by Ben Toalson | Oct 22, 2014 | In The Boat
An Old Record Player
I really like this imagery… imagine an old record player, and on it a record. Maybe you’ve never seen one except in the movies. One of the many reasons this method of playing music gave way to newer technologies was because of this thing that would happen if the record was scratched in the wrong way, where instead of the needle being able to follow the groove of the record all the way out to the edge, a groove would loop and play over and over again, turning it into a rut. With the transition to cassette tapes this problem went away, replaced by some others, but then later resurfaced from time to time in scratched CDs. Nowadays we have mp3s and other digital formats that rarely skip or fall into a rut unless something is really wrong with the device playing it. All of this to say, sometimes in our work we feel like we are moving along with the natural flow of things, like that needle moving slowly to the edge of the spinning record, and other times we feel like we’re just repeating the same patterns over and over again with no apparent progress or movement.
Broken Record Syndrome
A few days ago I was having a conversation with Rachel, my wife, about how I felt stuck with many of my weekly activities. I felt like I had hit a ceiling and wasn’t able to produce more than I had been already and that things didn’t seem to be fresh and growing like they used to be. I was also consistently burning more time producing content than I really had to spend, and was consistently late in meeting my own delivery deadlines. This kept repeating week after week. I was experiencing broken record syndrome. I was in a rut. In our meeting we spent some time evaluating my work habits and daily flow, and I wanted to share with you some of the valuable things that came out of our conversation that day.
The Danger of “Day-Of”
One of the major shifts that I needed to make was in my writing schedule. For a long time, for whatever day I had an article or newsletter, or some other written content going out, I would just write that morning. I did okay with the deadlines at first, but after awhile I began to run past the deadlines. This didn’t matter so much to my followers as long as it got to them that day, but for me it would cut into time I needed to work on projects, take care of administrative stuff or even my personal time. It got to where I started dreading those mornings because the deadlines were so pressing and the thought of writing a complete, fully-edited article in the space of the few hours right before it needed to go out felt overwhelming.
Actual vs. Self Imposed Deadlines
When you feel overwhelmed, you don’t do your best work. When you do things at the last minute, you don’t do your best work. Let me make a distinction here: working under a self-imposed time constraint is different from working under the actual deadline. Self-imposed time constraints allow your mind to work free from the pressure of missing an actual delivery deadline to your client or audience, while still challenging you to work efficiently within a predetermined time frame.
Words From the Past
So we looked at my schedule and decided that for my Monday newsletter I would do my writing, editing and scheduling on Friday. In fact, you are reading words that I wrote and edited on the Friday before the day (Monday) I actually sent this out. These words are from the past… I guess they are always words from the past, but the past that these words are from is more distant that it normally is.
Added Value
The practice of writing a few days in advance of actually publishing not only takes the pressure off and helps me to approach my work with greater focus and clarity, it also gives my ideas a little more room to breathe and evolve. It’s nice to know, in the back of my mind, that if I think of something over the weekend I want to add to this article, or if I realized that I needed to further clarify something before it goes out, I now have the freedom to. Instead of thinking of something later and saying, “Man, I wish I would have thought of that before I sent this out,” now I get to actually add those thoughts if I wish to do so.
Use the Self Imposed Deadline as a Tool
This doesn’t work without giving yourself a deadline. The same way children need boundaries and structure to grow and develop, your mind needs constraints and structure in order to thrive. Self-imposed deadlines are a great way to keep yourself from spending needless hours on something that you could actually do in less time. I find that when I have more time than I need to accomplish something I will somehow fill that time. Instead, find out exactly how much time you need to finish it to your quality standards, and let that be your deadline. Because it’s not the ACTUAL last minute, you free yourself from the pressure of not delivering on time to your client or audience. However, it is important to maintain this deadline. Don’t break promises you’ve made to yourself. If you find yourself not meeting the deadline consistently, step back and re-evaluate how much time you really require to finish the task.
