The engine in a NASCAR racecar produces, on average, more than 750 horsepower. That’s more than twice the horsepower of most production engines on the street. You wouldn’t guess it, but NASCAR engines are very similar to street engines. They use the same cylinder bore centerlines as street engines, they have the same number of cylinders, and they start out their lives the same size as street engines.

A NASCAR Lesson

During the building process, however, a NASCAR engine changes radically. It grows to about 358 cubic inches, a full 20% larger than most street engines. A NASCAR engine has a radical cam profile that makes intake valves easier to open and holds them open longer. A NASCAR engine’s subsystems are all designed for high temperatures and blazing speeds.

A NASCAR engine is almost exactly like a street engine in the beginning. What makes the difference?

A heck of a lot of hard work.

The same is true of freelance writing. Most writers have some talent. Only the best, however, have what it takes to race with the best. So, how do they do it? How can you boost your writing horsepower and pull ahead of the pack?

Start Your Engines

The simplest process in the freelance life is also often the most difficult: you have to get started. You do that by writing. You write every day. You write when you don’t feel like it. You write at night, on weekends and even on holidays. Even when you don’t feel inspired, you have to put your fingers on the keyboard and write something.

Turbocharge Your Enthusiasm

Freelance writing isn’t always fun. Sometimes, you’ve got to spend three months writing about the care and feeding of dingoes. From time to time, you’ve got to crunch numbers and read reports and compare figures. No, these aren’t fun tasks. Here’s the thing, though: you get to be a writer. There is no better life. Remember how cool it is, and funnel that enthusiasm into your writing. Your readers can tell when you’ve lost interest, so don’t lose interest or you lose readers.

Get a Pit Crew

One of the biggest dangers to the freelance writer, especially to the Internet writer, is isolation. Isolation leads to burnout. Isolation causes you to miss things. Isolation keeps your writing at a stagnant level while you stop to change your own tires. Your pit crew might be a partner, an editor or a mastermind group, but whatever it is, you can’t run the race without one.

Outlast the Competition

When the end of a race approaches, a driver and his pit crew have to make some decisions: does the driver pit, risking the chance that he’ll fall behind, or does he push his car, hoping to avoid a blowout or blowup? Sometimes, being willing to keep going on nothing but a wing and a prayer is all you need to outlast your competition. This is why most blogs fail within 3 months: to succeed, you’ve got to stay with it.

Cross the Damn Finish Line

NASCAR doesn’t have playoffs. In fact, it is conceivable that someone could win the Nextel cup with zero wins. With NASCAR, it is all about the buildup of points. Sometimes, you’re going to get outbid. Sometimes, you’re going to get your ass handed to you. You’re going to lose clients. When you do, deal with it. Tune your writing, work on your sales pitch, and do what you have to do to succeed the next time around. As long as you don’t wind up in a fiery heap on the track, you’re still in the running.

Do you have what it takes to run the freelance race?

Bob Younce is a freelance writer and writing mentor from Linwood, Michigan. Bob is dedicated to helping Internet writers achieve their dreams.

Graphic Design Lead For Corporate Logo and Product Logo for Cosmetic Line
Posted: 05/14/2008

Graphic Design Project Description: My Industry:COSMETICS-ONLY SMILES; LIP GLOSS,BALM,TOOTHPASTES,TEETH WHITENERS

Graphic Design Details: My competition is: MAC,DIOR,SMASHBOX,CHANEL,BOBBI BROWN,NARS My Budget is/is not Flexible:IS FLEXIB...

Graphic Design Lead For Logo Design for Product Launch
Posted: 05/14/2008

Graphic Design Project Description: Number of pages (approx): 1 My Industry: coaching I have several new products I am launching and I need a logo design for the greater whole of my company. Once site is about world peace, another is about becoming a healer, and another is for my coaching club which is about tracking joy. I need is for someone to help me figure out the name for the "parent company" as well. I don't have any image ideas or color scheme ideas, so I will need help with that.. I have several sites that are linked together, and I would like a logo that can encompass all 3 of t hem. I may also need some help decided on a name for the new product.

Graphic Design Details: My Budget is/is not Flexible: no Best time to reach me is: days 9-3 CST Best way to reach me is: e...

