You are absolutely right in that your freelance experience might differ from mine - and I did try to say at the end of the piece that money is just one factor. If you can operate well on a job and work in your underwear (and not feel like a sub-human after 3 days), power to you - DO IT!
There's room for disagreement and I'm not trying to run anyone else's freelance life - just share what's worked for me.
These are MY lessons. They're not meant to be absolutes for anybody. I couldn't have dreamed this would wind up on Hacker News - I wrote it for my (small) community and I'm thrilled to see it get traction, but I didn't try to game any system and get on here.
Interesting how you said money was the goal but then when you get the success there's always someone doing better...even though you might have a fat bank account.
Even if you come down strongly on one side or the other of a topic, it's a good discipline to look for logical weaknesses, edge cases and other potential holes in any given argument.
HN is great for this because for any given post you can typically find well thought out rebuttals which may or may not sway your opinion, but will in many cases be instructive in the very least.
Of course, the other option is to simply attack the commenter directly and fail to learn anything at all.
Judging by some of your comments, I may have walked right by you on the strand with my wife a couple weeks ago. That was only made possible by understanding my priorities, even when giving myself permission to follow them can be scary.
But I still treat it like a job. A job I can take vacations from, or a hiatus from, or whatever - but still something that takes some discipline to succeed at.
I never intended it to sound like freelancing should be un-fun slave labor. That would entirely miss the point.
Irresponsible person and/or unhappy worker will be less productive no matter where he works but I do think that remote work is the future if we want to have a sustainable life and don't have a new age slavery that is dominating in today's capitalism.
"Yes, you can work in your underwear, wake up at 11:00pm and drink beer all day if you want to.
But you shouldn’t."
YES YOU SHOULD. But not every day and only at the right moments. It depends on what you think of what is important. What is worth more to you. Your undies, or a pay check.
Trust your gut feeling and do networking. And if your gut feeling sucks and you think you are bad at networking... know how to deal with it or stop freelancing. You cannot apply a 'guide' like this to yourself. There are many many examples of successful (=happy?) people who do not apply this guide to their selves. Like me. I'm quite successful and happy! And do work in my underwear sometimes. And like to go kitesurfing in the middle of the week (and work my ass off in the weekend if necessary). I can make more money if I want to, but I dont. I prefer having fun, broaden my mind and sure do enjoy the freedom of being a freelancer!