Annie
third Apr 2025
Studying Time: 8 minutes
Up to date third April 2025
Going it alone as a freelancer is a superb feeling… till the work appears to dry up or get repetitive. Staying motivated as a freelancer is crucial for your enterprise success – however it might probably take a little bit of powerful love and self-discipline to maintain going!
Use these methods to remain motivated and hold pushing your enterprise ahead, even whenever you’re in a little bit of a stoop. You’ll really feel productive even on days with out shopper work AND you’ll get out of the doldrums, too!
Be part of a Digital Networking Group
One of the efficient methods to seek out work is thru your community. It doesn’t matter for those who’ve been freelancing for years otherwise you’re simply beginning out! Discovering an trade group to hitch will make a distinction to your work.
Not solely will you earn referrals and listen to of job alternatives by way of your group, however you’ll profit from ‘store discuss’ with a variety of individuals. Freelancers aren’t as aggressive 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, Fb teams, or LinkedIn teams to begin with. Have a look at your native Chamber of Commerce to seek out out what they’re doing by way of digital conferences. They’re a good way to satisfy different native enterprise folks AND promote your work with out being too salesy.
Some teams run webinars, others like a Zoom assembly. Some are steady chat channels like Slack, you could dip out and in of relying on how a lot time you’ve bought. Maintain common contact and reply questions in addition to asking them. Giving again to the neighborhood makes others extra receptive to serving to you out, too.
While you go to trade occasions and begin to see acquainted faces, it’s additionally value asking if there are any word-of-mouth freelance teams you might be a part of. An excellent instance of how this may be profitable is with The Messy Collective, a neighborhood that started off as a small group for ladies, non-binary and trans writers – and is at the moment over 3000-people robust. The Whatsapp neighborhood is stuffed with group chats devoted to components of being a author, whereas the Substack supplies common info, and the month-to-month networking occasions (often known as events!) assist real-life connections.
Diarise Your Day
Even when your books are naked and there’s no work coming in, spend time planning your day or week in a diary. Persist with your appointments!
Block out occasions for analysis, chilly pitching, or coaching webinars. Use the time you’ve bought spare to be taught extra about your trade or the right way to run your enterprise. These abilities turn out to be useful in a while, so all of it counts as business-related exercise even for those who really feel it’s not incomes you cash proper this second.
While you’ve bought numerous shoppers in your plate and also you’re juggling duties, a diary plan helps to interrupt your workload into manageable chunks. Set out blocks of time – say each 60 minutes – and write a schedule in your work. Embody time for social media and emails, too! Typically, block-checking emails then ignoring them for an hour or two is a good way to enhance focus and productiveness.
Set Targets
As a part of your diary planning, or a bigger challenge, make an inventory of targets. These may very well be short-term enterprise targets for the week or month, or longer targets resembling what you wish to obtain by the top of your first 12 months freelancing.
Having one thing to deal with and work in the direction of retains you targeted on work and reminds you why you went freelance within the first place. When work is gradual, these targets enable you to determine what you want to do subsequent to get the place you wish to be – resembling taking additional coaching programs or rising the variety of chilly pitches you do every week.
Change Your Workspace
Working as a freelancer at house means you possibly can go a little bit la-la from staring on the similar 4 partitions.
For those who’re caught in a rut, change your workspace. This might imply any variety of issues: rearrange the furnishings in your house workplace, or transfer from the couch to the kitchen desk. Maybe you possibly can take your laptop computer to the native park for a day of labor within the sunshine, or perhaps you possibly can go to a good friend to work collectively at their place.
Common freelancers who don’t have a house workplace, or just like the differentiation of labor/house area, discover co-working areas revive their motivation. You get the advantages of going to an workplace, however in your personal enterprise. Search for native workspaces in your space – you possibly can usually lease a hotdesk area by the day or week, and a few provide free trials to get you began.
And keep in mind among the best, free, locations to work: your native library. Many now have cafes too, and plenty of helpful assets – even issues like enterprise networking occasions typically – so be sure to try your native library. It’s heat and dry, pleasant, quiet, and FREE. Sounds excellent to us!
Train Each day
There’ll be days whenever you really feel such as you’re too busy to get some train, and different days when your motivation for doing something besides watch Netflix is nil. Don’t let it get to you!
Take time for no less than quarter-hour of train – even on the times you don’t really feel prefer it. Not solely does it get you away out of your desk/mattress/couch, however train additionally stimulates psychological potential and might help you discover inspiration. It additionally staves off melancholy – and is one thing you are able to do with a good friend, to spice up your social interactions, too.
