
Freelancing and Lifestyle Design - budowski
http://bucketlistjournal.com/post/50175681785/freelancing-and-lifestyle-design
======
chasing
I've been freelancing since 1997. It has its perks, for sure, but it's not
simply "become a freelancer, work two hours a day, fulfill all your dreams!"
That's as much of a stereotype as "become a freelancer, work in your
underwear, never take a shower!"

Making a good income as a freelancer requires work. And clients. And paying
attention to clients' needs. And spending much more time organizing your
financial and business life. And dealing with work/life boundary issues. It's
something I like to refer as a "job."

And he's certainly not "retired," as he seems to claim, if he's paying the
bills freelancing. It kind of sounds like he's decided to take a major income
hit in order to have more lifestyle freedom (aided by living in a place with
lower costs of living). Which is totally fine! Especially when you're young.
But that's a major trade-off, and not one that should be taken lightly.

~~~
budowski
I have actually written about the pros and cons of freelancing in a previous
post, showing that it's not all rosy:
bucketlistjournal.com/post/46601822485/pros-and-cons-of-freelancing

(and P.S. - I personally did not relocate, so my living expenses are still
high)

~~~
chasing
You seem like a good guy and I agree that balancing work and lifestyle is
crucially important -- especially in an industry like ours that tends to like
to grind people into the ground with mirages of fame and fortune. [Edit: Mixed
metaphor. Sorry.]

But. You come off as someone who has just barely started thinking about these
issues. You're being wildly overly simplistic about how freelancing works in
real life. And using the skydiving billboard as a trigger makes it sound like
"living your dreams" means doing extreme sports and hanging out on the beach.
Which is fine, but kind of shallow and definitely not the end-all be-all of a
well-lived life.

~~~
pbreit
I didn't get that sense at all. What I took away from the post was a) in sad
of packing your days with work now so you can do the things you want in 20-40
years, structure your life so you can do those things now and b) freelancing
could be an option (but its not easy).

------
keiferski
_In one of my upcoming posts, I’ll be giving concrete tips on how to actually
start freelancing and get paying customers._

This submission has zero content.

~~~
vinceguidry
It gets better when you look at his "about" page. All his startups failed, yet
he still thinks he has something interesting enough to say that he needs a
blog to put all this amazing content he's going to write in the future.

Most people start with freelancing then move on to start ups when they get
sick of playing client roulette. He went the other way around. There's
probably an interesting story there, something way more compelling than
rehashing Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi in the most schlocky way possible. But
it doesn't look like he'd know how to tell it.

~~~
budowski
I'm actually not quitting the startup world. But I'll probably won't return to
the same classic routine of working full-time until raising VC money and then
hoping to get acquired. More in the realms of bootstrapping an online business
with a concrete business model that grows slowly.

By the way, what didn't you like about the way I wrote my post(s)? I'm
honestly interested in hearing your feedback, since this is my first blog.

~~~
vinceguidry
Your blog posts need to actually say something. I've read 4HWW, nothing you've
written has anything new to say about the subject of lifestyle design, even
though his book came out 5 years ago.

But it could have. The main problem I've found in doing this global arbitrage
thing is that freelancing is actually hard to do remotely. I mean, you could
go on eLance and Mechanical Turk and do boring-ass work for annoying clients
for pennies, those types of gigs are easy to get and do remotely. But to do
actual serious work that way?

There's plenty to discuss on this topic, but you managed to avoid everything
that's interesting about lifestyle design and then promise only the most
uninteresting content later. "How to start freelancing and get paying
customers" is not a worthy HN post. Most of us, if we freelance, have already
been doing it for awhile.

You need to decide who you're writing your blog for. I wouldn't necessarily
choose the HN audience, you might be better off serving the legions of kids
just out of college who want something better than the choices they have in
front of them. If you're going to target that audience, then target them,
don't write generally and definitely don't self-submit to HN just to get
eyeballs.

If you want to target us, then you'll need to bring a bit more substance to
the table.

------
gdonelli
I think he forgot to mention that you need to try the freelancing route when
you have saved some $$$ buffer, for me it was about a year worth of free
falling.

It is going to be bumpy and you need to have the peace of mind to focus on the
present.

Moving to a foreign country to save money could be a good idea, but only if
you would like to live abroad. If you do it only for the money your life will
be miserable. Also the cost of leaving your local network behind might be very
high

~~~
budowski
I completely agree. I'll address specifically this issue in one of my future
posts (on how to get started).

~~~
vinceguidry
"Don't wait 40 years to book a skydiving lesson. Wait until you've managed to
save a $20K rainy day fund."

------
k-mcgrady
Not really much content here. It's been a while since I've read the 4HWW but
I'm pretty sure freelancing wouldn't fit in with LD. For example, it's pretty
hard to make any money freelancing when you're not working. I thought the
point of LD was to generate recurring income that will continue to generate
even if you do nothing.

------
rpeden
I see some negative responses to this, and I understand what people are
saying, i.e. that people here are already familiar with 4HWW concepts so this
is nothing new.

However, there are many people out there who are familiar with these concepts,
and want to act on them, but keep putting it off. So seeing this kind of thing
hit the HN front page once in a while, because reading it again rekindles the
idea in the minds of those who are interested, but haven't yet acted.

~~~
rhizome
Several people apparently did have their interests piqued by the title before
coming back here to say the post sucks. Is this a "silent majority" type
argument? "No no no...the _other_ people..."

------
michaelpinto
This is such depressing reading — it's all about "me" and doesn't give a damn
for anybody else. I guess on a spiritual level this is why I hated the 4 Hour
Work Week cult: It was all a sort of cult of being self centered. And on the
flip side I think this is why I admire Bill Gates: Because he's taken the
money he has and is actually trying to improve the world. There needs to be a
bit more of that in the tech industry...

~~~
vinceguidry
I don't understand this. When you work in technology, the very work you do is
a contribution to the world. It's not like finance where 90% of the money is
in scamming the less-savvy by trading on the big name of the company you work
for to inflate the price of crap.

Even if it's just making websites, you're increasing the size of the pie, not
just trying to take other's slices. So why place this heavy moral burden on
success?

Bill Gates is certainly an admirable figure, but really in spite of his
philanthropy and not because of it IMO. He advanced the state of the art and
made markets where none before existed. The "developers first" culture he
created made it possible for regular people to make real livings in software,
bringing tech out of the nerd boondocks.

~~~
michaelpinto
Software is just a tool and can be good or bad like any other tool: You can do
something very positive like create a website that educates people on health
issues and may save lives — but on the flip side maybe you're writing code to
guide nuclear weapons.

But I'm not objecting to that: What I am objecting to is the sort of "me
first" mindset that you see in that page. Granted I'm not saying that not
everyone needs to be a saint, but you do need to be aware that there are other
people out there.

------
dreamdu5t
You don't save for retirement to do fun things. You save so that you can live
when you have no ability to work.

