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Pregnant Freelancing and Maternity Leave, FFW-Style

January 13, 2017 By FiveFigureSarah 2 Comments

Can you freelance pregnant? Can you take a maternity leave? Does all life end when you see that miraculous plus sign on a pregnancy test?

The answers are: yep, I don’t know yet, and nope. So let’s get into it:

I’m pregnant and due this spring! This has been a crazy, patient journey, and I was pretty terrified during my first trimester because of the health issues I’ve written about in the past. But everything’s going great and it looks like I’ll be a very lucky mom in a few months.

On my personal blog, I tackled “a day in the life” of my freelance pregnancy so far. But for you guys, I want to dig deeper into what pregnancy does to the freelancing experience.

This isn’t about how grateful I am to have the flexibility to work when I feel good or not work when I don’t feel good (though that is awesome, and I cover my approach in The Sweet Spot guide). This is about the hope I have for my career now that a) I don’t feel as reliable and b) there’s about to be a little person in my life who’s even less reliable.

So, let’s talk about it! Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Pregnancy Makes You A Better Freelancer

I read a long time ago that parenting makes you a better freelancer. Now that’s hopeful!

I desperately wish I could find that original post, because the man who wrote it was very matter-of-fact about how much better he was at his job since he had kids.

And not just because of “the deadline paradox,” where the less time you leave for a deadline the faster you can finish it (because even if you can get away with it a few times, that leads to shoddy work). He meant that he was a different person, his child made him a better person, and the work he did was more creative, nuanced, and – yes – faster because of the pressures in his life.

He was a different person, his child made him a better person, and the work he did was more creative, nuanced, and – yes – faster because of the pressures in his life.

How awesome is that?

This is also a perspective shift courtesy of Pam England’s Birthing From Within. In her introduction, she explained pregnancy as an incredibly restorative, powerful, and creative time for a woman.

I’ve never heard that before, and it gave me the hope that maybe life would be better with a pregnant body and then a baby. Not our society’s warped view of discomfort, inconvenience, and general crappiness. But actually better.

I’ve found that to be true for me so far. Some days, I only get an hour or two of work in. And yet, somehow, I’ve met all my deadlines, added new clients, and billed well over the past 6 months of pregnant freelancing. I’ve also done the work I’m most proud of of my career during this time.

There were periods of significantly less work, and then periods of a lot of work. It all got done, and I grew a little baby human in the meantime. The two were not mutually exclusive for me — though I understand that that may not be the case next time ;-).

Pregnancy Makes You A Better Believer (Which Also Makes You A Better Freelancer)

I also have first-hand experience about how this pregnancy thing (and potentially parenting — we’ll see) forces you (ahem) gives you the ability to trust in God.

Because seriously. Much like pregnancy, this freelancing roller coaster is not under our control. We have a lot of agency — we can develop good freelancing habits like marketing and updating our portfolios, honing our craft by reading good books and participating in writing communities, and getting up every day and write.

But our careers are in God’s hands. If we’re not meant to freelance, this ship isn’t getting out of the dock.

Much like pregnancy, this freelancing roller coaster is not under our control. If we’re not meant to freelance, this ship isn’t getting out of the dock.

Fortunately, the opposite is true, too. When you give it all to God, things work out even when you don’t see how they possibly ever could. That client you gave up on calls back. Someone contacts you out of the blue to start a new project. And that’s the story of the past 6 months for me.

Clearly, it’s a give and take between doing the work and letting God bless the work, but before pregnancy I did a lot more “frantically doing the work”. The past few months, I’ve been given the grace to sit back a little and let God bless it, too.

Same goes for my brain function as a pregnant freelancer. I was really worried about “pregnancy brain” ransacking my ability to write and being a vegetable for 9 months (and then who knows how long after). But since I had to give it all to God, I did. I love this line from Peter Kreeft’s Prayer for Beginners:

“[When we ask for the grace to trust him with our thoughts…] He is the Master also of our miserable memories. A thought comes into our mind when he says, ‘Come!’ and leaves when he says, ‘Go!’ He is the centurion, our thoughts are his soldiers. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

This has definitely been the case with me. I place every single workday in God’s hands. I still get stressed and I still wonder if I’ll deliver my best work by the deadline and all that, but in general, I have so much more peace about the work I do, finding new clients, and when I will get paid, that it’s light years better than non-pregnant freelancing.

This sense of peace and calm filters into my client calls and emails, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my client relationships are better than ever.