The Live Example
I’m literally trying this out for the first time today (Friday) and I have to say, WOW, it really seems to be working. I feel like my thoughts are flowing more freely and with greater clarity. Who knows… I might be “getting back into the groove.” If you feel like you are in a rut and you can’t seem to break out of it, try shaking things up with your schedule. Shift some things around and take some of the pressure off and maybe you will find your way back into the groove.
I have some other thoughts on how to get back into the groove when you’re in a rut, but I feel like I could write a whole other article or two about it, so I’m going to save those thoughts for a future article.
Thanks for reading! If you have experiences with being in a “rut” or maybe some practical things you did to get back into the groove, please reply and share them with me. I’d love to hear from you!
by Ben Toalson | Oct 20, 2014 | Podcast
As people who work from home and raise children, it’s rare that we have significant solid chunks of time to devote to large projects. Looking at my own schedule, I do have a few good chunks of working time, but it doesn’t always feel like I am making a lot of progress when I try to squeeze a large project into small windows in my schedule. How can I make the most of these increments?
1:30 – Condensed, smaller blocks of time might actually allow you to achieve more.
1:50 – Many creative pursuits seem to lend themselves to needing larger sections of time. We often tend to feel as if we need these large chunks of time in order to make meaningful progress
Examples:
-Large Art Projects
-Websites
-Book Writing
03:06 – It’s like reading a book
Rachel – “I take a book to the grocery store and read it while I’m standing in line. I can’t often sit down and consume a whole book. I have to take it in increments. If you read 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there, eventually you will have read the whole book. It’s just going to take a little longer than you might have wanted.” Don’t feel like you HAVE to read a whole chapter. Sometimes when we let our work sit, we can come back with a fresh mind and finish it even faster.
What’s really happening when we work an 8 hour day? What’s really happening when we try to approach our smaller chunks of time this way?
-We tend to get distracted more easily because we naturally seek out rest.
-We tend to pace our work based not on the volume of work that we have, but on the amount of time we’ve been given to complete it. If you’re given 30 minutes to run a mile, you’ll run it more slowly than you would if you had been given 10 minutes.
6:36 – Brain fatigue
When we are working intensely over larger sections of time we tend to get tired. Your brain needs breaks. Parceling it out in smaller time segments makes us more effective.
You will naturally seek out rest, but when you’re not doing it intentionally you will not experience a healthy kind of rest. If I looked back at my schedule and how I spent my time, I’d probably find that I spent the same amount of time on distractions that I would want to spend on intentional rest, without the benefits of intentional rest.
Rachel – “The small little breaks we take on social media, reading the latest article that pops up in our feed, are not as healthy of a way of resting as actually taking intentional blocks of time reading something inspiring or instructive for 30 minutes or so.”
Ben – “I would say that even if you were going to read articles or watch videos on social media sites, doing so intentionally in a set aside block of time is healthier than allowing yourself to do it when you should be focused on work. Make a habit of setting aside intentional resting time, then answer the question of whether or not it is the healthiest activity. Don’t let rest ‘happen’ to you in the form of distraction, but intentionally choose rest as an activity.”
Maybe you have 10-12 hours per day that you can work. Even if this is the case, you should section out your work this way; blocks of intensely focused working time, separated by intentional periods of rest.
10:52 – People in strained circumstances are at an advantage
We who are in difficult circumstances may have more practice with working this way because we HAVE to. We are the lucky ones… maybe.
– 12:02 – We need enough time to reach a state of flow
Rachel – “Maybe at first it takes a while to reach a state of flow, but the more you practice it, the less time it takes, eventually getting to where you can sit down and flow right away.”
Ben – “All you have to do it press a button and off you go?”
Rachel – “It’s just focused practice. You have to condition yourself to do it.”
– 13:33 – We need an interruption free environment
We don’t just need no interruptions, but no chance of interruption. In order to fully focus on our work we need the assurance that interruptions will not happen. It’s worth it to be clear about what you need. There is a real cost per interruption, especially if it takes you a while to get back into flow. Interruptions can come in the form of notifications, chat rooms, social media feed, etc. Turn them OFF!
