Many people want to start their career as freelancers because of the work-life balance it offers them. This isn’t a bad idea because flexibility in your job is what everyone wants.
However, a dangerous side of being a freelancer is the fact that they work many hours. Working many hours can result in burnout in the long term. Not something you want to happen! In fact, statistics show that 43% of freelancers are prior to burnout, meaning that nearly half of them.
Therefore, in this article, we will show you some tips you can follow to prevent burnout as a freelancer.
The primary symptoms of burnout
Burnout isn’t fun to experience; the only way to realize it is after it happens. Burnout gradually worsens over time if you don’t make any significant changes to your routines.
Burnout symptoms focus on work stress but are usually related to depression, stress and anxiety. As many struggle with health issues, early intervention is much more important than not doing so at all. After all, it does impact your life, so suffering from stress is not something pleasant.
Burnout is what exhausts you physically and mentally. Nevertheless, it’s challenging to care for yourself once you face burnout. Moreover, here are some physical and psychological symptoms of burnout:
- Indigestion and stomach issues
- Feeling tired
- Muscle pain, headaches
- Self-doubt
- Fear
- Demotivated
- Feeling isolated
- Avoiding people and work
7 Ways you can avoid burnout as a freelancer
1. Set boundaries
Another huge red flag for freelancers burning out is their inability to set boundaries. Even though working more might be better for your wallet and clients, there’s only so much you can do in one day. It might not be much of an issue for a short period, but as time passes, you can start to feel the burnout.
Especially if you want to be a long-term freelancer, you need to forget about overworking. Therefore, you should keep your working schedule predictable and not long but always ensure flexibility. This will save you fresh throughout the week and make it easier for you to stay fresh.
2. Use a sales funnel tool
You may be wondering, how on Earth will a sales funnel tool make a freelancer’s life easier? As a freelancer, you are continuously dealing with clients, so you must know more about the customer’s journey from the beginning to the end. The entire reason it’s called a funnel is that you move through it and fewer people make it through after each stage.
The five primary stages of a sales funnel are:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Advocacy and loyalty
A sales funnel tool is designed to help you visualize your customer’s journey through every part of the funnel. A sales funnel tool helps you manage everything, from your landing page to setting up forms in your email marketing campaign and taking payments, all in one place. If you do this separately, you’ll be paying numerous subscription fees, but everything is made simple in this case.
As a freelancer, you need to use the best sales funnel tools, so here they are:
- Flodesk Checkout: The ultimate sales funnel tool for selling digital products and services online through a fantastic branded online experience. The platform allows you to build your sales, checkout, and delivery page from various templates.
- WishPond: The WishPond platform contains plenty of online ads and landing pages. WishPond is most commonly used because of its “contents and promos” feature that allows you to run giveaways, photo contests, and many other promos for building awareness of your brand.
- Systeme.io: Offers plenty of features alongside the sales funnel builder, including email marketing, an online website and a course builder.
3. Avoid comparing yourself to others
This might sound like an exciting tip to follow, but you would be surprised by how many freelancers become demotivated after comparing themselves to others. Some days, you might feel like everyone accomplished more than you, but it’s not about short-term achievements.
Some freelancers don’t achieve much soon enough but will do so in the future. Additionally, some freelancers accomplish a lot in a short period of time but fail in the long term.
Therefore, there’s no right or wrong way to approach your workflow, so comparing yourself to other freelancers will only be a distraction.
4. Have clear goals and prioritize
Most freelancers only overwork to make more money and this is fine, but not for the long-term. Statistics show that overwork has killed more than 740,000 people only in one year! This is usually due to not prioritizing mental health and not having any long-term goals.
Prioritize your most important work and see if it’s helping you towards achievement. If you’re assigned additional work, don’t focus too much on it but on the more urgent work. Prioritize all assignments from most to least important. You could also try breaking down your assignments, so it doesn’t look impossible to finish all the work you have.
5. Make free time for yourself
Making time for yourself as a freelancer can sometimes be challenging. This is because you are considered the only one in charge of your career, and taking a break can be challenging when you favor taking on more work. Trust us; we know exactly how you feel. Burnout happens when we, as individuals, fail to make time for ourselves.
Forget about those sleepless nights or working on weekends. You need a break too! Go for coffee, a night out with your friends or family, and more. Self-care won’t only positively impact your life but your productivity at work as well. Therefore, it’s best to make some reductions in the assignments you take on. After all, quality should be above quantity; the last thing you want is for your quality to not be there.
If you never recharge, you won’t allow yourself to become more successful in the long term.
6. Skip a day
It’s no fun only to be working and never having some fun, right? To avoid becoming tired or burned out each day, you can reward yourself by skipping a day at work if you find it suitable. Remember that the primary reason you want to be a freelancer is to promote flexibility and balance in your career. During your free day, go for some lunch, plan a meeting with your friend, or even deal with more important things you have to deal with.
You can skip any day, even if it’s a working day. Sometimes, we might need an entire day to ourselves and there’s nothing wrong with that!
7. Build long-term relationships with clients
Trying to find work from month to month might not be the most exciting thing to do. It might even be more challenging for you as a freelancer to do this month after month. After all, nobody is going to be concerned about whether you can pay your bills or not.
Therefore, you should be concerned about forming long-term relationships with clients instead of continuously changing your clients. Pick your clients wisely. Some companies invest in employee incentive schemes, and really do pay attention to their employees’ wellbeing. To build long-term relationships, you can do the following:
- Reward your clients: Say good words such as “thank you,” or offer them some discounts, and many other ways to show gratitude towards them.
- Meet your deadlines: Nobody likes it when you turn your work in late. That’s why you should seek to meet deadlines when you can. It’s important to show that you are a dependable person.
- Provide value: Whether showing your quality work or sharing an article your client wants to enjoy, you need to seek to become a valuable asset for your clients.
- Communication: Don’t hesitate to ask your clients questions to see if they are facing any issues or only to check up with them to ensure you’re both on the same page.
- Don’t see them only as a source of income: It’s never a good idea to see your clients only as a source of income. It’s important to treat your clients as people and even ask them how their day was, their plans, and more.
Avoid freelance burnout at all costs
Burnout is no fun to experience and we recommend you try avoiding it at all costs. It’s better to take the steps earlier than when it’s too late. After all, nothing is worth your mental health, so pay serious attention to it.
Life is short, but not short enough for those who struggle day in and day out. Therefore, take a break when you need to and don’t feel guilty about it!