Making and Disseminating Maternity Plans

I got into this freelance thing as a way to have more say over my day. Having a high level of control over when I wake up and where I work is a huge motivator for me, and by far the #1 benefit of working for myself.

So, when it comes to a maternity leave, even though I’m tempted to just wing it and try to work, I want to plan to take some time and truly detach from work and attach to this little baby. (And then there’s that whole sleep thing, which isn’t conducive to getting paid to write.)

Having a high level of control over when I wake up and where I work is a huge motivator for me.

Here’s how I worked it out, though we’ll see if it works out: I kept the news private until I was 6 months pregnant. Then I let all my clients know the news, that I’d love to put work together in advance, and that I’ll be limiting new assignments starting two weeks before my due date to two and a half months after. (I gave a three-month date range).

So far, so awesome.

With some clients, this triggered the response that it’d be best to reconnect after the baby’s born. With others (thank the Lord) we’re going to get the work for those months completed before I take off. In the green light scenarios, l offered to set up auto-invoicing with FreshBooks so the client can still pay at regular intervals instead of having one huge bill early on. (This might not be the advice you get from everyone, but in the two situations I offered, it felt really right.)

The Final Trimester

So, here I am, power writing and power napping. I’m wrapping up projects from last year and starting projects that will be wrapped up within the next two months.

When I list out all the things to do, it seems overwhelming, but so far I’m still trucking day by day and delivering some seriously awesome work (if I do say so myself). But the best part of it all is the level of peacefulness that comes with knowing I’ll work as hard as I can — and the I’ll stop.

And then, God willing, I’ll pick it back up again and have even more to share with you guys. 🙂

You’re Invited: Freelancing Pregnancy Stories? How’d It Go For You?

Stop Clicking, Start Improving: How to Fight Off Information Overwhelm

October 6, 2015 By FiveFigureSarah 8 Comments

Stop Clicking, Start Improving: How to Fight Off Information Overwhelm - Five Figure Writer

There are 1 Billion websites in the world. And sometimes it feels like there’s about twice as many resources for how to be awesome at freelancing, make six figures or more, or “4-hour workweek” your hair so you never have to use a brush or gel again.

In some ways, this offers us freelancers a world of plenty. There’s always a better way to invoice or an easier way to pitch a new client. But the reality of having a limitless supply of new, exciting information at your fingertips everyday? It’s paralyzing.

You only have so much time in a week. You only have so many mouse clicks in a day. And you can only read so fast.

You only have so much time in a week. You only have so many mouse clicks in a day. And you can only read so fast.

If you aren’t very careful about how you spend your time (and what you sign up for in your inbox), information overwhelm creep into your daily habits and prevent you from getting any work done at all.

And worse yet? Information overwhelm will make you miss out on the truly useful and actionable information that’s out there!

I’m not here to recommend any course or communities in particular, but I do have advice for handling the overwhelm so you don’t go bat crap insane (like I was feeling toward the end of summer this year).

1. Pick three communities and ignore the rest of them.

This is a random number, but it feels right to me. You don’t have fifteen hundred eyes and you only have 24 hours in a day. You can’t read everything, download everything, or take every course. You also can’t follow up with everyone and build a close relationship with everyone (if you think you can, you’re likely not being genuine about it).

It makes much more sense to pick three communities with leaders that resonate with you the most (and that might be filed with potential clients, potential peers, or whatever) and stake your flag.

I get it. Picking three in a million will be difficult. But think of the upside. Limiting your time investment means you’ll develop deeper, more personal relationships because you’re engaging, not lurking. This also means people within these communities will recognize you and what you do, rather than being 1 in a million of the faces they see throughout the day.

Find a blog you love with a voice that speaks to how you see the world and how you want to run your business. Focus on personality, tone, and values. Choose leaders who meet your aspirational goals (such as monthly income, independence, or level of confidence) not your personality goals (“I wish I could be as sassy as she is, it’s so entertaining!”). This will help you find other like-minded freelancers and writers who will be easy to connect with on a personal level.

The rest of the communities? Unsubscribe. Leave the group. Stop commenting.

The blogs that don’t sync with you? Unsubscribe. Leave the group. Stop commenting.

Now that’s not to say you aren’t reading a good blog post now and then or sharing the crap out of everything on Twitter. But when it comes to day to day engagement and investment, you have your big three and that’s that.

Use the least-stressful social media account you have (for me, that’s Twitter) and follow EVERYONE. That way you still see new promotions or popular posts and ideas as they come up, but it’s not distracting you from important work in your inbox.