– 14:47 – We need intentional rest
There doesn’t have to be a formula or fixed amount of time, but the rest does have to be intentional.
Our bodies work this way. The more we eat a certain way, or exercise a certain way, or sleep at a specific time, the more our bodies respond and come to expect these patterns. It’s the same principal athletes use with conditioning. Not only does it increase your threshold for focused work, but your mind and body will come to expect exertion under certain circumstances or within specific constraints, and will rise to the challenge.
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
It’s good to capture inspiration throughout your day, but it’s the consistent, daily showing up and doing the work that allows you to do your best work.
19:08 – Building this as a muscle is a great way to think about it.
You may not be able to focus intensely for very long at first, but the practice of doing this regularly will over time allow you to focus for longer and longer periods of time.
– 19:58 – Eating the right kind of diet.
– 20:12 – Getting enough sleep
This one probably belongs on the top of the list.
– 20:26 – Meditating
Meditation can drastically increase your ability to focus because it is in itself the practice of focusing on one thing.
– 21:42 – Schedule and limit screen time
Our modern access to social media and television is re-wiring our brains for limited focus. Studies show that children, in order to thrive in the school environment and experience healthy emotional growth, should be limited to 20 minutes of screen time per day. Maybe you need to have a significant amount of screen time for your design work, but we can limit and intentionally schedule our time for social media and television so that it doesn’t rob us of our focus.
– 23:31 – Journaling
Keeping a journal is a great way to clear your mind and de-stress.
Rachel – “I have a writers journal where I write down how things went with my day, or what is stressing me out in my work, or things I need to get done the next day, and I also have a mom journal where I complain about all of the craziness we go through on a day to day basis. I’ve found that when you write those things down it not only clarifies your struggles, but also helps you to find resolution. It’s kind of like telling a story.”
– 25:13 – Exercise
Studies show that exercise actually increases productivity.
Rachel – “Employers should let their employees cut out 30-45 minutes/day to go to the gym.”
Think about these things as vital to the success of your work. These things are as important and as vital to your work as the work itself IF it help your work to be more effective. Don’t look at it like “work is work” and “rest is rest.” All of those things are working together to help you do your best work.
– 26:45 – Maintain healthy relationships
You can’t always avoid relationship strain and the resulting affects on our work-flow. There may be days that are a wash, but we should treat maintaining healthy relationships and spending time with the ones we love as a vital aspect of our work.
A study was done a couple of years ago on CEOs of major companies. They found that of the 8-10 hours they spent in the office, they were actually only getting about 90 minutes worth of actual work done. They found that the more time they spent in the office the less actual work they completed. The theory is that if you want to stay on par with the CEOs of these companies, all you have to do is work hard for 90 minutes per day. According to this theory, if you have 2 90 minute blocks per day, you’re actually getting two days worth of work done per day.
30:08 – Rachel – “What do CEOs do?”
30:35 – Rachel – “We’ve seen in our own lives that it plays out this way.
The days I go into an office, I pretty much don’t get anything done.”
It’s not just the interruption, but the chance that you could be interrupted at any moment that keeps you from doing good work.
Rachel – “The times that I work from home and have those concentrated times, I can produce as much as another writer could in a few days.
31:46 – I’ve got 8 Blocks!
Looking at my schedule, after accounting for all of the other things that I do weekly (newsletter, blog, etc.) I still had 8 90 minute blocks open.
It’s worth trying out and testing your output. You only know if you actually try it.
33:02 – It doesn’t have to be 90 minutes.
There can be variations. It doesn’t have to be 90 minutes. You don’t necessarily have to just work on 1 thing. Find out what works best for you.
What if you’re saying “I see how this can be helpful, BUT it still doesn’t feel like a lot of progress on a large project?”
Change your unit of measurement. A foot (twelve inches) doesn’t feel like a long distance to us, but it is for the inchworm. Zoom in on your work and base your idea of progress on what you accomplish when zoomed in. You do need to zoom out from time to time, but if you’re only zoomed out, you will feel discouraged at the amount of progress you see on a day to day basis.
