Commitments to yourself and others

In my childhood and adolescence there were quite a lot of “shoulds”. You have to get up early for kindergarten and then for school. We need to do our homework. You have to go to bed before 22:00. We must graduate from school without C grades. I need to go to university. Which one? This one! We must not fly out of the university and not join the army ahead of time. After university you need to find a job. And so on and so forth.

Every time I was told “must”, I thought: can I somehow avoid this? If not, then he gritted his teeth and did what was “necessary.” I did my homework, took pills when I was sick, went to the dentist, cleaned my room. These things developed discipline in me. I realized that if you force yourself to do what you “need” to do, then after a while it won’t seem so scary and unpleasant. But if the answer was “yes” and if I could avoid these “shoulds”, then with the help of intelligence, cunning, and sometimes even the same discipline, I avoided them.

For example, as a child I was required to be in bed after 10 pm. But no one forbade staying awake. I loved reading books under the covers with a flashlight, listening to the radio for hours, or simply conducting various thought experiments while looking at the ceiling. I couldn't not do my homework, but I could do it on my own terms. If you deceive your mother every third time and say that the homework is done when they are not ready, then you can avoid checking and go about your business in the evening without fear of being discovered. And at the same time, do your homework at school, before classes begin. Sometimes I got caught and learned good life lessons. Quite early on, I realized that lying requires much more energy than telling the truth (because you need to remember a lot of extra false information in order not to get caught), and I began to act smarter and more efficiently.

When my mother bought me a computer, it was impossible to play it on a 24/7 schedule. “We had to” do something more useful. Something that would help me successfully graduate from university, get a well-paid job, get married, buy an apartment, have children and, apparently, live to retire and die. But for some reason I didn’t like this plan. I wanted to play computer games. And if I wanted something...

At the age of fifteen, I worked for a week as a loader in a bakery in the center of St. Petersburg, after which I left there, realizing that the salary did not exceed the pocket money that my parents gave me. At sixteen, my mother got me a job as a loader at Nevskaya Cosmetics. I quit after a month or so. The money earned was enough to buy a new guitar, which is still in use. Then I often worked here and there, installing software on neighbor’s computers or helping with the purchase of hardware. After my third year at university, at eighteen, I went on an exchange internship to China. There I taught Russian privately, as well as English at a local school. Moreover, the school lasted me literally a week. Then I decided that working with children was not for me. I worked as a model a couple of times, and it was the easiest money in my life. At the age of twenty, I worked for several months at RealWeb as a flash designer. And immediately after that he went to China for fourteen months as a translator. I returned to Russia to take exams at the university, and then was going to fly back, but...

I really didn’t want to leave Russia again. For fourteen months without the opportunity to return to my homeland, I became so sad that I refused this job for the second time. At that moment, my attitude towards “should” began to change. “We need” to go to China again - for what? Earn a million rubles? For what? Suddenly, real estate prices jumped, and it was no longer possible to buy an apartment with this money. And at that time I was not interested in cars. What else should a 21-year-old person about to graduate from university think about? And I began to think: what do I really want? Then I made an unpromising but pleasant decision and immediately felt great relief. Mom grumbled, but quickly left me alone.

And I wanted freedom. So that all my time belongs to me, and not to someone else. But since no one but myself could provide for me, and the money I earned in China was disappearing like morning fog, I had to look for work again. Why did I need freedom? Of course, to play computer games 24/7. But for starters, I would be quite happy with eight hours of play a day. Yes, yes, I know what that sounds like. But at that age many would have understood me.

So, now, when I got a job, I understood why I “needed” this, and my soul felt much lighter. It was the company Webmaster.Spb, a web studio led by Internet bourgeois Andrei Ryabykh. I became an interface designer, my responsibilities included writing technical specifications for the development of web projects. The salary allowed me to buy “goodies” and update my computer, and I lived with my mother, who saw that I was playing games all my free time, and therefore constantly cursed. This is how a new desire appeared: to save the amount of free time, but earn more money to pay for a rented apartment.

But I could not achieve such a result by continuing to do the same thing. And I did this: at work, when I had free time, I spent it looking for new, higher-paying jobs. He also voiced his desire to earn more money to Andrey Ryabykh, who in response gave a lot of advice and opportunities for this step, although at that moment these tips were not very clear to me.

It seemed to me that to earn more, you need to work more. I took on small part-time jobs within the company (drew illustrations, wrote texts), and also began to look for projects outside the company that I could do in my free time.

I began to get annoyed by the hours I spent commuting to and from the office, and by the fact that sometimes in the evenings I was now working instead of playing. But I remembered why I was doing this, and after about a year I was able to afford to rent a one-room apartment in the center of St. Petersburg. Then everything began to develop according to a monotonous scenario, which looked something like this:

1. I voiced my “wants” to myself and estimated how much they would cost me;
2. Made changes to familiar approaches to work to earn more;
3. I achieved the stated “wants” and came up with the next ones.

All this happened while living in a “comfort zone”. I have almost never risked what I have to achieve more.

For example. One day, while having lunch at McDonald's, I saw the new Tiguan. “I want a car like this!” - I said to a friend who was sitting next to me. And two years later I drove one myself. “I want to live in the Petrogradsky district.” “I want a top gaming computer.” “I want to switch from hired work to project-based work.” “I want to be able to go for a walk in the forest 100 kilometers from the city at any time.” “I want top-end photographic equipment for landscapes and macro.”

At first I didn't do very well. I took the car on credit. While living in Petrogradka, he was constantly in debt. When I tried new ways of working with clients to earn more money, I often made mistakes, earned less and was sad about it. But in the end, everything led exactly to the freedom that I envisioned for myself back in my early 20s. Don't work for "uncle", spend no more than 80 hours a month on work, earn more than I need to maintain my current standard of living. Freelancing helped me get to this point. This is when you stop counting on your employer and take on some of their tasks yourself. You organize your own workplace, find clients, make sales, receive money and pay taxes. You are responsible for the results, organize your vacations, sick leave and equipment upgrades, monitor your accounting and pay your own pension and insurance contributions.

At the time of writing this chapter, I consider myself a successful and happy person. True, I don’t have an expensive watch or a cool car. I still drive my Tiguan. I never bought my own home and live in my wife’s apartment (but with the pleasant knowledge that at any moment I can rent the apartment I need anywhere in the city or take out a mortgage). And I no longer meet in business suits with clients who care about status (all communication takes place via Skype).

But I have no debts or loans, there are enough free hours in the day. I have family and a circle of close friends, a set of hobbies I like, a community of like-minded people with whom I share my professional knowledge. And enough resources to take the next step in my life. And this step will depend on a new portion of more ambitious “wants”.

In this book, I will tell you how I found my first freelance client, how I opened an individual entrepreneur, came up with my own brand, increased the level of service, how all this affected my income, and much, much more. Some parts will go in chronological order, some will jump back and forth in time, but I will try to share in as much detail as possible the experience accumulated over fifteen years.

Now I am completely free from any obligations that I did not choose. I stopped surviving and started living. Therefore, if you have just begun to understand that paid work is not suitable for you, or you are an experienced freelancer, mired in constant stress, missing deadlines and losing clients, or working ten hours a day in order to “survive”, or you simply do not understand how it is even possible to work from home and whether it is dangerous to leave paid work, then perhaps something will change if you read this book. Let my story serve as a real example of a freelance career in IT for you. So, let's go!