Rule number one for me - don’t freelance when you’re at work. By that I mean, if you’re gainfully employed and working a full-time or part-time job, don’t be doing freelance work while you’re on the job.

For starters, it’s just bad form. You’re taking advantage of your employer and resources. Look at the situation with the shoe on the other foot - if your freelancing leads you to start a business, and you take on  an assistant or staff member, would you be happy seeing them tinker around on jobs unrelated to what they’re supposed to be doing?

Secondly, it gets in the way of your actual primary task at hand. If you have the time to freelance while you’re at work then you’re either in the wrong job or you should consider taking your freelancing full-time.

Doing freelance jobs while at work can get messy. Sure enough, you may have the resources at your disposal - computers, necessary software - but do you really have the time? Trying to squeeze in changes to a web site on your lunch break, or taking ten minutes in the afternoon to review a logo you’ll hand to a client some evening this week? How productive can that really be?

I’ve tried it - it doesn’t work. At least for me anyway.

If you’re in a job in order to support your love of freelancing and working for yourself in the evenings you might find that failure to deliver your main tasks will, in the worst case scenario, cost you said job. Anyway, you’ll get a lot more done in an uninterrupted 30-minute stint in the evening than you would while trying to squeeze a sandwich, a coffee and a flash template into a 30-minute lunch break, don’t you think?

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