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10 Ways to Stay Motivated as a Freelancer
Jun
Reading Time: 8 minutes
Going it alone as a freelancer is a superb feeling… until the work seems to dry up or get repetitive. Staying motivated as a freelancer is crucial for your corporation success – but it might take a little bit of tough love and discipline to maintain going!
Use these strategies to remain motivated and keep pushing your corporation forward, even whenever you’re in a little bit of a slump. You’ll feel productive even on days without client work AND you’ll get out of the doldrums, too!
Join a Virtual Networking Group
One of the effective ways to seek out work is thru your network. It doesn’t matter when you’ve been freelancing for years otherwise you’re just starting out! Finding an industry group to affix will make a difference to your work.
Not only will you earn referrals and listen to of job opportunities through your group, but you’ll profit from ‘shop talk’ with a wide selection of individuals. Freelancers aren’t as competitive with one another as you might initially imagine. In actual fact, they’re a supportive group of people that champion others who’ve taken the freelance leap!
Search for Slack communities, Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups to begin with. Take a look at your local Chamber of Commerce to seek out out what they’re doing by way of virtual meetings. They’re a fantastic solution to meet other local business people AND promote your work without being too salesy.
Some groups run webinars, others like a Zoom meeting. Some are continuous chat channels like Slack, you can dip out and in of depending on how much time you’ve got. Keep regular contact and answer questions in addition to asking them. Giving back to the community makes others more receptive to helping you out, too.
Diarise Your Day
Even in case your books are bare and there’s no work coming in, spend time planning your day or week in a diary. Follow your appointments!
Block out times for research, cold pitching, or training webinars. Use the time you’ve got spare to learn more about your industry or methods to run your corporation. These skills come in useful in a while, so all of it counts as business-related activity even when you feel it’s not earning you money right this moment.
Whenever you’ve got a number of clients in your plate and also you’re juggling tasks, a diary plan helps to interrupt your workload into manageable chunks. Set out blocks of time – say every 60 minutes – and write a schedule to your work. Include time for social media and emails, too! Often, block-checking emails then ignoring them for an hour or two is a fantastic solution to improve focus and productivity.
Set Goals
As a part of your diary planning, or a bigger project, make an inventory of goals. These could possibly be short-term business goals for the week or month, or longer goals reminiscent of what you should achieve by the tip of your first 12 months freelancing.
Having something to concentrate on and work towards keeps you focused on work and reminds you why you went freelance in the primary place. When work is slow, these goals assist you to resolve what you must do next to get where you should be – reminiscent of taking extra training courses or increasing the variety of cold pitches you do each week.
Change Your Workspace
The world is now working from home, it feels – but many have the luxurious of returning to an office in the event that they wish. Working as a freelancer at home means you’ll be able to go slightly la-la from gazing the identical 4 partitions.
For those who’re stuck in a rut, change your workspace. This might mean any variety of things: rearrange the furniture in your private home office, or move from the sofa to the kitchen table. Perhaps you’ll be able to take your laptop to the local park for a day of labor within the sunshine, or perhaps you’ll be able to visit a friend to work together at their place.
Regular freelancers who don’t have a house office, or just like the differentiation of labor/home space, find co-working spaces revive their motivation. You get the advantages of going to an office, but for your personal business. Search for local workspaces in your area – you’ll be able to often rent a hotdesk space by the day or week, and a few offer free trials to get you began.
Exercise Each day
There’ll be days whenever you feel such as you’re too busy to get some exercise, and other days when your motivation for doing anything except watch Netflix is nil. Don’t let it get to you!
Take time for no less than quarter-hour of exercise – even on the times you don’t feel prefer it. Not only does it get you away out of your desk/bed/sofa, but exercise also stimulates mental ability and might assist you to find inspiration. It also staves off depression – and is something you’ll be able to do with a friend, to spice up your social interactions, too.
Try the NHS quick workouts, pop to the gym to lift some weights, or get out for a brisk walk across the block. Alternatively, start your day with a yoga routine to feel invigorated, or arrange to satisfy a friend for some tennis or a kickabout within the evening after work.
Exercise doesn’t should cost you a penny, nevertheless it’s essential for keeping you motivated as a freelancer. It helps you discover mental clarity, boosts your health so that you’re not susceptible to taking (unpaid) sick days, and helps relieve strains from poor posture sat at a desk all day.
