Do You Ever Have Bad Days When Freelancing?
It’s normal to have an “off day” every now and then as a freelancer. Or sometimes, more than every now and then lol.
Freelancing is naturally an unsteady form of income for many people. There is a lot of feast-or-famine going on which can be painful for people without much money saved up.
When somebody works an 8-to-5 job, they can have an off day. If they don’t do much for one or two days in the office, nobody will notice. At most they’ll get a light reprimand. But they get paid the normal amount and their personal situation doesn’t change.
When the freelancer gets lazy for a day, they don’t get paid as quickly for those assignments. Other work piles up. It has an immediate and direct impact on their livelihood. Unfortunately this makes the whole thing much more brutal.
Managing Off Days
The big thing for me lately has been to not let an off day throw me off of my normal routine. I don’t need to be a hero and do extra work on the next day to compensate for the bad day. Just let it go and move on.
When I give an off day too much impact, it continues to mess with me for the whole week. When I put it behind me and move on, it’s much better.
I figure there will always be at least a couple off days every now and then. There’s no way to avoid them forever. It is better to have a policy that reduces the amount of pain an off day can cause than to try and completely eradicate them.
Good Days!
The flip side to the occasional bad day is the large number of good days that are possible. With a good routine and organization, good days can stack up on each other. It isn’t that hard to achieve a good freelance income if you are reasonably disciplined.
I notice that my own performance as a freelancer, and my income, fluctuate with how seriously I take my work. If I get distracted from putting a lot of energy into making money, it’s easy for the income to fall. After all there is no boss to keep me in line.
Do you ever have bad days as a freelancer? How do you deal with them?
Yup, we all have those days. I force myself to be productive in the morning. Have you have heard of The Miracle Morning proram?
Nope
You have collected your daily Power Up! This post received an upvote worth of 0.17$.
Learn how to Power Up Smart here!
You actually remind of my days freelancing
There was a time i wrote a complete post for a client just because i did some mistakes with some punctuation marks, he refuse to pay for the service i offer he was expecting 100 percent perfection.
I was really angry, ever since i make up my mind to read every client profile before accepting to do any job.
That day was not funny at all because
☁😞☁☁☁☁😞☁
☁💧☁☁☁☁💧☁
🌂🌂😞😞😞😞🌂🌂
🌂😞🌂🌂🌂🌂😞🌂
I feel so bad and completely dissappointed.
Oh no! That is the worst thing that can happen to you as a freelancer, when you do all the work and don't ge the pay. It's so terrible. Sorry that happened to you.
Am telling
Immediately i saw your post it remind me of such shady act.
The answer is already here.
Being reasonably disciplined doesn’t just help one manage his or her income as a freelancer, it also help one manage his or bad days.
Lovely post.
True! Thank you.
the nature of my job as a film editor is totally project based - meaning that I could be working on a film for 6 months straight, then have nothing for another 6 months. It never really used to bug me, but now that I have a family with a small child it's tougher. It's easy to go lean when you're by yourself or have a partner who's also working! It's not so easy when your partner is a stay-at-home-parent to a kid who needs school, curricular, and new clothing every time she grows an inch (which feels like every week, I swear.. lol!)
I have a few weeks off in between projects coming up, and honestly I think I want to take the opportunity to delve a bit deeper into my own projects as well as Steemit and see how it goes. We'll see!
You have a lot of responsibility with the family! That definitely makes it harder. I can't imagine having an unsteady income with other mouths to feed, sounds stressful. Hopefully steemit can be a good extra source of income, I think that's a good idea to delve a little deeper.
It has it's moments, but it's the nature of the industry! I knew what I was getting into, hahah
Yes. I call that feast-or-famine part of the roller coaster of freelancing, and it's important we build margin into our freelancing career otherwise it can very quickly crush us.
I have daily and weekly routines, but at times I can fail at maintaining them well. Each next day, I've got to refresh and move forward.
Most importantly, I create financial margin, and clear actions to take when things are slower. I use Habitica to help me stay doing the things I need to be doing to sustain my freelancing path.
It's also important to have community and friends for emotional support and encouragement. Freelancing isn't easy, but it is rewarding.