35:32 – Rachel – “People have asked me, ‘how do you get so much writing done with so little time?’
I write in increments. When you can get into the practice of that, your mind can more readily jump into it when you do have time, allowing you to take advantage of those increments. All of those little increments add up over time to a completed project.
There’s something about taking rest and being away from your work that activates the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” rule where you’re actually eager to get back to your work and approach it with the right kind of enthusiasm or energy.
Bottom line. I believe this is the best way to work. High impact working times, separated by intentional rest. I encourage you to test this out and see how it influences your output. My hope is that as you do, you will find your way to being even more effective with your limited time than you ever thought possible!
Your hosts:
Ben Toalson
www.bentoalson.com
twitter.com/bentoalson
Rachel Toalson
www.racheltoalson.com
twitter.com/racheltoalson
by Ben Toalson | Oct 15, 2014 | In The Boat
Of the many great interactions I’ve had with clients, I’ve had a few unpleasant ones (an understatement), and from these experiences I do my best to learn and adjust my process to make sure I don’t have these experiences again. A few examples: I do the work for a client and even though I’ve got due dates and late penalties on my invoices, their payments are still late (much later than I need them to be to pay my bills on time). And another scenario, I get a really good feeling from a client and they seem ready to go so I clear my schedule only to find out a week or two later that they are not ready or are thinking about going with someone else. Neither of these work for me. After all, I’ve got a family to take care of and bills to pay and I can’t afford all of this uncertainty.
If you’ve had, or are currently having experiences like this with your clients, you know how frustrating and disheartening it can be. One thing I learned that turned around the scenarios I described above is this: The people that “put me in this situation” are actually NOT YET my clients. I put quotations around “put me in this situation” because I believe that it’s not clients who put us in compromising positions, but our own shortcomings as professionals. A true professional uses every opportunity to find ways to learn and grow when they experience challenges with their clients, because it is ultimately the professional’s responsibility to facilitate a smooth interaction with their client.
So here is where we as professionals can be more responsible: until a potential client has paid a reasonable amount of money to secure your services, they are not your client.
-But what if they’ve communicated with me via e-mail and said “We’re ready to go?” They are not your client.
-But what if they’ve sent their content and shared their goals with me? They are not your client.
-But what if they’ve signed a contract and sent it to me? They are not your client.
-A potential client doesn’t become your client until they PAY you.
I’d like to share a few guidelines and some reasons why I believe it’s vital to require payment from your client first:
Guidelines
I highly recommend requiring payment in order to secure not just your services, but a place in your schedule. This means that even if you are booked up and can’t start working on their project until 4 weeks from now, their up-front payment now secures their future spot in your schedule.
Depending on the size and scope of the project, you may be able to get full payment up front. If it’s a smaller project and it’s a sensible investment for the client, this shouldn’t be a problem for them. If it’s a larger project you may get 50% or more up front, or you could break the project into phases and require up front payment before commencing each phase.
Remember, when your client sees you as the professional, you get to set the tone and expectation for how the project is going to work.
Benefits
Establishes trust – This is one of the biggest benefits of accepting payment from your client up-front. When a client pays money for a service they have not yet received, they are communicating that they see you as a professional and that they trust you to carry out your end of the deal.
Positions your services as an investment – A payment up front is an investment. The client is essentially saying “I’m willing to invest in your design solution now, because I believe the potential return on this investment is worth it.”
Places you and the client in your rightful places in the client/professional relationship – This one is tremendously important. The healthiest client/professional relationship is one in which each party fully understands and is fully equipped to carry out their own respective roles. The role of the client is to provide content and goals as they relate to their vision for their business, and the designer’s role is to use their expertise to craft an effective solution, using the provided content, to meet the client’s goals. When you’ve already received payment, the client must submit to you as the professional. That means that they don’t have the leverage to insert their subjective ideas and opinions into the design process, and you have the leverage to support this idea. This is good news for everybody because, as long as you’re carrying out your role as the professional, your design will be a solution that will be most effective at accomplishing their goals, regardless of whether or not it satisfies their (completely unrelated) style preferences.
