I have written about this before, but as it’s early in the year I wanted to tackle the subject again.
As the New Year gathers steam, we feel inspired to set new goals, maybe move forward in new directions, and take on fresh and interesting projects.
That’s all good.
But there is a caveat.
Don’t be lured into taking on someone else’s goals, directions and projects. They may be a perfect fit for that person, but not so much for you.
Let me explain.
As freelancers we like to keep busy.
In fact, if we’re not busy we start to feel nervous. After all, “empty” time is unbillable time.
Beyond that, sitting around and doing nothing is something we have always been told is bad.
Staring out of the window and daydreaming at school was bad.
Failing to keep your head down and looking busy as an employee was bad.
From an early age we have been conditioned to believe that during our work hours we should always keep busy. To do otherwise brands us as slackers.
I spent some time with a fellow freelancer recently, and he showed me a spreadsheet of his recent and current clients.
Better still, he showed me how profitable each of those clients were.
I have created spreadsheets like these myself, and was fascinated to see how similar his was in terms of the spread of profitability.
Let me explain.
On his spreadsheet he had a couple of really profitable clients, several middle-range clients, and a couple of clients that were barely profitable at all. His mix of clients was very similar to what I have seen in my own career as a freelancer.
So I asked him the obvious question, “The two least profitable clients take up way too much of your time for too little reward. So why not fire them?”
Procrastination is a bad thing, right?
Well, it certainly can be. It can be a real productivity killer.
You have a deadline, it’s getting closer and closer, and you still haven’t closed your Twitter page and got started.
Some people argue they work best under pressure, so procrastination is a positive thing. I’m not sure about that. Sounds like a clever, or not so clever, rationalization to me.
All that said, I know there have been times when I have been procrastinating for what turned out to be a pretty good reason.
For example, in one instance I was due to send a prospective client a proposal for a substantial writing project. We had agreed on the scope of the engagement and I had told him I was going to submit the proposal by a particular day and time.
Working is like sleeping? Absolutely.
I wish I could take credit for the insight, but I can’t. This is one of the observations shared by Jason Fried in the video below.
Incidentally, Jason is one of the people I really pay attention to when thinking about business. He is one of the founders of 37Signals.com. He is also the co-author of Rework
In the video he makes a number of points about getting work done. But the point I want to share with you is the one he makes about comparing sleep to work.
When you nod off, you don’t instantly arrive in a state of deep, blissful, restorative sleep. You move through different stages of sleep. And to get to the really good part, you have to move through the parts that precede it. And as Jason points out, if you wake up several times during the night, for whatever reason, you can’t immediately get back to that place of deep restorative sleep. You have to go down through all the stages again.
If I look back over the last 10 years, I can’t even imagine the number of things I have learned. For the sake of argument, let’s say I have learned 10,000 different things that might be useful to my work.
I have learned from articles and posts, from books I have read, from conversations I have had, and so on.
Now let’s say, out of those 10,000 things I have learned, I was smart enough to identify10 things which, if I applied them, could actually have a significant impact on my success. Those were 10 moments of learning that had the potential to transform my business in some meaningful way.
But out of those 10, how many did I actually apply? And of those lessons I have applied, did I work at them hard enough to achieve some positive change?