When you work online as a freelancer, the line between your personal and professional self tends to blur.
The risk of identity confusion and misplaced data is a constant, and so is the temptation to play cards from work. An email sent to the wrong address or a misguided post on your Facebook timeline could get you fired.
To reduce the potential for such a disaster, it's a good idea to disconnect your digital personal life from your digital work life. We're going to show you five basic ways to make that happen.
Start with your email. Get a custom domain name and email address to go along with it. Do not use this address to subscribe to services that are not related to your work. Use your personal email address instead.
You can still read email sent to both addresses in the same place with a desktop email client or webmail service that can handle multiple accounts.
Now for the most important thing:set up different profile pictures for your work and personal email accounts . For best results, use Gravatar to assign an avatar to any of your email accounts. Once you do this, whenever you use one of your online email addresses, the corresponding unique profile picture will display with it.
What is the benefit of doing this?
You are always aware that you are using the correct account for any online action you are about to undertake. This helps when you're sending a wordy email, leaving a comment on a website, or sharing sensitive files.
You may also want to have separate social media accounts for work and personal use. After all, professional networking on social media has certain dos and don'ts. Do's and Don'ts on Social Media on Social Media. Do's and don'ts on social media on social media. . But stick to the do's and don'ts, and you can make the valuable connections you're looking for. Read More
By limiting your personal and work-related tasks to separate devices, you don't have to worry about any data or identity commingling. You can turn one device into a productivity center and the second into an entertainment and management area.
You don't have to go out and buy a new gadget for this to work. Try to use your desktop or laptop only for work and your phone only for personal tasks and media consumption. A Chromebook is also the perfect device for personal use.
It can be tedious to switch between the two devices, but that's the idea. It will make sure that when you work, you work and when you play, you play.
If procrastination is your nemesis or workaholism, having a dedicated device for work and a shutdown routine can help you combat it.
If you use the same device for both work and personal activities, it's ideal to create separate user accounts or profiles for them.
You can use your personal account for daily administration, blogging, watching movies and TV shows, and catching up on newsletters. You can also use it for casual Internet surfing and as a testing ground for applications.
But when you log into your work account, it will be as if you had dressed for work and entered “the zone”. By the way, dressing up is actually a way to be more productive when you work from home.
Don't want to switch between user accounts? Why not switch browsers? You can use a combination of, for example, Chrome and Firefox, or Safari and Opera, to divide your digital activity.
With this approach, you can keep your browser working lean. All resource intensive activity on your personal browser will be limited to it.
You can play with all sorts of cool extensions in your personal browser without slowing down your work browser. You also don't have to worry about mixing bookmarks or leaving your search history behind on your work account.
If Chrome or Firefox is one of your main browsers, you can set up different profiles for work and play. 5 Custom Chrome Profiles You Should Start Using 5 Custom Chrome Profiles You Should Start Using The One Chrome feature is often overlooked:the ability to have multiple user profiles. We show you how they can make your life easier. And yes, you can also use profiles in Firefox and other browsers. Read More
While you can also have multiple user profiles in Opera, the method of setting them up is slightly indirect. You'll find it in this thread on the Opera forums.
It's a shame Safari doesn't support multiple user profiles. You can't even add them with an extension because of the security feature that is System Integrity Protection (SIP). But don't worry, you can quickly switch between user accounts from your Mac's menu bar.
Have you decided to go with a single user account after all? You can still keep your work and personal activities organized with different apps, brands, app suites, and ecosystems.
For example, if you use OneNote for work, you can save non-work stuff to Evernote. Or if you use iCloud apps or Microsoft apps for your personal data, you can use Google apps for work.
Setting things up this way may seem like a lot of work initially, but once you have everything in place, your workflows get more tidy. And thanks to the import/export and cloud backup features in the apps, moving your data isn't as difficult as it used to be.
The division of activities with digital and analog tools can also work. For example, you can use Trello, Google Calendar, and Evernote for work. And for personal use, you can go with a real Kanban board, a paper planner, and a paper bullet journal. You don't have to go to extremes like exchanging personal emails for handwritten letters.
This last approach is working quite well for me. By using my laptop primarily for work, I've been able to reduce my screen time greatly.
In a traditional work setup, your work life is both physically and digitally removed from your staff. As a freelancer, you can get the same physical space by setting up a home office. But you also need a digital barrier, and the onus is once again on you to create it.
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