Can put an end to the feast or famine cycle – I’ve talked about this cycle before, where you get a bunch of client work, so financially you’re good for a while, then you have to do some administrative/on-boarding work with new clients, and things are thin again. The benefit to requiring payment for scheduling your services, is that you can potentially be booked weeks in advance with fully paid projects that you have yet to do. As long as you are smart about how you budget that advanced income, it should make for a relatively even experience when it comes to your cash flow.
Note: don’t book too far ahead at the same rate. If you do book more than a few months out, take into account the fact that the more experience you have, the more you can charge. This means that you’re probably going to be worth more to your client by the time you start on their project. Price your services accordingly.
If you’re reading this thinking ‘I can’t ask that of my clients, they’ll just say no and go to someone else’ then chances are you might be allowing the wrong people to become your clients. You should only allow someone to become your client who is willing to entrust you with their investment, sees you as a professional, and will submit to your process. This is how you will do your best, most fulfilling work, and how you will offer the most value for your clients.
As always, if you have thoughts, stories, questions or comments, please feel free to share below!
by Ben Toalson | Oct 8, 2014 | In The Boat
Our family just took a weekend away in the country and I wanted to change things up a little bit and share a brief story about our time there and the impact it had on my mindset in the midst of some challenging circumstances.
Small Town Fever
My wife, Rachel, and I have similar backgrounds. We both grew up either in the country or living in a small town. I remember my friends all talking about how eager they were to graduate and get away from small town life. I don’t actually remember sharing their sentiments, but today I do find myself a little tied down to city life. I feel comfortable in my suburban neighborhood, not too close to the busyness of downtown, but still close enough to get there when I want to. All of the things I want or need are just a 5-10 minute drive away. The elementary school where our boys attend is within walking distance. When I imagine living out in the country or moving to a small town, I start to feel a little anxious about not being able to get to a store within 5 minutes or having to send my boys to school on a bus. Still, there are some things that I would love about it. Maybe one day I’ll let myself experience small town or country living again first hand.
Frito Pie
My wife’s hometown baptist church was celebrating 75 years since its founding, and we were all invited to come to their morning service and catered lunch this past Sunday to enjoy the celebration. We could have just come up for the day, but something in me said that we needed to spend more time there if we could. My in-laws are really cool, and they were thrilled to have us come up on Friday evening with their grand-babies to spend the weekend. We arrived to their little home out in the country on Friday night just as the sun was setting, and my mother-in-law walked out to greet us and let us know that they had prepared some chili and cornbread for Frito-pie. I love Frito-pie.
The rest of the weekend was so relaxing. We woke up early the next morning and took the boys into town to enjoy a parade, complete with marching bands from the competing schools in the area, local businesses, kung-fu demonstrations, old fashioned cars, and beauty queens. We also happened to be sitting right next to the tent where Nonny and Poppy (the boys’ grandparents) were helping run a bake sale. In that sitting we filled our treat quota for the whole month. Later that afternoon, the boys and I just played out in a field for a few hours, then that evening the in-laws watched the boys for us while we drove the 40 minutes into a slightly bigger town for dinner and a movie.
The 75 year celebration the following morning was both inspiring and fun. It was refreshing to look around the room and see people with so much joy and contentment on their faces, to hear them talk and laugh, to hear kids running around and playing together. It was refreshing to experience that feeling of not being in a hurry. After the lunch we said our goodbyes, packed everyone up in the minivan, and made the 3 hour drive back to San Antonio.
Distance From Our Daily Experience
The week prior to this trip had been a particularly challenging one. There were things that didn’t go through that we were counting on for business, news about changes with Rachel’s employment and some difficult decisions about what we were going to do next to navigate these challenges. I realized as soon as we arrived at my in-laws house that Friday evening why we needed so badly to go and spend a couple of days there. At home, in San Antonio, were the reminders of all of the obstacles and challenges, problems for which we had no solutions, anxieties and fears. Sometimes these things cloud up our minds so much that it’s difficult to look objectively at our circumstances in a way that allows us to see what real options exist. The change in scenery did wonders for me. I needed a new context, and to get some distance from my every day experience in order to have the clarity of mind necessary to accurately assess my circumstances and my options.
