Avoiding Burnout in Your Freelance Business
When you’re first starting out as a freelancer (and at other times, too, such as when business slows down or a major client closes shop), it’s tempting to work all hours of the day and night to keep things moving. There’s a strong hustle culture around freelancing that suggests you should be working twelve- and fourteen-hour days because that’s what it takes to succeed. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t.)
Working long days is a bad idea for two reasons. The first reason is that overwork can lead pretty quickly to burnout, which is that feeling that you don’t care about your work and don’t feel like doing anything. It’s the feeling of sitting at your desk and just wanting to cry.
The second reason is that working more doesn’t work.
Working More Doesn’t Work
Working more hours does NOT equal more productivity. For example, Stanford University research has found that working more than fifty hours a week creates a measurable drop in productivity, and working more than fifty-five hours tends to worsen the outcome. In other words, you’re not actually doing anything worthwhile after fifty or so hours of work.
In fact, you’re actively damaging your productivity. Studies have shown that people who work sixty hours a week actually accomplish only two-thirds of what they can accomplish working only forty hours a week.
Working twenty more hours to be one-third less productive? That math just ain’t mathing. You’ve got to believe it and step away from your desk.
There are multitudes of studies that reach the same or similar conclusions. So if you’re working more than fifty hours a week, you’re not actually making any progress and you may be making less progress than you would if you spent less time at work. Take that to heart, and take some time off.
Give Yourself a Break
You know that old adage about how the solution will come to you in the shower? It’s true. We often solve problems by stepping away from them, not by battling them head-on. Even if we do have to battle them head-on, stepping away from time to time can give you renewed energy for the problem-solving. Stepping away and doing something else – connecting with family or friends, pursuing a hobby, taking a walk – helps improve your mental health and make it less likely that you’ll suffer burnout.
Working long hours isn’t just hard on your brain and body, it’s literally pointless. Step back and be more effective.