Graphic Design Lead For Logo for Games and Electronics shop
Posted: 05/14/2008

Graphic Design Project Description: Number of pages (approx): I have a rough sketch of my logo and would like a graphics designer to create a black and white finished product going by the sketch My Industry: Games Retail

Graphic Design Details: Best time to reach me is: email anytime or phone Best way to reach me is: email is best I prefer t...

There’s a conspiracy against you, and everyone is in on it. Your friends, your roommates, your significant other, your co-workers (if you’re only freelancing part-time), hell, even that guy sitting a few tables away from you at the café you like to do work in. They’re all slowing you down.

Here’s the kicker, though: they don’t know what their doing. They’re just pawns in this game. So who’s the mastermind behind this nefarious plot to kill your productivity?

Your own brain.

A recent study by Dr. Timothy Welsh, from the University of Calgary’s Kinesiology Department, shows that a person working in your field of vision on a task that’s different from your own can slow down your performance – and it’s the fault of the way our brains work.

My Own Worst Enemy

Just like we react reflexively to external stimuli (pulling our hand away from a hot pot handle, for example), our bodies also react to internal stimuli without us consciously deciding to take action (like when we cry after thinking about something sad), like a reflex to ideas. This psychological phenomenon is called the ideomotor effect, and according to the ideomotor effect of motor programming (the system by which our body structures muscle commands before a movement begins), the perception and action systems in our brains are so closely linked that “actions and the results of those actions are maintained in a common representation.” That is, when we plan to do something, that thought conjures up another thought, a representation of the outcome of whatever it is we were going to do. On the flipside, thinking about the result of an action activates the neural coding of that action.

This relationship between perception and action gets complicated in a social setting when mirror neurons come into play. These information-processing cells in the nervous system fire both when we act and when we observe actions performed by others. Essentially, these neurons “mirror” the actions of others, as though we were performing them ourselves. When we see someone do something, we automatically imagine ourselves doing the same thing (the technical term for this is response co-representation), not in the sense of a prolonged daydream, but a thought just a few milliseconds long. (Like when someone has a crumb on their face and you wipe the same spot on your face? That’s always weird. — Ed).

That may not seem like a whole lot of time (a millisecond is one thousandth of a second), but imagine working on your laptop in a busy café and think about how many people you glance at while you’re there. Couple this with the fact that when you go back to your own work, you’re also imagining the result of every action you plan to take, right down to hitting a key or clicking your mouse, for a few milliseconds, and you can see how all these little flashes can add up.

Green Means Go, Red Means Stop

In his experiment, Welsh aimed to find out if a person actually has to see the action of another person for the mirror neurons to do their thing, or if simply believing that another person is doing their work is enough. Participants in the experiment performed a spatial-compatibility task (also called a Simon task, a basic example of which you try for yourself here) in three variations: one by themselves, one with a partner (a woman working with Welsh’s team acted as the partner in all the experiments) sitting beside them and one where the partner left the room and told the participant that they would perform their part of the task in another room.

In the first partner task, the participant sat next to the partner at a computer and pressed the “z” key when a green square appeared on the screen while the partner pressed the “/” key in response to red squares on the screen. After a while, the partner told the participant that she was going to leave the room and continue pressing her key on a networked computer in another room. Instead of actually pressing the key, though, she simply ran a program that made it look like she was performing her part of the task by making the red squares disappear after a pseudorandom period of time based on her response times. So, in this final task the participant lacked visual contact and social interaction with the partner and witnessed only the effects of her actions, but not the actions themselves.

And what did we learn from this?

Drum roll please…

Dealing with Peer Pressure

After analyzing the participants’ response times in the three tasks, Welsh and his research team found that participants were slower while working next to their partner than when they worked alone or when the partner was “working” out of sight. Even though the majority of participants believed that their partner performed her task after she left the room (there were a few who didn’t buy the ruse, and their results were eliminated from the data set), evidence of response co-representation was only observed when the partner was in the same room with the participants. Welsh concludes that the actions of another person are only represented and modeled by the observer when the observer actually sees at least a portion of that action.

