Making a Freelance Schedule Work For YOU

Walking Away from Burnout

Last week, I shared with you how I got to the point where making the simplest of decisions was a lot of work.  I was terribly distracted and needed perfect conditions to do easy tasks. 

I had to stop, REST, then back up and take a look at how I got there.

Several months ago, I created this awesome detailed schedule.  I was going to be organized and knock this thing out of the park!

I got caught up in new things not on the schedule.  Other things dropped off.  I didn’t adjust my schedule.  I just kept plugging along.  Adding in this and that along the way. 

To be fair, birthing a freelance business involves many details.  So I justified everything I wanted to add in.  After all, I need this running already!

Before I knew it, I was overloaded trying to hold up to some ideal schedule that wasn’t even working for me.  I disregarded the start/stop times because I usually found myself not finished with tasks.

That, my friend, is the perfect recipe for burnout.  Too many irons in the fire and ignoring time-frames that safeguard peace and sanity – and relationships.

I’m realizing that a schedule isn’t just about time management.  It’s about realism staring you in the face.  It’s understanding that just because you can fit something in doesn’t mean that you should.  You may be stealing quality from something else.  You may be stressing yourself out and stealing your happy self from your loved ones.  Like I was.

This week I wanted to share a post Sheila Wray Gregoire wrote in 2013 that reminded me the value of re-evaluating the schedule.  Let me know what you think!

My Daily Schedule for Blogging, Marketing, and Speaking 

Make Room for Breaks – Or Suffer the Consequences

Boosting Performance by Reducing Stress

Starting a business is a bold move.  It usually requires far more than you ever thought possible.  Yet you still want it – without losing everything else you hold dear.

Science indicates that simple things such as time for breaks, hobbies, and vacations are crucial to maintain your edge as an entrepreneur.   

Time for Breaks?  Ha!

 

I know, I know – there’s no TIME for breaks.  What if I said there’s no time to miss breaks? 

 

Consider what working straight through, and during “off hours” is stealing from you:

•    Your brain rejuvenates less at night, reducing creativity and productivity
•    Your family and friends don’t see you, increasing distance over time
•    Your body relaxes less, increasing aches and pains (headache anyone?)
•    Your energy is reduced, leading to burnout and possibly depression

The American work ethic is an interesting study in culture.  Don’t get me wrong, work is a virtue to be sure.  Yet somewhere along the way, workaholism replaced work as a virtue.   

Always “On” Syndrome

 

Innovation slowly tightens the noose around your neck.  Your devices make tasks faster to accomplish.  You feel pressure to do more.  It’s easy to find yourself “always on” – checking messages and emails through the evening and first thing in the morning.

When you work from home, any sense of getting away is difficult.  It’s easy to develop the habit of working in the evenings and on weekends because there is always lots to do.  

Science says you might not be getting ahead of anything.  In fact, you'll likely hurt your bottom line in the end.

"Staying inside, in the same location, is really detrimental to creative thinking. It's also detrimental to doing that rumination that's needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an 'aha' moment," Kimberly Elsbach tells Jeremy Hobson, host of Here & Now. 

Boosting Creativity

 

"We know that creativity and innovation happen when people change their environment, and especially when they expose themselves to a nature-like environment, to a natural environment," says Kimberly Elsbach.  

Walks at the park or beach are incredibly restorative.  More than that, it gives your brain a chance to assimilate everything that’s going on.  By removing yourself from work, you get a different perspective.  You’re far more creative in your solution when you give yourself the gift of getting away from it all for a while.

Tim Kreider put it a different way. “Space and quiet … provides  a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done." 

Getting Away More Often

 

Research is showing the restorative effects of a vacation lasts a limited amount of time.  People need to get away more often.  

Jeroen Nawijn (from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences and his team are published online in Springer's journal Applied Research in Quality of Life.) suggests that people are likely to derive more happiness from two or more short breaks spread throughout the year, rather than having just a single longer vacation once a year. 

