Creatives like you often enter the world of freelancing because they have more control over their days. As your own boss, you get to enjoy your job, do what you love, and turn down work that doesn’t interest you.
But a profession is still a profession, and if you want it to make money, you must include those business-side factors. Until you can pay someone to do all of the “boring” stuff you don’t like to do for you, you must find a way to balance your creativity and the professional side.
Successful freelancing involves juggling your finances, figuring out how to sustain your lifestyle with randomly spaced income, and marketing yourself to find clients. These things aren’t ‘fun’ to most creative minds, but they’re essential.
Yet, if you can find a way to balance professionalism and creativity, every day is a dream day in your world. These tips can help make that happen!
- Keep Building Your Network
Before you started freelancing, you focused on developing a network of people who could be potential referrals. Now that you’re out on your own, it’s easy to neglect those early supporters. But they helped you build your career, and you don’t want to let go of that.
Keep checking in on those social media groups you joined for creative freelancers. You found mentors there early on; now, you could be someone else’s mentor.
Connect with other gig workers on freelance platforms, too. These networks are great ways to bounce ideas off of other freelancers and creatives and ask questions about the professional side.
What are other solopreneurs doing for insurance? How are they getting discounts on products and services? What’s out there to help make the business stuff easier that you aren’t aware of?
Stay in touch with others like you, and what you learn could help you shape a better balance between creativity and professionalism.
- Design Your Day to Include the Boring Bits
There’s a popular saying that goes, “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch, but yard by yard, it’s all hard.” This applies to everything you approach, whether you want to do it or not, but it’s extra applicable to the boring bits we don’t enjoy.
Picture these two scenes:
Scene One: You have a whole year in front of you to get your tax stuff in place for your accountant. But since you don’t want to do it, you wait until the very last minute to try to scramble everything together. Because you’re disorganized and rushed, you miss out on expenses that could have saved you substantially as write-offs.
Scene Two: You have the whole year in front of you to get your tax act together. You spend a couple of weeks talking to your accountant about the best ways to organize your files. Then, once you have a system in place, you schedule 15 minutes into your day to store your receipts and update your books. When tax time comes around, you add the folders to an email, send them to your account, and save thousands of dollars in taxes that year.
Which scene sounds more like you? Which one sounds healthier? Make sure the two match. (Spoiler: It should look more like Scene Two.) Take the same idea and apply it to anything else that you don’t want to do, but you know could be easier if it were broken into small chunks and turned into a habit.
- Set Limits and Boundaries
Time doesn’t always mean the same thing to a creative as it does to others. You must set boundaries and limits in your schedule and find ways to reinforce them, or you’ll easily lose track of time and neglect other important things.
Maybe sticking to a schedule is really hard for you, and the idea of using a planner is downright nauseating. Still, if you want to remain successful as a freelancer and keep your professionalism, you need to find a way to balance the two with a schedule.
Consider combining flexibility with rigid boundaries into a Google calendar (or your preferred system) like this:
- 6:00 – 9:00: Morning routine
- 9:00 – 12:00: Creative work
- 12:00 – 1:00: Lunch
- 1:00 – 4:00: Creative work
- 4:00 – 5:00: Respond to emails, messages, and file paperwork
Set your scheduling app to notify you when it’s time to move on to the next item on your list. Pay attention to that notification, no matter what you’re doing. If you say, “Oh, I’ll finish this first, then move on,” you may lose track of time until the next alarm rings.
That requires setting limits on yourself and boundaries for other people. Let them know you’ll only respond to messages during your free periods and that you don’t want to be interrupted during your work sessions. But to balance that strict requirement, you must ensure you’re doing your part and making yourself available at those times.
Conclusion
Freelancing is a booming industry, and it’s a great way for creatives to mix business and pleasure in their job. It’s possible to balance the professional side and still keep your creative juices flowing. Just follow these three tips!