The Tao of Steve was a romantic comedy from the turn of this century, a favorite of my friend and martial arts brother Kelly Dodge.  Personally, I prefer my comedies less romantic – and my romances less comedic — but that’s a matter of personal opinion.

In Tao, protagonist Steve has a foolproof set of rules for seducing women.

1. Be without desire.
2. Be excellent in her presence.
3. Be gone.

You can apply these same rules to succeeding as a professional freelancer.

Be Without Desire. Of course you have desires, opinions, problems, difficulties and a personal agenda — but your clients and potential clients don’t need to know about them. When you’re pursuing and completing assignments, what matters are the job and the deadline. Save personal details for when you’re not working.

Be Excellent in Her Presence. Always put your best face forward whenever you’re interacting with a client. Check spelling on your emails, talk on the phone when you can give the conversation your undivided attention. Make certain you attach files to emails that need them. Meet your deadlines every time and without fail. Remain professional at all times. From my experience, this is the single thing that will set you apart from other freelancers.

Be Gone. Finish your work and move on to your next assignment. That doesn’t mean you can’t check in from time to time, foster a relationship and keep yourself in mind when they next need your services. But it does mean that you should complete your business in a timely fashion and wrap up each assignment as professionally as possible.

In the movie, Steve ends up meeting a woman who puts his system on its ear and turns him into a sincere and loving long-term partner. Like most romantic comedies with this storyline, the moral is that a long-term relationship is better than what could be called “romantic freelancing.” As a happily married work-from-home husband and dad, I have to agree when it comes to romance. For my work life, though, I’ll happily stick with freelancing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some of my clients for years, and value my relationship with them. But I have them because I observe these rules, and I’ve kept them because I don’t break them.

Thanks for listening.

Saturday turned out to be my favorite kind of work day, the sort where I find myself at my most productive for the longest periods of time.

For me, that sort of day consists of blocks — about 45 to 60 minutes each — dedicated to a specific task, with consecutive blocks comprising very different kinds of work. An hour of writing might follow thirty minutes of yard work, and precede an hour of throwing a ball around with my older son. The blocks let me group like tasks so I’m not constantly interrupting myself, and the variety keeps me from getting bored. For the record, getting bored is probably the most serious threat to my personal productivity in any task.

The rest of my fam was out of town for Saturday, so I spent that day alternating between cleaning house, doing laundry, writing on assignments and exercise. By the end of a 10-hour “shift,” I’d completed more than that day’s goal for writing assignments, excavated the floor of the playroom and run three loads of towels, diapers and workout clothes.

It might be that this sort of schedule works for your. It might be that you’d find such rapid channel-switching means you feel like you stop just as you’re getting started. The important thing is to spend a little time thinking about how you work when you’re at your best.

Consider for a few minutes a few of those magic days you’ve had where you felt like you were on fire. You got everything done, ahead of schedule, and had time left over to hit the gym and make a nice dinner. And you weren’t even tired when you went to bed that night.

What did your schedule for those days look like? There’s a fair chance they looked pretty similar. If you plan your work to feel like those days, you’ll see your productivity explode.

One of the great joys – and most serious dangers – of working from home as a freelancer is you get to set your own schedule. Doing it wrong means spending too much time on tasks that don’t make the money that lets you keep staying at home. Doing it right means better productivity, more energy, more money and less stress.

Thanks for listening.

If you have an important deadline or goal, it helps to have somebody to whom you are accountable. This is especially important when freelancing, since you lack the corporate structure that usually comes with its own accountability in the form of your boss.

Since I made my earnings goal announcement earlier this week, you my blog followers have become my accountability. Progress as I “close business” this Saturday night:

• Total Earnings Goal: $2250
• Total Earnings This Week: $2,385
• Earning Compared to Benchmark: 107%
• Progress Toward of Total Goal: 12%

Just posting this publicly helps motivate me to stay on track. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Many thanks to Tom Callos, my friend and mentor, whose Ultimate Black Belt Test taught me the value of blogging progress toward important goals.

Professional writers are lucky – we don’t have to worry about squeezing time to write in the corners left over by our job. Writing is our job. For those who want to become professional writers, developing a portfolio has to take place between your other demands.

The hosts of “Writing Excuses,” a podcast I recommend in an earlier post, have this to say about finding the time to write…

If you say you lack time to write, what you mean is you value other activities more than writing.

In some cases, this valuation is dead on. A contest between my writing and my sons is by no means a fair fight. On the other hand, I’ve sometimes made the wrong choice between re-watching Firefly and working on an impending deadline. To find time to write that breakout novel, or develop your portfolio, it’s likely that you’ll need to set aside another activity – like television, video games or sleep.

I’m currently in the middle of an aggressive productivity cycle, one that requires so much work that I feel like I’m squeezing writing time into the corners left over by my writing job. It reminds me of when I was running a full-time business, and writing in my spare time. Here are a few of the steps I’ve taken to find the time I need to write as much as I want:

• I get up two hours early. I used to sleep until my toddler son woke me up, but those two baby-free hours in the morning are seriously productive time.
• When baby Gabe goes down for a nap, I’m writing again rather than relaxing with a video game or Ted Talk on the youtube.
• Before I pickup my “bedtime book” to read myself to sleep, I take some notes on the assignments I’ll work the next day. This may be pure superstition, but I feel like my conscious mind works on them overnight.
• I split my daily workload into three segments, then only allow myself to check email, facebook and my favorite forms after I’ve finished a segment.
• I work out daily, except when I’m sick. A daily 20-minute bit of exercise improves how fast you work, and how you feel about the work you’ve done. Also, I get cranky when I skip a day – and the wife notices.

These steps have found the space I need to literally double my productivity for the past few days – and it feels like they’ll be sustainable until I’ve reached my goals. I also employ some hacks to how I use that time to best advantage…but that’s a subject for another post.

Thanks for listening.

So here’s the deal: my family may need $20,000 by the beginning of June. By that I mean $20,000 more than we’re likely to have. One of the great things about working as a freelance writer is that your income – once you’ve established yourself – is limited only by how much work you’re willing to do. In general, I prefer to work a little and spend time with my family. Although steering this course will mean less time with them, I plan to schedule most of it while they’re asleep. Twenty grand in nine weeks. Every goal-setting advisor or other coach I’ve listened to says that making a goal public exponentially increases your chances of achieving it. I have now drawn my line in the proverbial sand. As of today, I’m on track. I’ll check in from time to time with my progress, and some observations about setting and meeting goals – especially how that affects making a living as a freelance writer or other sort of stay-at-home dad. Thanks for listening.