I’ve come across several posts and articles recently that have gotten me thinking about the pros – and cons – of working independently.

Generally I am a serious advocate of small firms and free-lancers and a genuine cynic about large organizations (but I’ll hold back and express that cynicism some other time).

A friend recently pointed me to a post by Tina Brown on The Daily Beast (one of those many, many political blogs). I don’t read the Beast very often, but this one isn’t about it politics -  it’s about “The Gig Economy.”

“Gigs” are, obviously, projects – the things we free-lancers and small businesses depend on for a living.

Brown has become intrigued with what she calls “gigonomics” – the explosion of people working this way. She reports on a recent survey conducted by The Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. Five hundred employed U.S. citizens aged 18 and over were interviewed via the Internet on January 8 and 9.

Here’s what got Brown interested:

A full one-third of our respondents are now working either freelance or in two jobs. And nearly one in two of them report taking on additional positions during the last six months.

Just as startling, these new alternative workers are not overwhelmingly low-income. They’re college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.

Welcome to the club Tina! Regular readers of this blog are probably all practitioners of gigonomics. So what’s the big deal?

Consider this, for one:  none of the job statistics we’ve been hearing about daily since last September come close to measuring the impact of the economy-on-free-fall on small businesses. Traditional unemployment data comes from reports from large businesses and applications for unemployment compensation.  It just doesn’t capture the slowdown or flat-out stoppages of work being experienced by all of us small business types.

Just about all the “gigworkers” I’ve talked with recently are reporting that while they may have a project right now, the outlook for the next gig is pretty bleak. In fact, that’s being kind – the outlook is grim indeed.

Now, there’s either going to be a whole lot of creative scrambling (and some pretty intense competition) for the next gigs, or there’s going to be a whole more people “on the street” (hopefully not literally) than even the most thoughtful economists and government leaders seem to be expecting.

This thing could get a whole lot worse way before it gets any better.

But there’s another side to this explosion of small businesses and gigs. And that’s what Jon Husband wrote about just the other day right here  (“The Mass Customization of Work“). A more or less unrecognized consequence of this mass customization of work and the “atomization” of business is the loss of rhythm and synchronization that Jon highlighted.

When we’re all working independently and in our own offices (either at home or at Starbucks, etc) it takes a whole lot more effort and awareness to “sync up” with peers, colleagues, clients, vendors, and so on. We no longer have all those “signals” from the workplace that you see in large organizations – from the mundane clock on the wall to the progression of colleagues towards the cafeteria or the parking lot at lunchtime – let alone the boss scheduling meetings, directing your work, setting deadlines, and so on. And of course we’re not doing anywhere near as much “same time/same place” work as we used to.

As Jon rightly points out, thank god for the proliferation of Web 2.0 social networking tools – though we still have a lot to learn about people use them.

Anyway, this all something to think about on a Monday morning – and one that’s supposed to be focused on national service instead of ruminating on the future of work. I guess I’m just a bit out of sync with everyone else!