5 Ways to Regain Your Creative Joy
One of the most difficult parts of freelancing is the tendency of the freelancer to eventually lose joy for the work. You may have come, like me, from a gig that paid well but didn’t fully capitalize on your talents. You decided to start working as a freelancer in order to make money doing what you love. That’s what this is all about, right? Following your passions?
The struggle comes when, as with anything, the shine fades. But you have it extra tough as freelancers because you’re left without any of the protective structure of a formal work environment. This isn’t a salary position. You can’t have a bad day, get nothing done, and make your boss happy by doing twice as much the next day. An off day for you means no billable hours.
What happened? Wasn’t this supposed to be a wild ride toward financial freedom and fame for being an expert in your chosen field? For creatives, especially those who make their living by framing and finishing ideas, the grind of freelance work can slowly rip the joy out of the creative process.
How can you get the joy back? Whether you’ve been freelancing for years or are just starting out, I think you’ll find value in the following tips:
1. Simplify your process
Get back to the basics of your craft. Take away the client-focused “big picture” mentality and focus on the details how you get things done.
- For the web designer, try giving up designing in-browser and spend a week with a notebook and pen. Steep yourself in the world around you and get a feel for the way your design sensibility has developed since you first started. You might even learn something new about yourself as take a break from the big screen.
- For the copywriter, try to spend as much time away from your computer as possible. Perhaps limit yourself to an hour per day of online time. Sure, you won’t be able to fall back on your lightning quick typing skills to get projects out the door at the last minute. But that frenetic pace is part of what’s taken your joy. The idea is to dig down to the process that made you fall in love with your work to begin with. Surely you didn’t start freelancing because you hated what you do!
- For the consultant, try distilling your initial interview process into fewer than 5 questions and spend most of your time listening without trying to prepare an immediate response. It’s tempting to get sucked into constant rapid-fire interactions, especially because they seem so “professional.” Slowing things down and allowing for more robust answers will give you more room for deeper insights and, possibly, a reminder as to why you started doing this in the first place.
2. Change your location
If you can afford to spend the next month working from a villa in Rome, do it! The rest of us will have to content ourselves with working from a different coffee shop or switching coworking spaces. The point of changing your location is to alter the subliminal influences of a place that gain power over time. When you look at your current workspace, do you see a place where numerous late nights and frustrated phone calls take place? Do you sit in your office chair and get that feeling in the back of your mind that you’ve plopped yourself into more of the same old thing?
Dig your way free of the suffocating weight of your current environment and try working in a space that feels “new.”
3. Resurrect an old passion
Perhaps you once played in a band, took pottery classes, or went rock climbing back in the days when you didn’t have clients scheduled back to back? The freelancer’s workday is a blend of work and life like no other. You can use this to your advantage and push joy back into your work by adding joy in another part of your day.
For a creative, improvement in one area will necessarily help with the rest. Picking up that guitar again will hone your sense of rhythm as a copywriter. Taking pottery classes might cure you of your fixation on grunge web designs. Rock climbing and most other physical activities will give you a boost by reducing stress and increasing your stamina.
4. Set short-term goals
Remember when you were a dreamer? Now your work has extended its gnarled tendrils into every part of your life and you’ve stopped dreaming. I don’t have a quick and easy solution to bring your dreams back but I’ve found setting short-term goals to be a powerful way of helping me think more about my future.
When you think about your future, you’ll begin to consider possibilities and hopes that you may have forgotten. Setting short-term goals and reaching them will help you regain joy in your work by reaffirming your ability to use this work you’ve chosen to change your life for the better. For example, you may have dreamed that freelancing would allow you to be debt-free but life is complicated and you’re back scrambling to make minimum payments on your credit cards. A short-term goal in this case would involve paying one of your cards down by an additional $300 this month. Once you’ve planned and achieved that goal, you’ll have confirmation that you can indeed reduce your debt as a freelancer. Nice!
5. Get professional training
Join a professional society, start a professional club in your area, or sign up for classes related to your field. Why? Because iron sharpens iron and the freelancer who knows she has an edge in her field is the least likely one to frown at the idea of doing more good work.
Professional training will also give you another reason to get out of the house and talk to people. Until we start using James Cameron’s expression technology to move the eyebrows on our avatars, we’ll only find the true joy of companionship within range where deodorant matters.
What about you? Have you lost your joy for your craft and later regained it? If so, how did you do it and what can you share to help us find your success? Thanks for sharing!
Get more tips and creative inspiration from Seth Simonds at his blog or hit him up for a follow on Twitter.
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This came just at the right time. With my new website stuck 1/3 of the way into development and my camera sitting on my desk staring at me, I needed to know I’m not alone.
There are thousands in the same position. Probably not without as nice a camera though. =)
Perfect timing! I’m so close to losing my passion in designing. Thanks for the tips =)
Another great article. I to temporeraly move out of the studio for a few days the other week, and couldn’t work out why I felt happier. I finally figured it was as simple as a new location and change of outlook!
This is a great article, simple and to the point. I appreciate these tips of insight. I think taking a break away from a computer screen would be so nice for a week if I didn’t work full time. But, I could take a break from my evenings and no use the computer and just draw.
Thanks again.
OMG, this really hit the spot.
When you’re on your own, it can be tough to find a balance between doing what feeds your stomach, and what feeds your soul.
Somewhere in the chase to fill up those coffers, I forgot to dream. Time to re-examine my priorities.
Thanks for the reminder, Seth.
Dreaming is a must. Perhaps you could take a few days for a crazy micro project and come back with your creative joy in full force? Get that soul fed!
