When you can't find the pause button
To do nothing at all during a normal work day is harder than it might seem.
The Friendly Freelancer is a bimonthly, supportive newsletter for creative freelancers by Selma Franssen and Linda A. Thompson.
The great thing about having been a freelancer for a couple of years is that patterns start emerging amid all the unpredictability that goes hand in hand with it. I for instance now know what the peak seasons of my freelance year are. I work long days between October and May, while the summer months bring things to a partial standstill.
This knowledge ought to allow me to arrive at a nice balance. Go full speed during the winter months and take lots of days off during the summer. This logic could also be applied to the weeks in which I work multiple evenings in a row: I could idle during the day to compensate for all this evening work.
At least, that’s the theory. It usually works out differently in practice. For instance, there was a week recently where I had to work every evening. According to my own rules, this meant that I could spend my days in a park with a good book – but I just couldn’t do it.
Instead of fully relaxing, I pained myself with questions like: Shouldn’t I fire off some emails? Don’t I have paperwork to catch up on? Shouldn’t I clean out my desk? And if I’m going to read a book, wouldn’t it be better to pick a book by an author I’m going to interview? If you’re getting tired of reading this inner monologue, imagine what it’s like to have it playing in your head. The end result was that I didn’t do anything relaxing or productive during those days.
That voice in my head that’s prodding me to get to work is echoing the hard-to-ignore productivity mantras of our time, mantras aimed at a generation that’s grown accustomed to insecure labour contracts on the one hand and the myriad opportunities to always be working and learning on the other hand. As creative freelancers, there’s moreover a fat chance that your work overlaps with the things you’re interested in, i.e. where work ends and play begins isn’t always that clear. Which makes it even harder to shut up that voice in your ear encouraging you to do a bit of work during your down time.
I realised that there was another reason that I found it so difficult to shut my computer during that one week in which I was in theory allowed to take the day off but didn’t manage to. For the past months, I’ve used work to push my day-to-day reality away; to not have to think about the pandemic; to forget how much I miss my friends. The idea being that: I can’t do anything but work at the moment, so I should double down on work. So that when it becomes possible to travel and see my friends again, I’ll have a wealth of time to do both. I still stand behind this strategy, but … will I manage to work less when that moment arrives? 😳
That one stressful week gave me a taste of how much persuasion this will require. I told myself that the difference between a Wednesday and a Sunday is only six letters, and that if I’m allowed to go to a cafe on Sunday, I’m also allowed to go to a café on a Wednesday. That helped a little. But to be completely honest with you, in the end it was another productivity mantra (I’m well aware of the irony) that was more effective at getting me to unwind toward the end the week – namely that relaxation and productivity are two sides of the same coin. That I can only be productive and creative when I take the time to relax and that that really shouldn’t be a topic of discussion – not even, or rather, especially not between me, myself and I.
Are you able to idle without feeling guilty during a workday? How do you do it? Send us your tips at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com
Speak soon,
Selma