When many people begin a career as a freelance writer, being too busy with projects simply wasn’t a concern. As an independent contractor, a freelancer must find new projects and assignments to work on regularly in order to work full-time hours over the course of a week. This must be repeated regularly to earn a decent annual income and the prospect of constantly finding new assignments and projects to work on can seem daunting for a new freelance writer. However, now that you have established yourself as a skilled freelance writer, you may realize that your skills and talents are in high demand. In fact, you may have more people asking you to work for them than you have time available to work on those projects.
When You Are Overworked
The fact is that being busy with steady work is one thing, but being overworked and feeling like you have too much to do on a regular basis is another thing altogether. When you are overworked, you may have difficulty concentrating on the projects that are sitting right in front of you. Your creativity and focus may be lacking, and ultimately, your quality of work can suffer. In addition, you may feel as though you have to rush through your assignments in order to get all of your tasks completed for the day. You also may work longer hours and may even fail to take a day or two off work each week. All of these factors can combine together to create a situation where the quality of your work suffers. Ultimately, this can affect your paycheck and your ability to find assignments in the weeks and months to come. You may be busy now, but if you do not do quality work while you are busy, you may not earn future business from your clients. As a final note, being overworked inevitably can make you feel stressed out and unhappy with your job. This can breed discontent that carries over into your personal life as well.
What You Can Do About It
Clearly, it is in your best interest as a freelance writer to stay busy, but it is counterproductive and even damaging to be overworked. With this in mind, you should strive to find the ideal balance in your work life. Learning how to schedule your assignments and how to set client expectations is critical. For example, if a client asks you to complete an urgent assignment at the last minute and you simply do not have time for it, it is acceptable to tell the client what your realistic schedule for completing the assignment is. Just because he asks you to complete an assignment by tomorrow doesn’t mean he would not be open to having you complete it a day or two later. In the event your timeframe is not acceptable to him, he can always have someone else do it. You may not want to sacrifice work, but if you don’t have time to do it within his timeframe, then you should not try to force it into your schedule. Another idea is to reorganize your workday so that you work more productively throughout the day. By being more productive, you may be able to more easily maintain your workload without feeling stressed out.
All freelance writers want to stay busy, but nobody wants to feel overworked and stressed out. If you have been feeling overworked in recent days or weeks, consider taking steps necessary to ease your work schedule or improve productivity.
