Cognition #8: Should you freelance or not? Find out with a 7-point checklist!

Any person can learn a skill and monetize it by providing services to clients.

Any person can be a freelancer.

But does freelancing suit everyone?

The answer is no. And this edition explains why.

Welcome to Cognition! Today, we discuss:

1. Non-freelancers' views on freelancing!

2. What comes with freelancing?

3. The grey area!

4. Non-technical, aka fun segment!

Get into your reading zone. Fun is about to begin.

Non-freelancers' views on freelancing!

Recently, I interacted with professionals who are not freelancers.

They've got immense knowledge and skill in their domains. Plus, they have all the management, business, and soft skills required to be a freelancer.

So I asked them, "Why not freelancing?"

[Of course, I tweaked their answers to give a better reading experience.]

Person A—SEO expert

He told me he loves his full-time job because he likes to be in a team environment.

Person B—Graphic designer

I spoke to this woman, and she's got over 3 years of experience in graphic designing. She's got the entrepreneurial spirit, so I asked, 'Why not freelancing?'

Person C—Content writer

This guy is a specialist. When asked why not freelancing, he said,

What I think

After interacting with many professionals who either are employees or freelancers, I realized freelancing (or not freelancing) is more about lifestyle and priorities over skill and business ambitions.

To understand this better, recall the above three perspectives.

Person A chose social interactions over solitude.

Person B chose work-life balance over hustle.

Person C chose to be a specialist over a generalist.

These are extremely personal and unique choices, which come from what one prioritizes in life.

And there's nothing wrong with people who choose to take a job over freelancing or entrepreneurship.

I see employees are looked down upon in the freelance community, and I feel it's wrong.

Talking to employees made me realize not every person who picks up a job is because they had to or they're not ambitious. It's just because the job suits their priorities.

The best part is they're happy with what they do.

Okay, coming back to our topic, should you freelance or not?

To answer this, let's do a simple exercise.

I'll tell you what all comes with freelancing, and you can decide if you want to experience it or not.

I'll ask a simple yes or no question at the end of each section. Just note the YESs and NOs as you read.

Here we go. What comes with freelancing?

1. Responsibilities

In a job, you only work in your assigned roles.

For example, if you're a developer, you develop the assigned projects, and you're done for the day.

But in freelancing, you have to handle multiple responsibilities along with your core monetizable skill. To name a few, prospecting, cold emailing, meetings, invoicing, marketing, networking, etc., are the responsibilities a freelancer has to handle.

The result?

1. You spend more time than 8 hours a day.

2. Learning one core skill isn't enough. You have to be good at other roles too.

3. Work-life balance becomes a challenge. It's attainable, but it takes time to figure out.

Question: Do you think handling multiple responsibilities over one specialized role is challenging? If yes, are you willing to take up that challenge?

2. Income

Two things happen in freelancing with income:

Uncertainty:

In jobs, you have a fixed income. So you know you're going to earn a certain amount every month, which helps you plan and manage your finances better + there is a sense of security.

In freelancing, the income per month is not fixed. Sometimes you earn more. Sometimes you earn less. There are multiple dry spells too, where you don't have any projects.

It means you have to be good at managing finances, and you have to counter the income uncertainty with continuous prospecting and long-term clients.

Btw, I've written a thread on making dry spells productive. See if this helps.

Coming back to the second thing that happens with income in freelancing,

Scalability:

In jobs, the salary hikes yearly on an average. So you know you can't scale the income for some months. You counter fixed income with side hustles that become your secondary source of income.

In freelancing, the scalability is faster and higher. You can pick up more projects or onboard high-ticket clients to scale your income. And you can do it as fast as every month.

That's one of the bright sides of freelancing.

Question: Do you want to choose (income uncertainty + scalability) over (income stability - scalability)?

3. Diversity

Diversity in freelancing is basically you working with clients in different domains. One day you work in SaaS, the next day in health care, and the next day in lifestyle.

Even if you niche down your services to a particular domain, you still work with multiple companies with different objectives and goals.

So a freelancer needs to be highly adaptable to different industries—and requires versatility with skills.

In jobs, the need for you to be versatile and the diversity factor are comparatively less. But jobs demand you to be a specialist to excel. It's a different challenge altogether.

Some people like diversity. Some don't.

Question: Are you versatile with your skills and do you enjoy working in multiple domains at the same time?