2. Get old school (and offline) with handwritten note-taking.

Besides stuffing up your inbox, information overwhelm often fills your brain and computer with digital fluff. After a while, it’s hard to tell one promotion from another, let alone which ones you’ve read and which you haven’t.

Fight that feeling by taking handwritten notes, sharing the information with one other person, and deleting the information when you’re done.

Take handwritten notes, share the information with one other person, and delete the information when you’re done.

Stop clicking and signing up for things will-nilly, promising yourself “I’ll get to it later” while it clutters up your inbox and your subconscious. When you sign up for a new program or club, download everything you need and read it immediately, taking real, live handwritten notes for the important stuff.

Not only will this help you declutter in the long run (no saving weeks and weeks of 1 by 1 emails from prominent thought leaders), but you will also get more out of what you download immediately.

Just the other day I rediscovered the art of handwritten notes while going through a free email course I’d been meaning to read for ages. I took one full page front and back (see pic) and now I swear this stuff is ingrained in my brain! I understand it more than the times I read it quickly in my email, and the emails are cleared out of my inbox.

Sharing it with one person before I delete it (if it’s good!) further instills the knowledge in my mind and gives me an opportunity to help two people: the person who wrote the item as well as the person I forward it to.

3. Review your “doing” ratio.

The deepest problem of overwhelm is that you’re overwhelmed. You have so much information…and very little time or energy to implement whatever you read about or learn.

Take a minute to think of all the crap you’ve signed up for in the life of your time online. How much of it have you actually implemented? When I consider the hundreds of eBooks, courses, books, blogs, and downloads I’ve ever looked at, the reality of what has effected real change in my business or writing is very, very small. Like, maybe 4 or 5 things I could really point to (and I list them on the resources page).

Slow your roll. Stop signing up for things unless you plan to do them immediately.

Slow your roll. Stop signing up for things unless you plan to do them immediately.

This might seem really uncomfortable at first. But when you sign up for 5 new things each week (without completing the 5 things from last week) you’re floating in a sea of knowledge. It lubes up your mental grip too much to make any progress at all.

When you sign up for these things, you’re basically saying “I’m going to watch these opportunities fly by while I feel too overwhelmed to do anything about them.” Instead, sign up only for things you can get a grip on right away. Try them out, take handwritten notes, and then unsubscribe if it doesn’t resonate with you within a week.

I will still try new things, read new blogs, and download new PDFs, but I do it now with a shrewd and firm look at what I will actually implement. If I’m the third email in and it’s not something I stop what I’m doing to implement, I unsubscribe.

4. Take time off.

I don’t want to reiterate the whole post here, but taking time off — essentially giving yourself LESS time to do work — will help you fight overwhelm.

Taking time off — giving yourself less time to do work — will help you fight overwhelm.

Listen, I could check email All. Day. Even when I have inbox zero (which I strive for at all times) there’s more I could send and more I could follow up with. This kind of work expands according to how much time you give it.

So if you give it less time — by getting away from your computer and not working more often — you will work less, produce more, and be less stressed. You will essentially capture and control the work you’re supposed to do within the cage of a few hours and, voila, the end of overwhelm. If you don’t know how to say “No,” it’s a valuable skill to learn. Check out Nick Reese’s blog post with three simple scripts for declining questions and invitations.

Putting It Into Practice: “Underwhelming” Your Business Habits

There’s so many ways to feel overwhelm, so the solution is a little scattered. Here’s a way to get started:

First, take inventory of all the educational and influential things you follow:

Sign up for https://unroll.me/ and take a look at everything you’re subscribed to.
Look at your feed reader and count the business-related blogs you read
Look in your “Read later” file on your computer, email, drop box, Google Drive or wherever you keep it
Pull up your list of “must read books to buy on Amazon” or “What to put on hold from the library”

Then mercilessly cut and slash things you know aren’t worth your time. Straight up delete files from your computer and blogs from your feed reader. File-wise, organize everything truly worth your time into one place.

Then schedule out the following underwhelming activities:

Networking time throughout the week to build relationships in the three communities you decide to engage in.
Reading days each week where you can systematically walk through these items, implement and note-take on them, throughout the rest of the month.
Book-per-week or book-per-month reading schedule of all those books you’ve been meaning to read.

This schedule will have less on it. It will seem like you aren’t accomplishing much at all. But when you make time to actually go through a small list of things to read and then you actually read those things… you’ve done more than anyone “planning to read 30+ books this month.”

The End of Overwhelm

How many years have I spent trying to read “ALL THE BOOKS!” instead of just one book? And how many books could I have read if I focused on one at a time?

