A lesson from late-night TV
One of the shows I like watching to unwind at the end of the day is “Watch What Happens Live.” It’s a fluffy show with celebrity interviews – including a lot of reality TV personalities I’ve never heard of, but it’s fun to watch anyway.
Recently, Mario Cantone, a comedic actor, was a guest, and he made a comment that resonated with me: “I don’t intermittent fast – I intermittent live.” He was talking about how he designs his life around his apparently copious amounts of sleep. But it reminded me of the cycles we can experience when we’re running our own business.
The freelancer’s forecast? Sunny with a chance of surprise
Being self-employed means never quite knowing what your next week – or even your next day – will look like. Sure, as employees, we can experience sudden shifts in priorities and have peaks and valleys in our workload. But it’s nothing compared to the wild rides we can have when we’re self-employed.
I steadily do my marketing work, like sending out emails and attending conferences. I have a steady stream of administrative work I need to do to keep my business humming along, like my bookkeeping. But I never know when new work is going to pop up, whether it’s from an existing client or a new one.
When a slow start becomes a sprint
Just recently, a colleague I met during a certification course referred me to a new client. The work with this new client started off slowly, just a few hours a day. And this was fantastic because I was still finishing up a project with another client at the same time.
But this new project quickly morphed into working every weekend and every evening, up to 15 hours a day. Everything was completely new: the client, their processes, the technical information I was dealing with. With this type of learning curve, my brain was full by about lunchtime every day…and I still had hours to go. It was mentally draining work.
Squeezing life into the margins
Being wrapped up in this project led to truly “intermittent living.” I squeezed my non-work life into every spare corner of time I had. Even finding time to eat was challenging some days. Still, I was thankful for the work and thankful to have a new client.
It was the kind of workload that would have definitely led to burnout when I was an employee. But as a consultant, knowing there was a clear finish line – and that I could take as much time off as I needed afterward – helped me stay focused. I reminded myself it was a fleeting season and one that would ultimately have a nice financial payoff.
Surviving the intensity and appreciating the opportunity
Even if we steadily work on everyday tasks to build and maintain our business, we just never know when a new opportunity is going to come along. While having a steadier flow of work may be something I aim for in the future, I understand that to do the kind of work I want to do right now, part of that means grabbing the right opportunities whenever they may come along – whether the timing or workload is convenient or not.
Would you trade freedom for predictability?
What do you think? Would you rather have that employee-style stream of work every day? Or maybe you like the unpredictability that often comes with self-employment, especially for the trade-off of having much more freedom with your time overall. Let us know in the comments!