Strategies for Work Underwhelm

I’m anticipating my usual new year drop in indexing and editing jobs as everyone reboots from the holidays. As the primary breadwinner in my family, this situation generally leads me into 1) fear, and 2) distraction, which are both extremely counterproductive in terms of making the most of any “unscheduled” time off.

I know, you’re thinking about all those tasks that I could focus on while waiting for new work to come in. I get that, but overcoming the panic and the distraction of just doing busy work or binge watching on YouTube can be very difficult. I think the fear factor probably leads to using distraction as a self-medicating activity (Those old Fred Astaire dance routines on YouTube are so awesome!—go ahead, it’s only a couple of minutes long).

But this up-and-down in workload is a constant feature of freelance work, in the publishing industry and elsewhere. We need a plan to be able to best use the time available, whether we are overwhelmed, or underwhelmed, like I am at the moment.

The methods for both situations are, surprisingly in some ways, the same. My editorial friend, Sara Donaldson, has referred to an excellent Tedx talk that explains three key strategies to train our brains: simplify, relax, and unitask. I think these strategies apply equally well when we are faced with not enough to do. The trick is to relax out of the fear of not having the steady paycheck, simplify the list of tasks we’ve been putting off until we had all kinds of time, and take them on one at a time in the same way we would organize a day with billable work.

Which means finding and making good use of our best focused work time. I find my most serious stretch of work time is in the early-to-mid-afternoon, largely because I live in the Pacific time zone of the USA. Since I moved here a few years ago, I’ve noticed that because everyone else’s day is already well underway when I start my morning, my morning is the best time to communicate with clients and deal with email; later in my afternoon, the communication from the rest of the world goes quiet and I’m on my own to focus.

So, I’m taking this opportunity to:

1. Simplify and reduce my social media outlets
2. Get ahead on writing blog posts
3. Make my new year business plan

So, what are you doing to focus regardless of your workload?