Scheduling For Success

 

My challenge to you is this:  schedule regular breaks during the day.  Find some time each day to sit still without thinking about everything you need to do.  Find some time each week to get out into nature for fresh air and calm surroundings. In addition, if you can afford it, get away for a long weekend a few times this year.  Schedule this in.  Your business needs it.  So do you. 

Weekly Challenge

 

Last week, I wanted to work on homework for the workshop I’ll be attending next week.  I have started into it.  There is a lot more work than expected.  This week’s challenge will be to contact three people in my niche and interview them to learn the pain points in that world.

What task do you need to do this week that will move your business forward?

What You Need To Know To Balance This Schedule Thing Effectively

Prioritizing Time For Less Stress

You feel tension rising as you realize your schedule is blown yet again.  There's an emergency load of laundry to run and everyone is running late.  You’re frustrated, your husband is frustrated, and you wonder how it will ever work.

How DO successful business women manage to do it all?  The dirty secret is: they DON’T!  

Growing into a schedule that works for you and your unique situation is messy.  So is building a business and keeping up with the most important relationship you have.  The man you chose to marry deserves even more careful consideration than you give your business.

I think something I learned this past week will reduce some of that messiness.

I’m assuming you already have your husband’s buy-in on your new adventure.   Your stress level will be different.  You may be distracted with various tasks of starting a business.  Details effortlessly covered slip off your radar – but not his.

A neglected marriage in favor of your business may develop an emptier nest than planned.  Your husband might not admit he feels neglected, until it's too late.  If you do your best to understand and take his needs into account when planning your day, you may save your marriage – and your business, too.

After reading Sacred Influence by Gary Thomas, I asked my husband what one thing he would have me change.  It wasn’t about cleaning.  It was about my excessive use of social media.  I’m working to re-prioritize to spend less time there and avoid it past a certain time of day.

Over and over, I hear the message that we all have the same 24 hours in a day.  I want to throw my hands up in the air.   I get that I can’t do it all, yet it’s still waiting to get done.  I always feel ... behind. That wears on me.  I bet it wears on you, too. 

 

That's why I got excited listening to Brendan Burchard talk about dealing with priorities.  If you have trouble figuring out AND balancing your priorities, there's hope. 

Up until now, my priorities have to do with urgent tasks/chores and things that make me feel self-respectable.  So grocery shopping has a higher priority than mopping the floor.  However, ignoring a dirty floor drives me nuts.  It doesn’t feel self-respectable at all, and I’d be embarrassed if anyone came over.

I don’t have the funds to pay someone else to do that – yet.  I’m not willing to demand that my husband give up on his priorities and nag him about something he doesn’t care much about, either.  So what do I do in the meantime?  Get my priorities straight.

Brendon Burchard has four things to say about prioritizing.

      1.   Get rid of the unimportant.  

*Does this thing or activity have a benefit?   If it brings me joy, it serves an outcome.  If it is useful and I use it, it has value. 

*If not, it requires maintenance, tying up space or time.

2.  Know the value.

*When evaluating the cost - money or time, is there a short-term or long-term benefit? 

*Is it a big enough value to be worth the cost/effort now? 

*Can the same benefit be achieved without buying or doing this?

3.  Evaluate and Prioritize.  Score each activity plus those under consideration.  How does it score in:

*character/values/personal growth 

*relationships

*health 

*spirituality 

*wealth (making or giving money)

4.   Schedule accordingly.

We understand that we can’t do every good thing.  We can’t read every good book, make every appealing recipe, or pass the white glove test at all times. 

 

When you know the score of your activities, rank each item based on how they fit with the first two qualifiers.  Some things aren’t worth doing when stacked up against others.  

Know what you value.   Knowing where something ranks makes it much easier to say no to good things. You are crystal clear on what you have time to accomplish.  You know that over-filling your schedule won’t produce the results you are looking for.

