Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. Dwight D. Eisenhower

In 2019, I decided to take the biggest leap of faith in my career and become a full-time freelance Product designer. It felt scary, yet it felt like I was making the right decision for myself and not for someone else. It felt like I was taking back control of my life and not letting anything or anyone else dictate my work or how much I needed to earn.

Even though I’m no longer a full-time freelance designer (2022), I thought I’d revisit this article and after 4 years see if it’s still relevant.

Whose dreams are you building?

It’s really important to ask yourself this question. Whose dreams are you building?

A lot of us spend our whole careers helping others build their own dreams and never creating time to build our own. The reason why I’m working on CardSpace among many other things is that I want to build my own dreams too. The dream that I want to build is my own (and includes helping others realise their own dreams). The future that I want is the one that I create, not the one someone hands out to me.

If there’s one thing I’ve leant, no one is more concerned about your dreams, than you.

How do you define freedom and how much of it do you want?

How completely free are you as a working adult? I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. Being in an office from 9–5 every day can hardly be described as freedom. Having to explain yourself to someone about why you got to work late because you honestly did not feel like coming to work is not freedom.

Being unable to set your own working hours, choose your own projects and build your own networks and relationships can hardly be described as being free. The past few years I have been really thinking about what freedom truly looks like for me.

In my case, being free is being able to work from anywhere and to choose the project or client that I want. Freedom is about me being my own boss and not having to explain anything else other than my work to someone else. Freedom is about me managing my own schedule, working hours and deciding how much I want someone to pay for my work. Freedom is about me deciding what tools I want to use to get my work done.

How much do you want someone to pay for your work?

One time I once accidentally saw the salary spreadsheet for one of the companies I was working for. They were billing the client x3 my monthly salary and my heart sank. Honestly, I felt my heart going to the deepest parts of the ocean and I wanted it to stay there.

Rightly fully so, they were building a business and pursuing their dreams and they had every right to charge the client what they wanted.

The greatest feeling about being a freelancer is that I get to decide how much someone needs to pay for my services. Not only that, but I also get to decide how much I actually want to make based on my availability.

What do you have to lose or gain?

If you are still reading this article you need to decide what you are going to lose and what you are going to gain.

In my case, the harder I thought about it the more I realized that the only loss was a steady and predetermined monthly income, but what I could gain was so much more.

I could build my own dreams, define the freedom that I truly want, decide how much I want to earn and build my own connections and relationships along the way. If all failed, the worst that could happen was to get a full-time job and look back and think, “At least I gave it a shot!”

I hope this article helps…