How much time have I spent reading through Facebook freelancer group messages, yet not engaging or making friends in those groups because I’m too busy lurking?

It’s time to stop this nonsense. So, for me, this means I am going to put time in my calendar this week to finish How to Get People to Do Stuff by Susan Weinschenk, a business book that has been on my Kindle, half-read, for six months. I’m also going to leave the one group I lurk in (because it’s just not a good values fit for me) and engage more in the two groups I like.

What are you going to do?

Jessica Starks on Freelance Writing Right Out of College

August 3, 2015 By FiveFigureSarah 1 Comment

As a supplement of Five Figure Writer’s webinar with College Recruiter, here is a short interview with Jessica Starks, freelance writer, on freelancing right out of college.

Please share a little about your career as a freelancer, in particular your successes and why you think it’s the right field for you (thus setting up the awesome benefits of freelancing).

I’ve been freelance writing for about 2-3 years now. I started mainly writing for contests and for my blog, but I eventually expanded into online publications and print magazines. I have also aided students write papers and done some social media work. My first job was honestly a disaster and really made me reconsider if I was fit to work in this business. But the next two jobs I received after that were offered to me without them even seeing my resume,which showed me that maybe I was actually pretty good at this! Ha.

But I honestly believe that freelance writing is the career for me because it’s my calling; I seriously believe writing is my God-given talent and I love it so much! When you get to the point where you would be okay doing something without money,you know it’s love!

What made you decide to freelance right out of college?

Well, I’ve actually been freelancing since high school, but I didn’t really seriously start freelancing until my sophomore year of college. I graduated this past May with an Associate’s degree and two freelance writing jobs, so I have chosen to take a break from obtaining my Bachelor’s right now to focus on my career. I chose to do this because I honestly and truly believe that writing is my calling, and I knew that if I were to continue working and go on to school one of the two would suffer. So I chose to take a leap of faith and see how I could do freelancing with an Associate’s!

What was the hardest part of making that decision (friends and family pressure, fear, situational obstacles, finding a skill you could freelance with)?

I have to say the hardest things for me where peer pressure and self-doubt. I live in Mississippi, which isn’t exactly the first place you’d think of when considering where a freelance writer would live. Not to mention that freelance writing is a job that your average person isn’t familiar with, so when I first started coming out as an actual freelancer, people didn’t know what it was, therefore assumed that it either wasn’t a big deal, wasn’t real, or wasn’t a job where I could make actual money. So that, mixed with my own initial insecurities as a writer(I think most writers struggle with this from time to time, no matter how experienced they may be) made the decision a hard one to make. So I just finally left it in God’s hands and allowed Him to guide me. But my family and friends were extremely supportive throughout the entire process.

What considerations did you give to the financial side of things as you decided to freelance as the sole income provider for the family of you?

Since I decided to take a break from college and pursue my dream, money was something that I really thought about. For one thing, I was going to miss those amazing refund checks from college(LOL), but I knew I couldn’t just go back home and not do anything – I’m only 20 so I still live with my parents, but still – I don’t want to be a bum! So I made a deal with myself: the summer before school is supposed to start back for everyone, I’ll work my two steady freelance gigs and really try to get things going. I will keep track of what I make, and if it doesn’t seem to be doing anything, I will get a part time job in the fall. I told my parents my plan so that there would be other people to hold me accountable.

How did you manage the health care and benefits side of it?

I’m still on my parent’s insurance, so I don’t really have that issue right now. I have read that certain freelance unions offer healthcare for certain areas, but that’s something I’ll figure out when the time comes for me to fully be on my own.

What do you think it takes to be a good freelancer right out of college or at all?

Let me first clear up one thing: being a good freelancer has nothing to do with a degree. I’ve read about great freelance writers who barely made it out of high school, let alone college. Being a good freelancer takes an open mind, confidence, and humility. An open mind will help you to embrace new and different experiences, which can teach you just as good as any college course. Confidence is the ability to pump yourself up, especially when you get rejected(and it will happen!).

What advice would you give to someone interested in doing so but very intimidated by the idea of not getting a full time job?

If someone was nervous about putting themselves out there, I would tell them to take baby steps to make the process easier. Instead of keeping their full time job, maybe they can find something part time so they can start freelancing and have some security starting off. That way if they find that freelancing isn’t for them,they’ll have something to fall back on. But I would also tell them not to worry and just step out on faith – you never know what could happen!

If you’d like to learn more about Jessica and her writing for businesses and for her personal blog, check her out at The Pen and The Needle and on Twitter @JSKA94.