Chana Roberts – The Write Life

How to Manage Freelance Writing With ADHD: 8 Tips for Success

Chana Roberts — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 11:00:39 +0000

As a kid, you couldn’t sit still. In school, you were labeled a lazy, hyperactive, underachiever. Growing up, it was always hard to sit through the requisite classes and force yourself to stick to the task at hand.

As an adult, you’re always putting your foot into your mouth. You get on the boss’ nerves. You’ve been fired for saying what you think. Sometimes you’re organized, and sometimes disorganized. You’ve taken medication, or learned to manage without it.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, is a diagnosis that follows you everywhere. It shows itself in all areas of your work life and family life. It helps you and hurts you.

Now, you’re freelancing. The freedom might be good for you — but it might not be. How will you force yourself to get stuff done?

I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t pretend to. But as a writer with ADHD, I do have some tips for successfully managing your business while dealing with this ever-present challenge.

1. Work with yourself

And don’t try to work against yourself. You’ll be a happier person if you accept yourself.

If it’s hard to sit, then stand. If you have a short attention span, switch back and forth between assignments. Do you work better with music? Go for it!

Consider finding a therapist or coach who can help you. A coach will be able to help you define goals and reach them. A therapist will be able to help you sort through the feelings of frustration, guilt, and failure that may have accompanied you through much of your life.

2. Get up and move

Freelancing means freedom. You’re not tied to a desk with a boss standing over you. Even if you’re earning per hour, those hours don’t have to be contiguous.

When you need to get up and move, do it. If you can’t concentrate, go for a run. Or, take your bike and go grocery shopping.

After you get home, your head will be clearer. You’ll have renewed energy and patience, and will be more productive.

3. Get a friend to help

Friends are always important. But for a freelancer, especially a freelancer with ADHD, friends can be the difference between success and failure.

Working with coworkers, a boss, and managers helps you stick to your tasks. They pressure you to get the job done. Now, you’re on your own. If you don’t motivate yourself, you’ll lose clients. If you lose clients, you won’t have an income.

Ask a friend to help. This friend doesn’t need to be a writer, but should be someone who’s ready and willing to hold you accountable for your progress. Your friend should contact you every few hours, or at the very least, every day — and you’ll need to report on how much you’ve accomplished.

Don’t have a friend willing to commit? Offer to pay someone. For $5-10 a week, someone will probably be willing to boss you around once a day.

4. Make a schedule

Schedules mean structure. For those with ADHD, structure is an indispensable tool that helps us successfully complete tasks. Freelancing means that you no longer have a predetermined, outside schedule.

In order to succeed, you need to create your own schedule. Go to sleep around the same time every night. Get up at the same time every morning. Have someone call your phone, or dump water on your head, so that you can’t ignore your alarm clock.

5. Get dressed and get fed

Part of having a set schedule is getting dressed every morning. As a freelancer, you might be tempted to spend all day in your pajamas. After all, you don’t need to wear work clothes in order to work.

But you do need to get dressed — and then start work on time, and sit in the same place, and do the same things, in the same order — so that you’ll be able to concentrate on your work and meet your deadlines.

You also need to set times to eat, and times to prepare meals. Meal preparation can be done the night before, the weekend before, or during those times you can’t sit long enough to work. It can be frustrating to feel like you’re just not able to concentrate on your work. Advance planning and using your “out-of-it” time for something productive will both help you stay on track.

6. Work [when you’re] ahead

You probably have times when you’re on a roll, and times when you just can’t manage to sit. There’s no magic formula for dealing with this, but doing work in advance can help.

If you need to write two posts each week about fixing cars, you don’t have to stop there — you can write seven when you’re feeling creative and energetic. Save those extra drafts for when you hit a low-energy period. By preparing some work ahead of time, your clients don’t notice fluctuations in your productivity.

7. Break it up

A big project can be overwhelming to the point of leaving you frozen in place from fear. You can work through that fear. Find a hand to hold, and a friend to encourage you.

Then, bit by bit, break that huge task into smaller pieces. You’re not doing this task right away. You’re simply breaking it up. When you’re done with that, go to sleep.

In the morning, look at the list of small, easy, tasks that you have to do. You’ll feel more confident and be more productive.

