freelancers/writers but also determines how far we go, grow and how many opportunities we become opened to in our freelancing journey.

Furthermore, Consistency and Meeting Deadlines are beyond what we need to do as a Freelancer or what is expected of us as writers or as human beings. Although, of a truth, Consistency helps prove our seriousness or helps showcase our level of seriousness as regards what we do which is freelancing. It determines the depth of commitment and also goes a long way in how we are being portrayed to the client world. In other words, we can’t be kind of a freelancer. It’s either we are freelancers or not. You can’t just quit today and decide to pick your craft back in a month’s time or when you deemed fit.

I’m aware that writing is a very emotional art. There are days when you really feel like it and there are days when you want to shut it all out but the moment we decide to make a serious business out of writing, we sure do have the power to control when we break down, when we bounce back and how we bounce back. So, it won’t speak well on our freelancing career if we are being offered a job and then we decline on reasons we could easily summarize as not open for business. . . maybe some other time. If this sort of becomes a trend, we do not only start losing jobs that could have fetched us cool cash but also old clients, new clients that could have come through our old clients and jobs that only our artistic touch could have done justice. So believe me when I say, fFreelancing is more than a career, it’s a calling.

Meeting Deadline, on the other hand, is a great determinant in how our integrity is perceived. Many of us don’t keep to agreements. Somehow we’ve managed to be comfortable with taking advantage of our deadlines at the expense of our integrity and knowingly and unknowingly holding our clients to ransom. This simply means that when we don’t submit an article/writing job at an agreed time or date, we put our integrity at risk. Of course the owner of the job would have no choice but to wait on you to deliver it at another appointed time/date which is you technically holding your ‘employer’ to ransom, he/she might start having doubts when it comes to giving you a job and expecting you to deliver at a designated time. Then it becomes more serious if it happens again and again.

I know that there are lots of unforeseen happenings when it comes to freelancing. Your freelancing tool may disappoint, hard disc probably packs up, laptop becoming dramatic etc. but the fact still remains never to skip a deadline because the question will always remain does he/she really understands when you explain why you’ll need to deliver the following week or in two days time? It’s easy for people to say I understand while most of the time they really don’t understand or deep down wish you were more professional. So this is what I advise when you have a job, take your time to determine how long it will take you to do justice to the job and add extra one week for unforeseen circumstances. If your employer isn’t comfortable with such a long time, try get an extra two to three days and with that, your career won’t be jeopardized by one or more situations of disappointments on your part. If you don’t know, words spread quickly in this industry *just kidding.*

Finally, Consistency and Meeting Deadlines are very crucial to Freelance Profile Building. It’s a great determinant 90% of the time. Also, often times we don’t become inconsistent at something because certain circumstances are beyond our control but because we don’t take it serious enough.

I hope you found this article very helpful and I hope it helped us all to get better in this area of struggle, and I also do hope you found one or two solutions therein.