4. Content creation

Both employees and freelancers can create content and build their personal brand online.

But currently, the number of freelancers who create content is higher than employees.

Most freelancers today want to create content and build a personal brand.

Although I am a firm believer in "You don't need to create content to become a successful freelancer," I do also believe that a personal brand is a great asset to have.

Content creation acts as a lead magnet, makes self-promotion easy, and helps you develop a secondary source of income when you monetize your content with info products, brand deals, workshops, etc.

So you might also get into content creation if you choose to freelance.

Question: Are you comfortable building in public? Can you create content that is relatable to the audience? Do you want to allot your time for content creation?

5. Resistance

If you're from India, you're most likely to face resistance from family, relatives, society, friends, etc.

They respect a person with a job. They think freelancers are unemployed, not self-employed.

It's funny how some families think an employee earning 20k a month is responsible, and a freelancer earning 30k a month is wasting time.

It's something you have to deal with as a freelancer, at least until you attain financial independence and growth.

Question: It takes time to build stability in freelancing? Are you ready to ignore the noise around you and focus on your goals?

6. Freedom

Freelancing comes with a lot of freedom compared to a job.

You have the freedom to choose the companies you want to work with, your working terms and timings, planning your days, etc.

In jobs, you don't have a freedom at such a large scale, but you do have a routine which is hard to find in freelancing. And having a fixed routine is a great great advantage.

Both freedom and routine are great. It's a very personal and subjective choice. Also, you can develop a routine in freelancing and gain freedom in your job. It's a choice based on how you approach life, employment, and business.

Question: Does the freedom that comes with freelancing suit your lifestyle, and do you want it?

7. Complications

There are a few necessities everybody has to cover irrespective of you're a freelancer or an employee—like tax, insurances, etc.

In jobs, it's done by your employer in the form of CTC (Cost to Company.)

But in freelancing, you have to maintain a record of your income, client list, and invoices to pay the tax. Also, you have to spend time on necessities like finding the best insurance policies, etc.

Or you can hire someone for it.

Question: Sometimes, freelancing needs you to do stuff you're not interested in. Do you think it's worth it, and are you willing to do it?

The 7-point checklist ends!

I'd like to think you have a set of YESs and NOs in front of you.

If we boil down all the questions I've asked, they're structured as "Do you want to choose to freelance over job?"

It's a simple equation now.

If YESs > NOs, you might want to consider freelancing.

If NOs > YESs, you might want to consider a job.

I hope the checklist explains what you need to know and helps you choose one of the two extremes: freelancing or a job.

But there is a grey area too!

It's not always you're full-time into employment or freelancing.

Sometimes you do both. You work full time in a company and freelance on weekends.

You do internships and freelancing.

You work part-time and freelance.

Or you're a student and freelance.

So if the Yes:No ratio of 7-point checklist is very close, like 3:4 or 4:3, you might want to explore the grey area and figure out what's best for you in the long run.

Before we end the technical segment, I wanna say nothing is easy. Be it a job, freelancing, or the grey area we spoke about.

Everything comes with its challenges.

Everything comes with its benefits.

Everything needs you to hustle and give your best.

It's all about where you want to put in maximum effort with all your heart.

So that's about Cognition #8's technical segment.

It's time we lighten the mood in the fun segment.

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment!

Favourite quote from a book

Started reading Ego is the Enemy recently and loved this line on how we assume the symptoms of success as success itself.

Ryan spoke about it from an ego-building perspective. We see signs of progress and confuse it with success. It is when we begin to develop ego.

Movie I watched this week

I watched Tamasha this week on Kshitiz's recommendation.

It's a very beautiful film and addresses very deep questions on how we want to live and how we are pretending to live.

The first twenty-five-minute conversation between Ranbir and Deepika, beautiful BGM, and the climax make it a must-watch!

Originally made in Hindi. Available on Netflix and Zee5.

Watch the trailer here.

Tweets I loved

YouTube video I loved

I rewatched this stand up from Kenny and this video is one of my favourites.

It's super chill. Do watchhh!

Song I’m listening to on a loop

The lyrics of this song from Aashiqui 2 are so damn deep!! One of my all-time favourites.

That's it from Cognition #8! I hope you had an amazing experience reading the issue.

Don't forget to share on your socials if you love what I write here.

I'll see you next week.

Until then, take care, stay safe, and check if you should freelance or not.

Love,

Vikra Vardhan.

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