Now, response co-representation isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and can be helpful when one is trying to learn a technique from someone else (“watch and learn”), but as we see here, it can also cause problems when what someone observes and someone intends to do are different. Welsh thinks his results have some practical implications for the design of both physical work spaces and remote work systems. He suggests that “in a situation where speed and accuracy in performing a certain task are important” a work setting “in which people work in isolation – or at least with people who doing very similar tasks” would help productivity and that “coordinating actions through more remote systems in which neither operator can see each others’ actions” would have the same benefits.

If you like working around other people, but find you’re less productive in social settings, try to situate yourself in a way where you can’t see anyone else. People thinking you’re strange for sitting in the corner may be worth it for the increased productivity. And if you like to work in isolation, you’ve got a leg up on our more social brethren. And if you’re roommates hassle you for shutting yourself in, you can just tell them, “Hey, it’s science. Look it up.”

Reference: Welsh, T.N., Higgins, L., Ray, M., Weeks, D.J.. “Seeing vs. believing: Is believing sufficient to activate the processes of response co-representation?”. Human Movement Science, Volume 26, Issue 6, December 2007. DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2007.06.003

Dear Aunty Entity,

I’m convinced my client hates me

I took over an account from someone who had been with the client for 3 years and they were disgruntled about them going. The last few weeks have been difficult in terms of establishing a relationship and getting things done because of this negative vibe. Today when I phoned to ask about an approval for something I got yelled at before having the phone slammed down on me.

Am I being paranoid and how can I get out of this?

Nora Para

* * *

Dear Nora,

Inheriting a client from someone who had developed a relationship over a significant amount of time is difficult. It takes time to gain trust and for them to develop their own level of confidence in you.
As for the nasty phone exchange, people have bad days and it may be entirely unrelated to you: maybe their car broke down, maybe they ruined their best pair of shoes, maybe they got bad news that morning and you just caught them at a bad time.

Then again, sometimes you just have to admit it: ‘your client doesn’t like you’.

It’s one of the worst things in the world when this happens because, especially in the project management or client services world it is your job to get along with everyone and yup, it’s nearly always personal.

I don’t think there is ever a textbook way of dealing with hostility because it really depends on you, your personality and your working methods. It takes time to build trust and a relationship. If you are able to, quietly working on their project/account and taking care of things in the background while keeping them up to date can convey a sense of reliability and you may find their attitude softening once they see what a good job you are doing. Attention to detail, a courteous and professional manner at all times can only help here and it’s probably a good idea to behave as if that phone call never took place.

However, if the hostility continues to the point where it is affecting the ability to do your job sometimes it is best to cut your losses and move to another account or disengage yourself from the relationship if you have the luxury of being able to do so.

Just remember – for every client you feel hates you, there are sure to be a couple who will sing your praises. It’s just the way it rolls.

Aunty Entity

* * *

Surviving meetings, part two:

(See part one here.)

Game: Phrases that should have stayed behind in the 80s.

Stuck in a meeting for hours?
Finding staying awake and alert a problem?
Snoring, dribbling and falling off your chair are not advisable and potentially job-threatening actions.
Keep alert by playing: ‘spot the meeting cliché’ *

* various iterations of the game are well known ie: bullshit bingo

You’ll need:

• Meeting room. Preferably over designed with numbingly uncomfortable chairs and at least one piece of artwork guaranteed to make your eyes water.
• Meeting attendees. Extra points allocated for any or all of the following: Ponytails on men, crumpled linen jackets, bow ties, PowerPoint presentations including graphs, flip charts, socks in colours other than standard grey, black or navy, more than 4 x blackberrys on the table at any one time. Note: the more senior the meeting attendees, the better the chances of meeting clichés.
• Note-taking, refreshments or reasons for holding said meeting are optional extras

Points:

Score two points for each phrase uttered. 4 points if two phrases are mentioned within the space of 5 minutes.

2 – 8 points: generally allowable, though cliché sources should be treated with utter disdain

8 - 12 points: approaching a high level of bullshit and waffle. Resist the temptation to beat speaker with blunt instrument repeatedly until they stop talking/breathing.

12+ points: cliché alert. Have the speaker run for Head of State, CEO of a global corporate or establish an internet start-up company.

