6 Ways To Replenish Your Energy & Creativity as a Freelancer

6 Ways To Replenish Your Creativity And Energy As A Freelancer

Summary: Staying balanced as a freelancer is key: If we thrive, our business thrives. However, motivation and energy come in cycles, and slumps are a natural part of that. In this article, I’m going to share 6 things I did in the last 6 weeks that have helped me replenish my creativity, energy and motivation as a freelancer.

Being a freelancer comes with a lot of ups and downs: Fluctuating workloads and irregular working hours can really take a toll on you, and it’s completely normal that we can’t feel our best at all times.

I’ll be honest with you – In the past couple of weeks, I also found myself in a pretty deep creative and motivational slump. I struggled to concentrate on my work and coming up with new language content wasn’t flowing as much as it used to. So I took some measures to get back on track. Here are 6 things that have helped me feel motivated, energized and abundant again:

1. Identify What's Going On

When I was struggling with motivation, concentration and creativity, my first thought was that I needed to take a break, change my habits or do something differently than usual.

But when I took a closer look and asked myself: Since when have I been feeling this way and what happened in my life during that time? – I could suddenly see that the problem was not that I was doing something wrong, but that I was trying to change things without really knowing the cause of why I was feeling this way.

Zooming out and analyzing since when I’ve been feeling demotivated, I saw that there were two changes in my life happening simultaneously to my decrease in energy: My translation workload was lower than usual, and, at the same time, I increased my content rhythm on social media. And I did a lot of things out of my comfort zone (I posted videos of myself online – veeeery scary!). These two things combined caused me a lot of discomfort, left me feeling anxious and eventually blocked my energy.

But once I realized that this might be the reason for how I feel, I already felt a huge relief. Because now I knew what’s going on, I could name it and take the right measures.

2. Limit Yourself to 1 Task

If you’re like me, you’re way too interested in too many things, and you want to do everything at once. And the thing is: I love all the things I’m doing! I love writing, I love language learning, I love exercising. But shifting from one thing to another is exhausting for your mind. Because it always works with 10 open tabs, switching to a different one while actually doing something else.

Believe me: Subtracting things from your routine can sometimes be harder than staying disciplined. Especially as a freelancer, as we’re used to working on several things a time: Our mind sometimes confuses doing less with not doing enough for your business.

So, when I was on vacation, I set myself the goal to subtract things from my schedule: No writing, no reaching out to new clients, no language learning – even though it was tempting to get some things done now that I had some more time. I just took a book with me and the only thing on my to-do-list was to read that book.

By going somewhere and only bringing one thing to do, that conversation in my head whether I should do more didn’t even come up. And but shutting down that conversation, my mind was emptier – and if your mind is empty, you’re making space for fresh motivation and inspiration.

3. Define "more"

As I’ve just said, one of my problems used to be that I often felt I wasn’t doing enough. When I took less time to complete a job, I would look for something else to do: Making some changes to my website, writing a new article, searching for some new photos, learning some new words.

But it never felt like enough. And that was my problem: I didn’t know what “enough” even meant.

You know, building a business is different than, let’s say, studying for a degree. When you’re a student, you’ve given a certain precise schedule. You’re thrown into a group of fellow students that aim for the same thing. You’re handed all the material you need to know in order to graduate. You have a set framework, and if you’re making an effort and follow along, you’ll be certain that you’ll graduate.

Being a freelancer is different. Sometimes, you don’t have anyone in your life who has the same goal. Nobody gives you the exact steps you have to take, and nobody guarantees you that it’s going to be worth it, there’s no teacher who gives you feedback. Maybe you’ve been putting your energy into something that’s not going to lead anywhere. And you know, this can be scary. It can feel like you’re alone in the dark without even knowing if there’s an end.

See, in order to make it as a freelancer, you need to know where you’re going. And I personally lost sight of the way at a point. I was writing my blog and managing my social media, but I got no feedback whatsoever if I was doing a good job. Or if what I was doing was eventually going to pay off. If you do something without knowing that you’re on the way towards a specific goal, you may tell your mind: Let’s do this! Let’s sit down, reach out to another client and write another text! But your mind secretly won’t believe it’s worth the effort and will sabotage you.

So, becoming more clear about where I want to go, for example how much I would like to earn each week, and which steps I had to take to achieve that, helped me define my “enough” – and this really applies to language learning, building a business and any other project equally.

4. Connect With Fellow Freelancers

I really underestimated how important it is to talk to people who share your struggles. And lately, I noticed that I have very few fellow freelancers in my immediate environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very lucky to have friends who I can talk to – but, you know, sometimes, we need someone who knows exactly what’s going on.

So, last week, I scheduled a “lesson” with my Serbian teacher Lellah, who’s also a freelancer. She’s more a friend than a teacher and, to be honest, I didn’t call her to learn Serbian – I just like her positive energy and enjoy talking to her. And really, I haven’t felt that understood in a long time. Having someone telling you: “I know how you feel. I experienced the exact same thing last year. It’s going to pass.” is priceless.

Talking to someone who listened, understood and didn’t suggest me solutions on how to get out of that situation – because sometimes, there is none – is sometimes really all you need.

5. Meditation and Yoga

Meditation and yoga have been a game changer for a long period of time. But especially in the last past weeks, I’ve noticed how setting some time apart for some yoga and meditation – even if I didn’t feel like it – really lowered my anxiety level and increased my focus.

If you’re breathing and moving slow, you’re sending signs to your mind to slow down, and by that, you’re tricking your mind into thinking that there’s no danger, nothing to feel anxious about.

You don’t have to be athletic or flexible to do yoga. Actually, yoga is not about exercising, but rather about what’s going on on the inside. And that’s the beautiful thing: It’s an activity you can do without the pressure of having to be good at it.

I got started with yoga back when I was living in Uruguay in 2019, thanks to the amazing Youtube channel Yoga with Adriene. She’s a yoga teacher who creates, among others, 30-day-challenges that are designed to introduce you into yoga. Even I – a complete beginner a the time – could do it, and that’s how I started. And as it takes about 30 days to build a new habit, this is a great way to try if it’s something you might be able to incorporate in the long run.

6. Engage in Nourishing Activities to Build Focus

Focus is the enemy of anxiety.

So, what’s helping me a lot lately is putting my phone on flight mode and engaging in one activity a time: Reading a book for half an hour, learning some Serbian or Turkish, or writing texts for my website or for social media.

All of these are activities that bring me joy, value, inspiration or clarity, while at the same time forcing me to focus.

As I’m writing this article, I’ve been focussing for around 2 hours in 15-minute intervals. I realized that sometimes, the problem is not that we have too much work. The problem is often that we have too many different tasks or tasks we don’t like, and engage too little in activities that bring us joy and get us into a flow state.

See, each time I’m in a motivational or creative slump, I learn something new about myself, and eventually, this is what’s building resilience in the long run.

This time, for example, I really learned that language learning and writing are not just a hobby. Instead, they can be an important tool for me to stay level-headed, lower my anxiety and calm my mind down.

What I learned in these past weeks is this:
Motivational and creative slumps are part of being a freelancer. It’s important to have a toolbox with things that keep you on track and refill your energy: Things that help you calm your mind, nourish you, make you feel connected.