What I do when I don't want to work
An exposé
One of the silliest assumptions about starting your own business is that you’ll always want to work on it.
Because, at least for a while, it was the thing you wanted most.
You probably spent months building it alongside your full-time job. Saved every spare penny as a financial buffer, so you could afford to quit. Or, you did an Ebony and fucked off to a different country with a £250 contract to see if the freelance thing was worth it. Spoiler: it is.
But, as with any other job, there are days when the alarm jolts you awake and you think: Nah. Fuck this.
A lot of freelancing exists in this duality: feeling incredibly lucky that you get to do it, and incredibly guilty when you just don’t wanna!
It’s a lifestyle of extremes – but you probably already know that. Feast and famine. Underbooked and overbooked. More satisfied in your career than ever before, but also more overwhelmed by it.
When my motivation dries up, I miss something I swore I’d never want: a boss hovering over my shoulder, telling me to do stuff. It’s a bit sadistic.
Instead, I have to find momentum elsewhere. You have to figure out your unique triggers; the metaphorical buttons you can push that motivate you when you barely feel like opening your laptop. I think of this as a weird form of conditioning; as you’ll come to see in this edition of Your Freelance Ally, I regularly ‘trick’ myself into working.
Which is why I’m giving you this today: a list of things I do when I don’t want to work. Some motivate me to work, others make me feel less critical of myself. Because you probably need to do some work too, but you don’t need to feel shitty about it.
7 things Ebo does when she just don’t wanna work
I reframe. I’ve learned that criticising myself into action never works. I can’t take full credit for this realisation—my partner, a CBT therapist, passed this wisdom onto me. He reminds me that we can’t be cajoled into action by ‘shoulds’; ‘I should write more.’ ‘I should exercise more.’ ‘I should paint more.’ Instead, I reframe these as ‘I get to’. When it comes to work, I tell myself ‘I get to work on this today’. It helps.
I walk. I’m trying to average 10K steps a day because there’s no excuse for me not to. I live near a cemetery – not the spooky kind, the kind that has an army of squirrels and a scattering of muntjacks. Wildflowers grow there this time of year, and the trees are so tall and broad that the sunlight looks like flecks of glitter on the leaves. No excuse.
I take the lowest-hanging fruit. What’s the easiest task I can do that means I can tick something off my list and spur myself into action? The little buzz I get from ticking a task off is akin to a full-fat coca-cola. And probably better for my health than that delicious syrupy treat. It makes me want to do more tasks and tick more ticks.
I do the five-minute rule. This one’s sneaky: you tell yourself you’re only gonna do five minutes on the thing. Just five! The trick? You usually end up working on it long past five minutes. Turns out you just need to lower your expectations and take the pressure off. Works a treat.
I get a snack. It is frequently: sesame snaps (a childhood treat!), an apple, or a cereal bar. I’m very good at ignoring physical cues, so enforcing snack breaks is helpful when I’ve forgotten to eat. We’re overly complex plants, and if in doubt, food, light, and water are usually the answer to most questions.
I reward myself like a caged rat. My favourite reward at the moment is a kitkat chunky, but I’ve also tried non-edible things like getting to draw a colourful flower once I’ve completed a job. Turns out we’re not just plants, we’re toddlers! Yay for colours!
I tidy my office. This doesn’t get the work over the line, but it does mean when I leave my office and reenter it in the morning, I don’t shout expletives about the number of trinkets, odd socks, and hair accessories strewn across surfaces.
Anywho, I hope that helps. At the very least, I hope you feel reassured that even with your dream job, some days you might think: fuck it.
Juicy resources below.
~ Ebony-Storm x
The resource section
🔐 How much do we actually trust AI? And – more tellingly – who do we trust with it? This Edelman Trust Barometer report contains plenty of wild stats about our faith in innovation and innovators.
❤️🔥 I have a sneaking suspicion that, should I be employed again one day, I’d be a personality hire. This podcast ep from the Financial Times explains why that can be a positive and a negative in equal measure.
📚 One for my fellow word-wranglers: The Copy Book is sexy enough to have on your coffee table, and insightful enough to pull you out of a marketing slump when the words don’t fit together. I’ve been dipping in and out of this for weeks, and loving it.