Mental Health for Freelancers
7 Tips for Freelance Writers Experiencing Chronic Stress
How to design a lifestyle fitting your writing career goals optimally
While writing brings a lot of joy and can certainly be therapeutic for some of us, a writing business, on the other hand, can be very stressful.
I met several freelance writers who suffered from chronic stress severely. Unfortunately, this type of stress disturbs their motivation, reduces productivity, and causes mental health issues. Sadly, some of them left their profession due to excessive cortisol (stress hormone).
Chronic stress is a significant cause of many ailments. Emotional stress can have a severe impact on our mental health.
Almost all physical and mental diseases are related to chronic stress, which puts us in a fight, flight, or freeze mode when experienced in excessive amounts and extended periods. This natural phenomenon is an undeniable fact proven scientifically.
This post introduces seven practical tips to help freelance writers deal with chronic stress effectively, improve productivity, and live a healthy and happy life.
1 — Manage your priorities
Time is the most significant stress creator. It never stops like a river. Even though time management is highly touted as a skill, we cannot control time. However, we can change and manage our priorities to save time. This distinction is not semantic but a lifehack used by successful entrepreneurs.
As a freelancer, managing our priorities determines our success. We set our priorities and work hours as we report to ourselves, not to a boss.
Managing our priorities can significantly contribute to managing our stress. By focusing on our priorities, we can reduce our stress. Many tasks are not essential as they don’t contribute to our ultimate goals or are simply noises. Eliminating noise is necessary for saving time, completing essential ones on time, or meeting deadlines.
Our priorities differ based on our goals, lifestyle, capabilities, and overall background. No one can set your priorities as it is a personal point and preference. However, there are some guiding points to set priorities.
I recommend three key questions to ask every morning. The answers to these questions can help us identify our priorities daily. I helped my proteges to ask these questions and make them a habit. For example, they write it on a piece of paper and stick it on a visible wall. Or some of them put a reminder on their electronic devices showing every morning.
What do I want to achieve today?
What are the most important actions to help me achieve my goals today?
How do these goals help me realize my ultimate goals?
Identifying only critical goals and scheduling them can give us mental clarity and motivate us to complete them on time. In addition, each completed task can provide us with a dopamine boost that we can leverage for undertaking and completing the next activity in the schedule.
As a freelancer, you are a self-employed entrepreneur offering value to your clients. Entrepreneurs execute essential tasks. Deliberate actions can cure your stress, anxiety, and fear. Actions can also rewire our brains for happiness and joy.
2 — Understand the requirements and expectations of your readers
Customer service is critical for freelancing. Remember, we don’t have a boss to pay us. Instead, we have customers who pay for our services. This strategic viewpoint and mindset are essential.
If we can find ways to satisfy our customers, our financial problems are naturally solved. The key customers for freelance writers are regular readers who advocate their content.
Since regular readers are critical to our success, we need to understand their requirements and expectations for our services. Once we know what our readers expect from us, we can add those points to our priorities. So items one and two are closely related.
We can obtain the requirements and expectations of our readers via feedback. It is up to each person to develop a relationship with their customers and receive constant feedback on their progress. I regularly write to my customers about whether they are happy with a piece of service I provide and ask how I can improve it.
3 — Refrain from perfection
Perfection is the deadliest reason for chronic stress. Entrepreneurs and leaders know the importance of this situation.
Analysis paralysis is a terrible stress creator and one of the root causes of chronic stress. We shouldn’t fear making mistakes. Paradoxically, this fear causes us to make more mistakes. Your clients are human beings. They would understand if you make a mistake.
Providing high-quality service is essential for our success. But this does not require perfection. Excellence is enough to meet this requirement.
Getting 90% on a test shows your proficiency. Killing yourself to get a 100 score is not worth the extra effort. I regrettably made that mistake which caused severe health problems for me.
4 — Leverage the therapeutic benefits of writing
Writing is a skill for freelance writers to earn a living. However, we are advantaged to have this skill for other reasons too. While we write to make money, writing also can be used for therapeutic purposes.
We can make our occupational writing a therapeutic tool. However, not all of us write therapeutic pieces. Some of us write about mechanical topics which do not necessarily give us particular pleasure. For example, some writers write about technical matters.
However, it is possible to turn technical writing into an enjoyable state by engaging with the readers. Focusing on the benefits our readers get from our writing is one way of doing this. This decision and related activities are up to our creativity.
If we are unable to make our professional writing therapeutic, there is another option. It is expressive writing. This type of writing is a scientifically proven technique to help improve mental health, especially by reducing concerns, anxiety, fear, and stress. I use therapeutic writing as an addition to my professional writing.