We returned home yesterday evening right around dinner time. The house was messy, our refrigerator was nearly empty, the boys were still wound up on their “vacation high” and our twins (the youngest boys) apparently picked up some kind of stomach virus during the trip which is currently making things… interesting. We are basically hitting the ground running, but I brought something back with me from this weekend away that I couldn’t have found had we stayed here. It’s a mix of clarity, courage, rejuvenation, inspiration… maybe to sum it up in a word, hope. Hope is a surprising, yet welcomed guest in the middle of our current struggles. It’s driving my work, and showing me possibilities I might not have otherwise considered.
Hope
Hopefully you’re not having a similar experience right now. I hope you’re reading this and saying, ‘I can’t relate, everything is good right now.’ But if you can relate, I encourage you to get away from the familiar. Put some distance between yourself and your struggles. Get around some people who know who you are and care about you. Maybe this is something you could make a regular practice of doing, whether its going for a walk in the park, getting out to a national forest, driving to the country, or maybe even a trip to the city is just the change in scenery you need. Take the trip. Get away. Even if it’s just for a few hours. Your work and all of your struggles will still be waiting for you when you get back. They’re not going anywhere. It’s worth it to get away if it helps to lead you to a better, healthier mindset, and reminds you that you do have choices, that these circumstances aren’t forever, and that you are capable of facing these challenges.
Peace,
Ben
by Ben Toalson | Oct 1, 2014 | In The Boat
Many of the creative people I know are also some of the most hard-working, committed people I know. Creative work in almost any area–art, design, engineering, development, etc.–is usually just the right mix of enjoyable and challenging. Because of this it’s easy, as a creative person, to find one’s self completely wrapped up in the work of making things, even at the expense of our own well being.
In a recent newsletter I asked for feedback about some of the struggles we have as creatives trying to balance our work and family life. A huge thanks to those of you who responded! I’d like to focus today on feedback I received from Claire. To summarize her comments, she said that in the busyness of doing her creative work, raising her daughter, and keeping up with stuff around the house, she finds very little time to replenish her creative inspiration, and when she does, she has trouble doing so without feeling a little guilty.
This is something that I have definitely struggled with and something I believe is very common among my fellow creatives. I wanted to go ahead and share some practical ideas that I hope will help you in shifting your feelings about taking personal time, and re-framing the value it adds to your work.
Find creative replenishment in the things you are already doing.
Sometimes, the last place we look for inspiration and replenishment is what we already do day in and day out. Aren’t these things part of the reason I feel creatively drained? While I agree that the monotony of doing these things every day, whether it’s cleaning the house, caring for kids, administrative work for your freelance business, etc. I also believe there are aspects of these things, when looked at from the right perspective, can be invigorating and life giving.
What I try to do is purposefully shift my focus away from the things that are draining and toward the things that inspire me. For example, with my kids there are obvious drains on my energy. Between our rigorous night-time routine and all of the daily transitions that are necessary to get us from place to place I am just about spent. My kids are incessant makers though. There isn’t a day that goes by that pages of drawings don’t fill our art basket and new melodies aren’t introduced to the keys of our piano.
Just the other day, I brought home a new box fan (we use them for nap-times to create white noise) and my 5 year old stared at it in wonder as I removed it from the box and exclaimed “Wow!” when I turned it on. When I slow down enough to take a moment to really look at these things… I feel that same sense of wonder. My 7 year old is making up a song from a melody that he hears in his head… “Wow!” My 5 year old is doing something kind and helpful without being asked, just because he loves his brother… “Wow!” My 4 year old drew a picture of me and, though it looks nothing like me, it gives me a peek into the way he sees the world around him… “Wow!”
When I allow myself to experience these moments from my kids, the newness of the world is restored to me and my heart and eyes are filled with wonder once again. As a maker of things, we NEED this wonder, we NEED new eyes.