Your valuable time and energy is available for what you value most.  Your life will be more enjoyable without the unnecessary stress of misplaced priorities.  Your husband will enjoy his unfrazzled wife, too.

What things do you need to let go to make room for your highest value activities?  What one thing would your husband ask you to change?

Striking Procrastination From Your Schedule and Lowering Your Stress

Ways To Get Things Moving Forward

How many times have you vowed to stop procrastinating?  How many times have you mentally smacked your head for the unnecessary stress you put yourself through? 

We often think procrastination is a mindset issue: “I don’t feel like it” or “This will take too long.”  That’s a real thing.  Yet what if that’s not always the deal? 

What if you found that there’s actually a reason behind a lot of your procrastination - and it’s not that hard to fix? 

 

Imagine you want to write an article about confidence.  You know you want to talk about the importance of skill development and positive mindset.  Yet you can’t seem to begin.  Your first step isn’t to sit down and open up a Word document.  Your first step is to research confidence as it relates to your target audience. 

 

However, you weren’t thinking about research.  You subconsciously avoided it by checking email and social media.  In desperation, you played a game of solitaire because you knew something is missing, but you hadn’t thought through the process.  And that blank page was as barren as can be, an hour or more later.

To create an effective schedule, you need to back up.  Know what’s important.  Start with the big picture. 

• What are your big goals?
• What projects drive those goals to fruition?
• What steps accomplish those projects?
• Are there pre-steps?

Where You Get Stuck

It’s the pre-steps you are unconsciously aware of that lead to procrastination.

However, let’s take a look at a few less visible culprits of procrastination:

• Ineffective schedule
• Lack of clarity on a task
• Waiting for someone/something else

·       

Getting Unstuck

Build an effective schedule and review.  Be clear about what moves your goals forward.  Know how many things you can manage at one time.  Prioritizing and setting the rest aside for later is crucial for stress management.

Using a weekly schedule template allows for regularly scheduled events.  It allows you to see the bigger picture.  Build in time for the unexpected for cushion.

Know your current projects. Knowing the actions you want to take on each task in light of the big picture informs how to schedule your day.  More on that in a minute.

Creating blocks of time for similar activities is efficient.  Tony Robbins calls this “chunking.”  If you can schedule your meetings in one chunk of time, plan errands plus appointments away from the office in another chunk, you minimize disruption.  You free up time spent getting ready to go and settling back in for singular events.

Particularly while this is a new habit, review your schedule frequently.  Being able to respect that stop time is challenging when there’s no hard deadline.  This means spending your time in a balanced way rather than being sidetracked on the easy or the more enjoyable tasks. 

The stress seems worse somehow, when you find yourself up against a deadline unnecessarily.  Effective scheduling combined with clear project steps will go a long way in reducing procrastination.

Create clear steps for each project.  You need to do something, but can’t seem to get started.  You may think starting the project is the first step.  You actually need to make a decision first – how do I want to go about it?  Do I need to research to make that decision?  That’s the pre-step … write it in your schedule as it’s the real first step.

When you need to stop in the middle, write the next step or two.  This means clarity about project status at any point. David Allen of http://gettingthingsdone.com/  is big on getting stuff out of your head.  This frees up brain function for your projects and lowers stress.

I highly recommend his book for any business owner as well as those who want to be more effective in their day.  (And no, I receive nothing for this recommendation.)

When it’s out of your control.  Does your project require someone else?  Have you reached out to that person?  If so, did you schedule a time with them to deal with their part? If there is no forward motion, are there other options?   

If not, and timeliness isn’t working, schedule yourself to check back in a reasonable time frame, and then forget about it.  You took it as far as you can go, the other person is aware and unable/unwilling to schedule right now. No point nagging or wasting mental energy on it.

As you get clear on your next steps and scheduling more effectively, you will find your projects may go more smoothly.  You may even find yourself less stressed.