Save some creative energy for yourself

One of the most common reasons creatives freelance or start our own business is for freedom and flexibility (see: my previous post on optionality).

We crave flexibility because we have our own ideas that we want to explore – and being tied to a building or a desk from nine to five feels suffocating.

We don't want our time (and our creative energy) to be held hostage.

So, we leave that job to create our own.

But then something bad sometimes happens: we start holding our own time and creative energy hostage.

We get so wrapped up in the day-to-day of our business and the needs of our clients that we put our own ideas and projects on the shelf.

We tell ourselves that we just need to get through this client project first.

But of course, when we get through that project, there is some other client that we need to attend to.

Sound familiar?

If we aren't careful, we will give away all of the creative energy we left our jobs to protect.

We rationalize it to ourselves.

We tell ourselves that if we don't fill our time with meetings, we will run out clients and go broke. Or we'll tell ourselves that if we don't spend another few hours on this project, the client will hate it.

Sometimes there may be truth to this story...but usually, we're hiding.

We're hiding because it's scary to try and make our ideas a reality. It's scary because it might not be as good as we'd hoped, or it might not get the response we wanted.

We all hide from time to time – it's what Steve Pressfield called The Resistance.

But we know we have to get past it.

If we keep hiding, if we don't remember to save some creative energy for ourselves, we begin to resent ourselves and our own businesses. After all, we resented our previous jobs and businesses because they took away our energy, right?

And if you begin to resent your business, you may not even realize why. You may not realize that you dread getting out of bed to do the work because it feels like the same suffocating situation as a job did.

It's really tough to recognize that we are the reason we are unhappy.

But there's good news: it doesn't have to be that way!

Saving some of your own creative energy is simple – you just need to make it an explicit priority.

It starts with your calendar. If you look at your calendar and don't see time reserved for yourself, then you don't have any.

Explicitly block some time for yourself – honor it like you would honor a client meeting.

My best creative energy is in the mornings. So over the last several months, I have updated my scheduling software to protect my mornings – it's literally impossible to schedule time with me before 11am EST.

The same is true for Mondays and Fridays generally – clients can't schedule time with me on Mondays and Fridays, because the only client that I look after on those days is me.

You may not be able to reserve as much time as I can, but you can start with a couple hours each day, or even a couple hours each week.

If that still seems difficult, what if you woke up 30 minutes earlier every day?

There is always a way to carve out some of your time. And if you hope to stop trading your time for money someday, you HAVE to reserve some of your time to build your way out of it.

I promise you, you can do this.

We will drop our plans on a moment's notice to take care of our clients – we just need to remember to treat ourselves with the same respect from time to time.

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Jude Brewer is an American author, producer, and podcast host.

In this episode we talk about building a career as a writer, traditional vs. self publishing, his struggle to keep a regular job, Portland’s literary scene, and why Adapting his stories for different mediums has helped his career take off.

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Jay Clouse is the creator of Freelancing School, which provides the training and community to help people make a living freelancing. He is also the founder of Unreal Collective, a community for founders, freelancers, and creators that runs a 12-week accelerator program.

Jay hosts Creative Elements, which interviews high-profile creators who have made their own independent living.

You can connect with Jay on Twitter @jayclouse or sign up for his Sunday newsletter for creatives at jayclouse.com.