Also, though I hate the work of tidying up and cleaning, having a clean house does wonders for my ability to be creative. It’s like when I remove clutter from my house, I’m also removing clutter from my mind.
By changing my mindset I am able to run what is coming into my life through a better filter that helps me to better receive inspiration from what might otherwise feel monotonous and taxing.
The “oxygen mask” principle
If you’ve ever sat through a flight attendant’s safety presentation before a flight, you probably remember them advising you that in the case of a loss of air pressure, oxygen masks will drop down and you should FIRST put on your own oxygen mask, THEN put on your child’s oxygen mask. The idea is that if you don’t take care of your oxygen supply first, you could possibly black out before you had a chance to properly secure the mask for your child.
I feel like this principle applies in our lives, in that when we are not taking care of our personal needs and consistently placing others’ needs before our own, we run the risk of burning out and not being as available or present for the people in our lives. For a person who cares about their children, this can be very difficult. It seems like self-sacrifice is the right thing to do, but in my personal experience, the more I sacrifice my own needs and the less I take care of myself, the more burned out I feel and the less patience I have with my kids. They can sense when I’m feeling thin, and they respond negatively to it every time.
I’m not saying that one should never be self-sacrificial in situations that are more desperate, but we simply cannot sustain living this way indefinitely. Our family and our work is better served by a version of us that is rejuvenated and inspired. Believe it or not you are a limited resource. If you are not allowing yourself to be replenished, you are in danger of running out.
Added value to your work
Though you may not list it as one of the benefits in your client proposal or talk about it to your audience (though here I feel like I can) taking time for yourself should be factored in to the value of what you produce. When you take time for yourself, you are able to offer a better version of yourself to your work and this plays out in the quality of what you produce. When someone hires a professional, the thing they’re looking for the most is a solution to their problem. Your solution’s value doesn’t have as much to do with the quantity you can produce, or how quickly you can produce it as the effectiveness of your solution at solving the problem. Therefore, when a potential client identifies you as the one whose solution is able to solve their problem, they must take you as you are. If part of where you draw your inspiration is the time you spend with your family, and that factors into the value of your work, then they need you to uphold that value in order for your solution to be effective. If where you replenish yourself is on the couch, binge-watching a tv show on Netflix, and that factors into the value of your work, then you need to continue that practice in order to meet your client’s expectations.
I’m being a little facetious, but the time that you take to gain inspiration, to replenish your creative spark is worth something to your work. It’s worth something to your clients. Your mindset should be that your work is not worth as much when you are not taking time for you. It is not as valuable.
Measure your output
This is the paragraph where I say “don’t just take my word for it.” The goal here is not necessarily to produce more/better work. The goal here is not to justify taking breaks. The goal is to remove unnecessary guilt from the practice of taking personal time as it adds value to your work. Only you can know how effective your efforts are at accomplishing this.
I encourage you to try the following:
Don’t change anything just yet. Keep a daily journal and answer the following questions:
1. How much did I get done today?
2. How do I feel about the quality of my work today?
3. Do I feel burned out or energized?
4. How do I feel about the time I spent with my family/managing my home?
Repeat this activity at the end of the week as an overview for that week.
Repeat it at the end of the month as an overview for the month.
Then, change it up. Start allowing yourself more time for replenishment and inspiration and record it as in the steps above
This will give you a better idea about how you feel about what you are accomplishing, how much you are sacrificing, and how well you are taking care of yourself. Again, the goal here isn’t necessarily to achieve the highest output, quality, etc. It’s to find a balance that doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve neglected a vital area of your life.
In a world where the vital things in life seem to be pulling and stretching us beyond what we are capable of doing, my hope is that you feel permission to be a whole person, to establish boundaries, and to offer the best of yourself without sacrificing any of the things that make you valuable.
I’d love to hear from you…
How do you take time for yourself without feeling guilty? What are some things you do to gather inspiration? What are some unexpected sources of replenishment for you? Feel free to share your answers in the comments below.