For example, if I write an hour about a serious technical matter, I have a five-minute break and do expressive writing about a topic close to my heart. On the other hand, if no topic comes to my mind, I simply write expressively about my thoughts and feelings at that moment. This five-minute activity recharges my energy stores.
In addition, I find ways to convert those therapeutic writings to income-generating activities. We call it repurposing content. Although, for example, most of my income-generating writing relates to technical and academic matters, I wrote a book about my personal transformation, which also generated income for my business.
5 — Nurture relationships and learn from others
Closely work and collaborate with other content creators.
Our network is essential for success. A network requires business and personal relations, including close friends. Being part of a community can be very beneficial.
Communities are made of like-minded people with similar goals and dreams. They are designed to help and support. Writing and reading communities are two great examples that you might consider. In addition, joining rituals of communities can significantly contribute to stress reduction.
We should be audacious to reach out to others and ask for ideas and help. There is nothing wrong with asking for help from people with whom we have a close relationship. We are related to them because they care about us. Asking for help can contribute to emotional maturity.
Collaboration does not necessarily mean co-creation or unconditionally supporting other writers. It also includes meaningful relationships and friendships. In addition, we learn from their success and failures. This tacit knowledge is critical for our efficiency in our entrepreneurial journey.
You can also learn from their skills, styles, and outcomes. We can do our job more efficiently by learning new things, gaining new knowledge, and acquiring new skills through collaboration. Efficiency is an excellent way to reduce stress and prevent stress from unknowns.
My biggest mistake is that some freelance writers see other writers as competitors. Even though it might be true in business speak, in reality, seeing competitors as collaborators is a healthier and more productive approach.
The fear of collaboration comes if you think about losing benefits such as intellectual capital or critical clients. However, pragmatically collaborating does not mean sharing your trade secrets and paying clients. There are numerous other acceptable collaboration methods.
6 — Be your own best friend with self-compassion
It is excellent to have many friends. Friendship is beneficial for our mental health. However, being our own best friend makes the most critical contribution to our mental health.
Self-compassion and self-love do not mean narcissism. On the contrary, it is a genuine requirement for our survival and well-being. However, it can be challenging to love others unless we accept and love ourselves.
With self-compassion, we can reduce unnecessary stress imposed by others. It is okay not to be perfect. It is okay to fail sometimes. It is okay to feel down now and then. If the body sends a pain signal, we need to listen, acknowledge the pain, and understand the causes. Paying attention to pain signals is a way of self-compassion.
These are not weaknesses. They are signals from the body and the brain for us to slow down. We are biological beings requiring downtime. Downtime is not laziness but an essential stress management tool. Simple and non-work-related activities can be useful brain boosters.
7 — Redesign your life to fit your writing career
This final point sums up previous ones.
The critical message is to design your life in a way that best suits your goals, dreams, capabilities, and new lifestyle. This new lifestyle should enable you to work in a flow state. When we are in the flow state, we can cope better with physical and mental stress. In fact, a flow state can prevent the accumulation of stress, so we don’t experience chronic stress.
You can rearrange your times for meals, sleeping, exercising, resting, and recreation. You can also change your nutrition, exercise regime, frequency of workouts, and type of recreational activities suiting your new lifestyle. I call this orchestrating our life for satisfaction.
You are your own boss. You make the decision and choose what works for you the best. No one will know about you as much as you know. And no one would care about you as much as yourself. Therefore, you must be your best friend and own therapist with self-compassion, self-love, and self-care.
Takeaways
Taking personal responsibility for our work and downtime can produce better results with less effort, less time, and less stress.
1 — By managing our priorities, we eliminate unnecessary tasks, save time and reduce stress.
2 — By understanding the requirements and expectations of our readers, we deliver better service with less stress.
3 — By refraining from perfection, we reduce fear of failure, hence producing excellent service.
4 — By leveraging the therapeutic benefits of writing, we can clear our minds, boost energy, and reduce stress. Expressive writing is an excellent pattern interruption tool.
5 — By nurturing relationships and collaborating with others, we can gain new perspectives to increase our productivity and reduce stress.
6 — By being our own best friends with self-compassion, we love ourselves and others. Love is an antidote to chronic stress.
7 — By redesigning our life suiting our writing career, we can produce effortlessly and hence manage our stress more effectively.
I believe these seven tips can help you take control of your life and reduce stress significantly in this challenging journey, particularly in these challenging times.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a joyful and healthy life.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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