Meeting clichés:

• On the same page
• Take offline
• Think outside the square/box
• Talk me through it
• Blue sky
• Best practice
• Singing from the same hymn-sheet
• Paradigm
• Moving the goalposts
• At the end of the day
• Comfort zone
• Win-win situation
• Rock the boat
• Core competency
• Action item
• Touch base
• Synergy

And finally – how often do you hear this:

“I’m in a meeting”

We all know you are NOT you liar. You’re chatting to your mates, in the queue at McDonalds, on the bus, texting your boyfriend/girlfriend, emailing your mother or reading this blog.

PhotoshopDisasters: Irish Independent: That Must Be Some Distinctive Nose

DesignQuote was designed by a web design company with over 12 years in business. We determine the validity of a lead (whether or not its bogus) based on the same criteria we use from a customer that contacs us directly.

When we deal with a client we often meet or speak with them and the create a ballpark proposal, sometimes we never hear form them again. This is usually because they picked a different firm and do not want to have to tell us the bad news, so they just avoid it. Other times we will spend hours creating proposals only to have the client come back and say they lost the funding, or something else came up and they have to put the project on hold. This is a normal part of business, and it doesn not mean that those clients were bogus clients.

DesignQuote is different from most sites in that we allow you to pick and choose the leads you want instead of forcing you to take every lead. We have guidelines that determine if a lead is bogus, and if a lead is found to be bogus you will receive your credits back.

Designquote sells sales leads. Leads are NOT guaranteed jobs, they are sales leads and you are competing with other designers and dealing with "potential" clients who may or may not end up purchasing services.

We contact the client multiple times and verify their email and phone number and ensure they are actually looking for a designer.


How validity is decided:

A lead is NOT Bogus if:
The client picks another provider outside of DesignQuote.
Reason: The lead is valid, the client was looking to hire a designer, all designers had an opportunity to contact the client and make the sale.

The client decided to put the project on hold, or decided they could no longer do the project for whatever reason.
Reason: Sometimes customers change their mind or have internal problems that prevent them from doing the project. They may contact you later if they decide to start the project again. Keep in contact with them and you may still get the contract.

The client received your bid or had some correspondence with you, then never contacted you again and chose another designer.
Reason: The client is usually talking to several other designers, during these contacts the client may pick a winner for the project and not notify you directly.

A lead is MAY BE Bogus if:

The client never responded to any contact you made with them. Reason: Sometimes customers change their mind or have internal problems that prevent them from doing the project. They may contact you later if they decide to start the project again. Keep in contact with them and you may still get the contract. If you suspect that the lead is bogus create a bogus report on your leads page.

A lead IS Bogus if:

The client never responded to any designers and does not close their project. Action: DesignQuote customer support will investigate the lead and try to contact the client and get the results of the project, if the client does not respond after several attempts the lead will be marked as bogus and all designers will get their credits back. If you suspect that the lead is bogus create a bogus report on your leads page.


Stumble

Adobe Flex gives you almost all the power of a full-blown desktop application (except for local file access) and it runs right in your web browser, it's the future of hosted applications. The Joy of Flex: Adobe Air and the future of the desktop (with Ben Forta)

The Freelancer's Guide to Increasing Referral Business One of the biggest challenges involved in freelance work is reaching and maintaining a steady workload. For many freelancers finding new clients can be a time-consuming process, which leaves less time for income-producing work. What if this effort could be reduced or eliminated? You could more completely dedicate your focus to earning money

How Do You Invoice Your Clients? Recent articles on invoicing at FWJ (which I linked to yesterday) and The Golden Pencil have gotten me thinking about general freelance invoicing practices. And the thing is, there are no general practices. We all seem to have a vastly different way of doing things. Some I’ve seen over the last few days (paraphrased, with my comments) include: I invoice using

Website Upgrade
RFP Budget: $1001 - $2500
Project Start: 2008-02-23
Requests 7 Bids By: 02-16-2008
Deadline: 03-21-2008

Bid on This Design Project

We create awnings for businesses. We need to upgrade our existing website.
Hiring Providers:Nationwide

Bid on This Design Project

Include a new product, and add downloadable pdf files....


This designer project lead is from DesignQuote.net