Monday, October 12, 2015Avoiding th

Monday, October 12, 2015
Avoiding the Freelance Writing Burnout
What's on the iPod: Glorious by MaMuse
It's Monday -- do you know where your weekend went?
It was a good weekend. The only damper in it was my son was on his way when his car started making grinding noises. That's never good. He had to turn around and head back.
However, it was still a good weekend. A cousin was in town unexpectedly, I was able to read a book, and I didn't have to work for 56 whole hours. Given the huge load of projects on my desk last Monday, that in itself is a miracle.
In fact, last week I found myself quite close to my breaking point. Too many projects, more coming in, and I had just pushed a little harder on the marketing toward the end of September (not one of these projects came from that push, which added to my anxiety over way too much work for the time I had).
By working through lunches and avoiding email, I whittled the seven-project pile down to one. I have two coming in this week. I'm ready for them. There was a point last week, though, where I thought one more project and I'd have to turn something down. I nearly did, but I managed to find time to squeeze in the small project from a favorite client.
Still, in my view, having too much work is a sign something isn't quite right. Yes, it could be the marketing was working, but as I mentioned earlier, none of this came in as a result of my marketing. One was a referral job, one came from my website, another came through an editor, one was a regular client....
I pulled out a few of my strategies to help reduce some of the stress (and at times, some of the clients) without impacting my earnings. Here are some things I've done in the past that work:
Charge more. It's an easy way to rid yourself of the busy work and save that time for the meatier, more lucrative jobs. Tough to do as there are clients you may not want to part with. If you can keep them, do. Just charge future clients a higher rate.
Push back on deadlines. Had I accepted every deadlines as stated, I'd have been working through the night with some of these. Instead, I pushed back on a few, and I got the changes I needed. It was an easy sell -- I said quite frankly I wanted to make sure I had the time to do the job right.
Track every project. I mentioned last week that I put everything on my Outlook calendar. If I hadn't, I'd have lost track of at least two projects (and I still had some momentary panic -- alleviated by my calendar task list).
Don't answer right away. It's why I turned my email off. If another client's note comes in, my mind is now on that project. The shift between one project and another takes me a good 15 minutes or so to recover from. So I shut the damn thing down until I took a break. No one says you have to answer your email within seconds of receiving it, right?
Let absentee clients stay absent. One revision was due to me two weeks ago. On any other day, I'd have checked in with the client. However, I saw it as a chance to catch up. I let it slide and, lo and behold, I bought four more days. The client got in touch on Thursday. That meant I had a small window of time in which to deal with the revisions.

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Monday, October 12, 2015Avoiding the Freelance Writing Burnout What's on the iPod: Glorious by MaMuseIt's Monday -- do you know where your weekend went?It was a good weekend. The only damper in it was my son was on his way when his car started making grinding noises. That's never good. He had to turn around and head back.However, it was still a good weekend. A cousin was in town unexpectedly, I was able to read a book, and I didn't have to work for 56 whole hours. Given the huge load of projects on my desk last Monday, that in itself is a miracle.In fact, last week I found myself quite close to my breaking point. Too many projects, more coming in, and I had just pushed a little harder on the marketing toward the end of September (not one of these projects came from that push, which added to my anxiety over way too much work for the time I had).By working through lunches and avoiding email, I whittled the seven-project pile down to one. I have two coming in this week. I'm ready for them. There was a point last week, though, where I thought one more project and I'd have to turn something down. I nearly did, but I managed to find time to squeeze in the small project from a favorite client.Still, in my view, having too much work is a sign something isn't quite right. Yes, it could be the marketing was working, but as I mentioned earlier, none of this came in as a result of my marketing. One was a referral job, one came from my website, another came through an editor, one was a regular client....I pulled out a few of my strategies to help reduce some of the stress (and at times, some of the clients) without impacting my earnings. Here are some things I've done in the past that work:Charge more. It's an easy way to rid yourself of the busy work and save that time for the meatier, more lucrative jobs. Tough to do as there are clients you may not want to part with. If you can keep them, do. Just charge future clients a higher rate.Push back on deadlines. Had I accepted every deadlines as stated, I'd have been working through the night with some of these. Instead, I pushed back on a few, and I got the changes I needed. It was an easy sell -- I said quite frankly I wanted to make sure I had the time to do the job right.Track every project. I mentioned last week that I put everything on my Outlook calendar. If I hadn't, I'd have lost track of at least two projects (and I still had some momentary panic -- alleviated by my calendar task list).Don't answer right away. It's why I turned my email off. If another client's note comes in, my mind is now on that project. The shift between one project and another takes me a good 15 minutes or so to recover from. So I shut the damn thing down until I took a break. No one says you have to answer your email within seconds of receiving it, right?Biarkan klien seperti menginap absen. Satu revisi adalah karena saya dua minggu lalu. Hari-hari lain, saya akan memeriksa dengan klien. Namun, aku melihatnya sebagai kesempatan untuk mengejar ketinggalan. Saya membiarkannya slide dan, lihatlah, aku membeli empat hari lagi. Klien masuk touch pada hari Kamis. Itu berarti aku punya jendela kecil waktu di mana untuk berurusan dengan revisi.