Get Dressed
Your pyjamas is perhaps the comfiest clothes you own – nevertheless it’s not going to place you in a piece frame of mind!
On daily basis, rise up and dress. Even when you’re changing from ‘sleeping PJs’ into what’s officially often known as ‘lounge wear’, that act of getting turned into something different helps change your mindset into work mode.
Some people find the straightforward act of putting shoes on is all it takes to offer them confidence for that all-important client call! It might probably assist you to feel such as you’re knowledgeable on the office (which you might be, just at home), and resets your pondering right into a business-like attitude.
At the tip of the working day, change back into your PJs! This helps signify the tip of your work time and begin of your wind down night time.
Make an Appointment Every Day
Treat your working week as when you’re going to the office. Even when you’re a part-time freelancer, use your working days as efficiently as possible.
Avoid losing focus by ensuring each work day has no less than one appointment in it. This is perhaps calling a possible recent client, catching up with an existing one, or attending a training webinar. Just pick something that forces you to get your corporation head on!
It’s also a great way of creating sure you’re moving towards the goals you set. An appointment doesn’t should be with a client or potential customer. It might probably be an appointment with yourself! Promise yourself you’ll spend one hour reading a couple of topic, or that you simply’ll spend two hours developing your corporation plan. It puts your corporation on the forefront of your each day routine – and helps you stay motivated as a freelancer.
Take Regular Breaks
On the flip side, don’t stuff your day with back-to-back calls when you can avoid it! The chances are, you selected freelancing to get away from the 9-5 grind and find a versatile way of working that suits you.
The difficulty with that – plus the knowledge that you simply’re chargeable for every penny that goes into (or out of) your pocket – it it’s easy to get carried away. You’ll realise you’ve been sat in the identical position for hours on end, attempting to finish your latest project or sending off ‘just another pitch’.
Set a timer in your phone to go off every hour. Stand up, stretch, make a cup of tea. Spend no less than five minutes away from screens in each hour and revive yourself! Take a lunch break, too. Going full force all day long is the guaranteed path to burnout – and no freelancer stayed motivated when that happens!
Use Apps to Improve Your Focus
Sometimes, you’ll be able to do all the things right and yet still find it hard to remain motivated as a freelancer. The world in 2020 is a very big challenge: there are numerous, MANY distractions happening around us and it’s easy to get sucked right into a mental wormhole about all of it.
For those who struggle to remain focused in your work through the day, think about using apps to assist. For instance, when you know that social media drains your time AND energy, use a blocking app in your computer. Apps like AppBlock allow you to set the times you might be – and aren’t – allowed to access other apps in your phone or desktop.
It signifies that, even when you’re tempted to ascertain Facebook as a substitute of write that proposal, you physically can’t! You’ll be able to go one step further with similar apps for things like writing, too: Cold Turkey Author blocks EVERYTHING until you reach a set goal!
Many freelancers struggle with their focus overall. Staying motivated as a freelancer involves a capability to chop out the distractions – which are sometimes brought on by a busy mind and that results in an absence of sleep! Try apps like Flipd or Calm to assist you to learn techniques for coping with a busy head. Meditation strategies and even the sound of a crackling fire to lull you to sleep at night can all assist you to manage your mental focus.
Arrange Social Engagements
Don’t forget to have a life, too! Staying motivated as a freelancer is nigh on unattainable when you’re all work and no play. It’s really easy to maintain cancelling plans because you should work in your next pitch, otherwise you’ve got client work you actually need to get finished (even when the deadline isn’t until later within the week).
Taking time for yourself to have social interaction is significant to maintaining your motivation during your working day. Set time aside to spend time along with your family, and ensure that you’ve got no less than one full time off every week to do things with your folks, family, and even just a few ‘me-time’ that’s away out of your desk.
Social interaction is vital to your mental health and maintaining your relationships. Nonetheless, it might also boost your enthusiasm to your freelance work. Taking time away out of your computer to do something entirely different gives your brain time to percolate ideas within the background. You’ll return to work revived! Going out to do things, like taking a walk along with your family or watching a movie with friends, also brings inspiration from other places you can introduce to your work.
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With so many redundancies, reduced hours, and folks realising there’s never a ‘perfect’ time to launch their freelance dream, more people than ever are turning to freelance work. That’s why we’ve put together a complete bunch of useful articles about freelancing to assist you to start!
