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Why I decided to take a working holiday…

Posted 25 Mar 2010 - 2 Gratefully received comments

I’ve read plenty of articles on various blogs about the dangers of designers/freelancers burning themselves out. To be honest; I never really took a lot of it seriously.

There have been times in my career that I have felt a little less enthusiastic about what I’m doing. Or I’ve found it very difficult to muster up the motivation to get things done. But I never really imagine that I’ll ever have a complete meltdown where I need to get away from all forms of work.

Lately I have been struggling a little with my workload and balancing it all with the rest of my life. Tight deadlines, unexpected project extensions and revisions. You all know what it’s like when you feel like everything that could go wrong does go wrong, all at once.

Basically the last few months have been very hectic, and there is always a bit of a payoff to this. I wouldn’t say I’ve lost my edge, I just find myself procrastinating a lot more than usual. I still get the ideas, I still do the work to my usual high standards but I keep putting it off until the last minute.
My flat is as clean as it’s been since we moved in, I’ve discovered all those little addictive games that I thought I’d deleted from my hard-drive and I rediscovered my passion for cooking. I put all of these things down to putting off some of my design projects.

So I guess it’s a question of motivation.

In an attempt to battle this odd quirk of mine I decided to give myself a break. I can’t actually afford to take a complete holiday from everything, so I took a half measure.

For a week I scaled back the “design” element of my work. I didn’t grind everything to a complete halt, but I got away from the creative part of my job for as much time as I could sensibly manage without stretching deadlines or upsetting clients.

I didn’t walk away from it all though. I decided to take the week to sort out the administrative side of things, and get myself organised. In fact it turned into a bit of a business spring clean.

I updated all of my records and got my accounts in order, I performed all of my backups and updated all of my software and hardware. I even took some time out to reconnect with a few of my clients. I went to visit a few of the clients I’ve worked for recently, and a few that I haven’t just for a bit of a chat. Not directly chasing jobs just to check in and act as a bit of a reminder.
I’ve even scaled down my activity on twitter, which has been a bit of a wrench but I felt it was important. Apologies to anyone that might have missed my tweets (doubtful I know).

I also took some time to be a bit lazy. I played those computer games, got into a book I’ve been meaning to read for ages, and just spent time with my fiance.

Now I feel quite refreshed, through very little effort. The only thing I did was create a small pocket of time for myself where I could turn off the pressures of work.

I’m raring to go now and get stuck back into the projects I have in the works. I’m really looking forward to it all, in fact I have been for a few days, but I’ve managed to restrain myself.
I know exactly what I’ve got to do, how I want to do it and I’m in a position to achieve these goals knowing that my supporting equipment is in order.

Why not give yourself a business stocktake, and more importantly give yourself a break. Not only will you benefit personally; it could benefit you professionally in the long run.

How do you relive the pressures of work, and what are the signs you look out for that tell you that you need to take a step back?

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