Challenge yourself to see how many of those items you can check off in one day. Yesterday, you did one thing. Can you do two today? Can you finish this list by the end of the week?

8. Find what works for you

If you’re alive and semi-successful, it means you’ve found strategies to help you cope with your ADHD. They’re your personal, subconscious coping mechanisms.

Sit down and figure out what those strategies are. Once you’re conscious of what helps and what doesn’t, it will be easier to use those tools in your freelancing.

Do you have ADHD? Is it a struggle or an asset? How do you cope? Share your thoughts in the comments!

How to Write About Anything: 5 Steps for Researching a New Topic

Chana Roberts — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 11:00:22 +0000

You’ve just landed a job as a content writer . . . for an industry you have absolutely zero background in.

You’re a beginner, and this is a great job, your best so far: $100 for 800 words. You’ve gotta make it. There is no way you’re about to mess this up.

What now?

You’re going to write those articles, and you’re going to write them well. No one, especially your new client, will ever guess you’re new to the field.

That’s the right attitude, and you’re halfway there. Now the question is how to do it.

Ready? Here are five steps to effectively research your subject, so you’ll be able to write authoritative, accurate content.

1. Define and refine your topic

Let’s say you’re writing for a marketing manager. You’re new to freelancing, and have no idea what marketing even is. All you know is that when you need vegetables, you can go to the supermarket or the farmer’s market.

Your first step is to define what kind of marketing your client wants you to write about. Does he want to market a service or a product? Online or offline? Is what you’re writing going to be printed, made into a wall poster, or published on a website?

Once you’ve figured out what you are marketing, along with where, how, and to whom, you can move on. Remember, you’re not out to become an expert. If you gobble up too much at once, it’ll hurt your writing. All you need is a basic understanding of the subject at hand.

Take a minute to write down what your specific topic is, just as if you were writing an academic thesis statement.

2. Determine what resources you need

Once upon a time, when we wanted to look something up, we went to the library and opened an encyclopedia. Those were the days.

Today, it’s not so simple. If you’re looking to write for a travel agency, you’re going to read popular websites, search for cheap deals, and see what interests travelers right now.

On the other hand, if you’re writing about whether breastfeeding has health benefits, you’re going to want to read government sites, medical reports, and organized, reliable research.

You also need to think about whether written information is enough. Maybe you’re going to need to dig up a video or sound recording, conduct an interview or observe someone.

3. Start your research

If you’ve decided that your primary information source is the Internet, start Googling. If you’re looking for people who have been to the Bahamas, look on Facebook. If you need to find out whether it’s worth it to be a dentist, make a list of dentists in your area and ask for interviews.

How long you spend on this step depends on a few things. First, consider how complicated the subject is, and how much material you will need to cover. Also take into consideration how fast you read, how quickly you learn new concepts, and whether you need to take someone else’s schedule into consideration.

Tackle at least one of your chosen sources per day if you have the time to plot out your research.

4. Get your sources to work for you

It doesn’t take research to learn how to research, but it does take preparation.

If you’re observing someone, you’ll need to think about who and what you’re observing. Write down your goals. Think about recording the observation session so you can review it later, and be proactive beforehand to obtain permission to record.

If you’re conducting interviews, make a list of questions to ask and topics that you want to cover. You won’t always be able to ask all the questions (sometimes the conversation will go off on a tangent or you’ll run out of time), but if you have a list of topics, you’ll remember the most important items.

For those Googling, I recommend reading through the first five-to-10 pages of results, the last five-to-10 pages of results, and a few random pages in the middle. Otherwise, you’re liable to miss important information.

Whenever possible, take a few moments to research the viewpoint opposite to your own. Knowing both sides of the issue will give you a better understanding overall — and it will show in your writing.

5. Write down what you’ve learned

Make a list of the most important things you’ve learned. This can be done on paper, in a Word document, or even just by copy-and-pasting the most important selections into an email to yourself. Make sure that you keep track of your sources, so that you don’t get stuck later on.

Remember your original document with your topic and list of sources? Open it. See if you’ve done what you wanted to do. You may want to write what you’ve learned in this same document, to keep it all together.

Do you have tips on how to quickly learn about a new field? Share them in the comments!