Strive the NHS fast exercises, pop to the gymnasium to elevate some weights, or get out for a brisk stroll across the block. Alternatively, begin your day with a yoga routine to really feel invigorated, or organize to satisfy a good friend for some tennis or a kickabout within the night after work.
Train doesn’t need to price you a penny, nevertheless it’s important for retaining you motivated as a freelancer. It helps you discover psychological readability, boosts your well being so that you’re not liable 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 garments you personal – nevertheless it’s not going to place you in a piece way of thinking!
Day-after-day, stand up and dress. Even for those who’re altering from ‘sleeping PJs’ into what’s formally often known as ‘lounge put on’, that act of getting became one thing completely different helps change your mindset into work mode.
Some folks discover the easy act of placing sneakers on is all it takes to present them confidence for that all-important shopper name! It will probably enable you to really feel such as you’re an expert on the workplace (which you’re, simply at house), and resets your pondering right into a business-like angle.
On the finish of the working day, change again into your PJs! This helps signify the top of your work time and begin of your wind down night time.
Make an Appointment Each Day
Deal with your working week as for those who’re going to the workplace. Even for those who’re a part-time freelancer, use your working days as effectively as attainable.
Keep away from dropping focus by ensuring every work day has no less than one appointment in it. This is perhaps calling a possible new shopper, catching up with an current one, or attending a coaching webinar. Simply decide one thing that forces you to get your enterprise head on!
It’s additionally a great way of constructing certain you’re transferring in the direction of the targets you set. An appointment doesn’t need to be with a shopper or potential buyer. It may be an appointment with your self! Promise your self you’ll spend one hour studying a few matter, or that you simply’ll spend two hours growing your marketing strategy. It places your enterprise on the forefront of your day by day routine – and helps you keep motivated as a freelancer.
Take Common Breaks
On the flip facet, don’t stuff your day with back-to-back calls for those who can keep away from it! The chances are, you selected freelancing to get away from the 9-5 grind and discover a versatile manner of working that fits you.
The difficulty with that – plus the data that you simply’re liable for each penny that goes into (or out of) your pocket – it it’s simple to get carried away. You’ll realise you’ve been sat in the identical place for hours on finish, making an attempt to complete your newest challenge or sending off ‘only one extra pitch’.
Set a timer in your cellphone to go off each hour. Stand up, stretch, make a cup of tea. Spend no less than 5 minutes away from screens in every hour and revive your self! Take a lunch break, too. Going full drive all day lengthy is the assured path to burnout – and no freelancer stayed motivated when that occurs!
Use Apps to Enhance Your Focus
Generally, you are able to do every thing proper and but nonetheless discover it exhausting to remain motivated as a freelancer. The world in 2020 is a very large problem: there are various, MANY distractions happening round us and it’s simple to get sucked right into a psychological wormhole about all of it.
For those who battle to remain targeted in your work throughout the day, think about using apps to assist. For instance, if you understand that social media drains your time AND power, use a blocking app in your laptop. Apps like AppBlock allow you to set the occasions you’re – and aren’t – allowed to entry different apps in your cellphone or desktop.
It implies that, even for those who’re tempted to test Fb as an alternative of write that proposal, you bodily can’t! You’ll be able to go one step additional with related apps for issues like writing, too: Chilly Turkey Author blocks EVERYTHING till you attain a set purpose!
Many freelancers battle with their focus general. Staying motivated as a freelancer entails a capability to chop out the distractions – which are sometimes brought on by a busy thoughts and that results in a scarcity of sleep! Strive apps like Flipd or Calm that will help you be taught strategies for dealing with a busy head. Meditation methods and even the sound of a crackling fireplace to lull you to sleep at evening can all enable you to handle your psychological focus.
Organize Social Engagements
Don’t overlook to have a life, too! Staying motivated as a freelancer is nigh on inconceivable for those who’re all work and no play. It’s really easy to maintain cancelling plans since you wish to work in your subsequent pitch, otherwise you’ve bought shopper work you actually wish to get completed (even when the deadline isn’t till later within the week).
Taking time for your self to have social interplay is important to sustaining your motivation throughout your working day. Set time apart to spend time with your loved ones, and be sure to have no less than one full break day each week to do issues with your folks, household, and even just a few ‘me-time’ that’s away out of your desk.
Social interplay is vital in your psychological well being and sustaining your relationships. Nevertheless, it might probably additionally increase your enthusiasm in your freelance work. Taking time away out of your laptop to do one thing solely completely different offers your mind time to percolate concepts within the background. You’ll return to work revived! Going out to do issues, like taking a stroll with your loved ones or watching a movie with mates, additionally brings inspiration from different locations you could introduce to your work.