Why everything feels urgent when you’re self-employed
The freelance world can be full of exciting opportunities. However, when you’re self-employed, it can also feel like everything needs doing right away. You have a dozen hats to wear and a seemingly endless to-do list…
With so much to consider at all times, it’s no wonder freelancers and solopreneurs feel under constant business stress. The good news is that reducing stress as a freelancer can start with a few simple steps — and support is available.
If you’re wondering why everything feels urgent and how you can reduce mental overload while successfully running your business, read on for insights and tips.
Why self-employment can feel overwhelming
As an employee in a traditional business, you may experience stress, but there’s (more often than not) a team to bounce off. You have colleagues to problem-solve with and gain support from. You also tend to have a more streamlined role that allows tasks to stay within scope.
As a freelancer or self-employed business owner, things are usually a little different…
Being in charge of everything
No matter the industry you work in, if you’re a freelancer, you often find yourself taking on all areas of business management. You’re in charge of the accounts, marketing, networking, and admin… all alongside the part of the job you love best!
Because so many tasks need to be completed simultaneously, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed.
Workload peaks and troughs
Self-employment can also feel less steady than employed work. Whether you’re an artist selling work online, a wellness practitioner, freelance writer, or any other kind of vendor or service provider, workload can vary month to month.
Some months, you may be rushed off your feet, while others feel like a bit of a trudge. This can lead to a ‘feast or famine’ mindset, where it feels like you need to do everything you can all at once to secure your next lot of income.
Feeling like you can’t take a break
And when securing that income feels constantly urgent, you may find yourself working long hours to do so. You might experience guilt or panic at the thought of taking a day off — a slippery slope towards burnout.
Tips for reducing stress as a freelancer
Let’s be honest, freelancing can be a rollercoaster ride for your mental health! But it can also bring a plethora of benefits, including freedom for creativity, better work-life balance, and the chance to genuinely follow your passions.
The secret is to find systems that help you feel calm, steady, and measured. Wondering where to begin?
Start setting boundaries
When your freelance business is always at the forefront of your mind, work-rest boundaries can become blurry. If you find yourself replying to emails late at night, monitoring social media at all times, or doing ‘just one more hour’, it’s time to:
Set dedicated working hours: If client comms come in outside of these, remember that a reply can wait until the morning. Close your laptop and try to switch off as much as possible.
Put clear contracts in place: Scope creep can mean that a simple project with a set timeframe insidiously takes up more time, resources, and capacity. Creating clear written contracts can protect your energy and prevent you from feeling that you need to work every hour under the sun to get the work finished.
Learn more about setting boundaries without losing clients.
Plan your priorities
Prioritising tasks can take you from a long, tangled list of jobs that need doing all at once to a clear plan of action.
It’s important to find the prioritisation mode that works best for you. This might include:
Writing weekly to-do lists and then breaking them down into daily ones.
Choosing three of the most urgent tasks to focus on each morning
Organising tasks by deadline
Seek accountability support
For some business owners (especially neurodiverse individuals), having a long list of tasks that all seem urgent can actually make it hard to decide how to prioritise. Rather than creating clarity, a big to-do list can lead to decision fatigue and procrastination.
If this is something you’re worried about, you may benefit from having someone there to help you work out what genuinely needs doing, break tasks into manageable steps, and keep you accountable.
See how Bizzybee can help with 1:1 coworking, goal and deadline planning, and other accountability support.
Build systems
Are there any tasks on your to-do list that can be automated or streamlined? Whether it’s batching social media content and scheduling it using a tool like Buffer or setting automatic replies for emails, see if there are any opportunities to automate repetitive admin tasks.
Consider outsourcing
Sometimes, the best way to reduce the feeling that everything is urgent is to stop doing everything yourself.
When you’re self-employed, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that you need to handle every single aspect of your business yourself. But taking on every element can leave you stretched too thin and facing potential burnout.
Outsourcing to a virtual assistant (VA) can take some of your to-do list tasks off your plate, allowing you to focus on the areas that require your expertise as the business owner.
You can hand over administrative tasks, email management, content creation, techy stuff, and a whole lot more. As well as giving you a few hours back, outsourcing can lower the sense of overwhelm and give you the space you need to grow your business.
Freelance business support is available!
Being self-employed doesn’t have to be isolating, and you really don’t have to do everything yourself.
It’s important to remember that freelance business support is available in many forms, from meeting like-minded business owners experiencing similar challenges at networking events to VA services.
Explore the Bizzybee blog for tips and guidance on running a small business, and feel free to get in touch to discuss how our VA services can support you.