I was getting to this point just a few days ago.
Day after day stuck at home working, working, working, not really feeling creative nor satisfied.
Last night I had a chance to sleep over at a friends house, and I took it, woke up this morning and went straight to a good old coffee place. I suddenly saw different solutions to the problems I’ve been trying to fix at work and I felt more in the mood to tackle other tasks that I had been postponing because I had too much work to deal with them.
Everything is falling back into place, like it was a couple of years ago.
Leaving the house, working from the coffee shop and seeing people everywhere has been great.
It’s crazy how a simple change of geographic surroundings can make such a difference! Unlike many jobs, freelancing + working too much often = not seeing people.
Even the annoying ones are better than nothing. =)
I’ve had plenty of those moments and it just takes a day or two off to relax. When you have no creative flow, just stop and step away from the computer.
It can be great to go back to the “roots” of where you began as a designer. Many started with a pencil and a scrap piece of paper.. Sometimes its good to head out to a public place and do some character sketches, nature studies, etc.
Might just pump you full of inspiration.
Wonderful tips. Setting short-term goals is something I had all but forgotten about – this was a great reminder. Another point I’d add on to the list is perhaps a little less practical and a little more ‘touchy-feely’, but I think it’s important to remember that as freelancers we are providing a valuable service for our clients. Sometimes it helps to think about a job from the perspective of ‘how can I best serve this client’? ‘What can I do differently or better than usual?’ It helps to take the focus off your own situation and think about the job from the opposite perspective – sometimes that can get some juices flowing.
Nothing wrong with “touchy feely” if it gets results!
“How can I serve my client better” can also lead to tremendous scope creep and burnout.
At the same time, that sort of focus can lead us back to the roots of why we started. Good tip!
Great post!
Lately I have been noticing that I’m not really into coding as much, mostly because I am still learning and its frustrating for me. Currently going to school for night courses, etc to learn JavaScript, etc.
I think once I am done my courses, I might take a separate direction. I have been thinking about hitting up the colleges for more design related courses… I find I have a better understanding for that sort of thing rather than programming JS and PHP.
We’ll see how it goes, but I will never 100% push myself away from other aspects, but I think its time to focus on what makes me happy.
You just mapped out what looks to be a very cool journey. I’m a bit jealous.
Nicely done. All good things to do.
1,2, and 4 really help me out when the creativity is running low.
Mike
http://www.doogin.com
Timely post, in the past 3 weeks I’ve done three (and a half) of these. Thanks for the inspiration. I’m going to make sure I simplify my process and seek out some professional training.
Very timely post.
.
See how many commented experiencing the same situations
For me it’s time to have break and get back to some outdoor activities.
Great ideas and perfect timing!
I was stuck in my own design rut and decided to rechannel my energy into my artwork. However, now my creativity has blown out of control with 18 paintings to complete, jewelry designs to create, and getting back to photographing the things that inspire me…I feel more creative than I have ever felt in years!!
BTW…keeping a small sketchbook and my favorite ink pen close by helps me to concept ideas on the fly. Try it!
I have a moleskine and nice pen I carry around. Sometimes it helps just to write or sketch something, even if it’s nothing in particular and for no reason at all. Keeps the blood flowing, I guess.
I´ve been a frelance writer and translator for 25 years (yikes) and I would not have it any other way. However I still need to change my place of work (a library, coffee shop or even the pool) regularly to “feel” it and become more productive. Good article.
Setting short term goals is a definite to get back your inspiration. Nice article!
Keeping a list handy of what needs to be done and leading a disciplined life with only a few hours of work everyday certainly keeps one excited about the day.
Continuous Parallel education is the best way to reduce uncreative slots..
You forgot 1… dance! Dancing is a great way to get the brain working and think up some great things.
Great post! I find myself daydreaming often about what I’m passionate about, and I always try to write things down. Coming back to my super-long list of ideas and creative thoughts always gets me worked up about what I do again.
Two things that work for me when things go muddy.
1. Going deep. (Expressed better than I could ever do so, by writer Steven Pressfield: http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/2010/02/writing-wednesdays-28-depth-of-work/)
When work gets funky, it’s often because I’ve retreated to some surface junk, like word count, or client specs, or formulas. I’m not really immersed in the task, or seeing the real core. I’m faking it.
2. Just do the thing exactly as I would LOVE to do it. Never mind the client’s imagined whispers. Never mind what’s ‘proper’ or ‘expected’. Never mind how you’ve always done it. Just do this one, exactly as you would truly want to do it — breaking as many rules, taboos, protocols and creative briefs as possible. How would you really like to see this? (Being snide and sarcastic is okay.)
But then, I often just make this stuff up.
Thanks for the post. I am currently at this phase, when freelance doesn’t make me feel like free anymore. Tasks are no longer challenging, but suffocating.
But I just noticed that these tips, except for #2, are the same tips that we’re drummed into my head during the stop-yourself-from-burning-out workshops I attended when I was still a regular employee.
And I thought being a freelancer is the answer. I hope it still is.
“Remember when you were a dreamer? Now your work has extended its gnarled tendrils into every part of your life and you’ve stopped dreaming”
T_T… Nicee post! I loved
Great ideas and perfect timing For the web designer
Good ideas would love to sod off to Rome for a couple weeks to do this
great tips, thanks for the post
Good article. Also believe it’s important to make sure you have the physical and mental energy it takes to succeed. Wrote an article about that recently. Read more on http://catarinasworld.com/?p=121
Useful site. If I start freelancing again I will definitely join.