by Joe Wallace

Freelance productivity tools are supposed to help you get things done while you’re busy on other tasks. But sometimes the very tools you’re using to help you can come back to haunt you in ways you never expected.

In the freelance game, as in life, perception is often more important than reality. Here’s a puzzler for you–could your freelance tools actually lend the impression that you’re stealing company time from one client to service your other clients or your own freelance blog?

I run another blog, Turntabling.net. It’s a site for vinyl junkies, soundtrack collectors, and drive-in movie lovers. Part of the reason I’m able to do Turntabling is because I write the blog posts two and three at a time in my off hours, and use the WordPress Schedule function to add the posts in over time during the day.

After hearing a few horror stories last month about sticky relations between bloggers and employers, I started to wonder if perhaps my scheduled blog posts could be misinterpreted as being written and posted in real time.

Normally this would not be a problem, but I’ve been doing more on-site work as a freelancer lately and the timing of my Turntabling.net posts could be perceived in the wrong way.

Fortunately for me, most of my posts have been timed for early morning when I’m actually on my commute to the on-site gig. I’ve never had a post go up via the scheduler when I’m in-house. But what if I HAD scheduled those posts for mid-day?

In reality, chances are good that nobody would ever know the difference. But the what-ifs are too important to ignore. I’ve decided to set my Turntabling posts for 6AM and leave it at that–there’s no way THAT could come back to haunt me…but it’s an important thing to remember when you’re doing that off-hours work and using an automation tool like the schedule function.

Freelance productivity tools are your friends, as long as you can stay mindful of little things like this…