One of the things that I’ve noticed when talking to new freelancers is that they are afraid that they won’t “make the grade” on their first job. It’s a fear that I had when I first started out, but once you get that taste for blood, it’s all over.

Previously, I and others have warned about the dangers of taking on more than you think you can handle, but do you know what you can handle in regards to workload and ability? Each person has an individual threshold of what is too much to accomplish, and most of the time people underestimate what they can really do. The problem with underestimation is that you will never give yourself the chance to succeed or grow. You need to have confidence–not an ego.

Here are the three places you can be:

Lack of Confidence

You don’t apply for any jobs because you’re not sure if you’ll be able to handle that proverbial monkey wrench which may get thrown into your project. Another sign of lacking self confidence is that you stress over whether or not you will be selected to interview, so you don’t apply because you would be “wasting your time.” Both of those will get you shot down before you get a toe in the door. A client doesn’t want someone who appears to be unsure whether or not they are capable of doing the job. If you have the skills necessary to complete the work, then don’t be afraid to stick your neck out a little bit and take on a job; just be sure you’re willing to do what it takes to handle any surprise situations that may pop up.

Inflated Ego

An inflated ego is the opposite of a lack of self confidence and just as harmful. The sign of this is that you take on jobs you know for a fact that you can’t do, but you think you can “wing it” and learn Java programming well enough to develop sophisticated AI in a month. It would take about five years of Java experience to take something like that on, and that’s the minimum if you use it every day. An inflated ego can get you a job because it has the outer appearance of being confident in your abilities, but when it comes to performance, you’ll be found out rather quick. In this scenario, you had a shot, but you really never had a shot at all.

Reasonable Confidence

If you’re confident in your real abilities, you can apply to jobs that you’re not entirely sure of all of the specifics, but you know you can do the core work. A fact of doing anything on an as-needed/freelance basis is that strange things can and will happen, and your project could suddenly shift directions dramatically. If you have the basic knowledge of your field, then you also will have to knowledge to handle (or know where to go to find out) most anything that the job can throw at you. It’s what every programmer faces every day: hacking. Hacking can apply to any job. What is hacking (for you non-programmers)? When a programmer is working, he will make a lot of mistakes. It’s a fact, and there’s no way around it. When he or she applies for a job, they have a general idea of how they will complete the job, but when they actually get to coding, they will have to use some trial and error. So, hacking is using trial and error to fix a problem in the code, but you have to use educated guesses for this method to work at all–you can’t keep typing random characters until it works. Also, they know where to look to find solutions: open source code, programming books, and talking to other programmers. Apply that hacking style to your art, writing, or whatever it is you do, and find the resources to protect you from being hit by an unexpected occurrence.

Fin

I started out being scared. I didn’t want to apply because I was afraid of rejection, but eventually I got sick of that. I went all out and started taking on every job that I had reasonable confidence that I could do. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve paid for them, but I’ve also learned a lot in the process. The main fact is that I’m still standing despite all of the things I’ve done wrong, so don’t be afraid to roll with the punches. It could land you a life-long career that you love.

It has for me.

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