The Mindf*ck of Going Freelance

Moving out of corporate and into self-employment was one of the biggest mindfucks I’ve ever experienced. Here are 10 things I wish I would’ve known when making the transition:

🔋 Manage your energy, not your time

Time-management is overrated — all you have is time when you’re self-employed! Energy management is your ultimate task now, especially if you’re neurodivergent.

Observe how and when you do your best work, and put yourself in that position often. Learn how to create energy, and then strike when the iron is hot. Learn how to channel energy toward your work, even when motivation is low. These are the skills that will take you where you want to go, and keep you sane in the process.

You are no longer a cog in someone else’s machine — you are the machine. Your work is fundamentally different now. Your work, your success, is contingent on how you show up.

🛼 Momentum matters more than motivation

There are a lot of overwhelmingly big, scary, and complicated to-dos you’ll have to conquer when you’re self-employed, and it’s easy to freeze up before you even begin.

Only focus on getting through the first 5-15 first minutes of a task. Focus on the smallest first step of a project. Keep taking the immediate next step, over and over, even if it feels slow. Eventually, you’ll see progress and momentum will start to carry you.

Momentum has a way of quieting the voices in your head, making resistance fall away, and make the most complicated things feel kind of… easy.

🏆 There’s no glory in having the hardest time

Self-employment will be quite difficult at times, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make things easier. You don’t get a cookie for being the most tired. There’s no trophy that gets awarded to the Biggest Struggler.

It becomes a lot easier to ask for when, try new things, and find a new path forward when you remember that there’s no morality in how easy or hard something feels.

🤝 Find a creative collaborator, business partner, or accountability buddy

You’re an ideas person, which is great for self-employment — but you may find yourself having trouble staying on one things long enough to bring it to life. Your tendency to overthink will only make this more difficult. And sometimes, you probably just won’t feel like doing the boring, hard, or tedious tasks that land on your to-do list.

This is why you need someone to keep you on track. It can be tough going from the accountability that corporate jobs provide in teams and managers, to self-employment, where you’re both the boss and the employee all tied up in one.

Find someone who has a stake in your success. Find someone who will hold you to what you say you’re gonna do. This could be a business partner, a friend who also has a business, or at minimum, a group you can become familiar with, whether online or IRL.

🌀 Don’t get lost in the fonts and colors

Making a shitty first draft will always be the better strategy than spending 2 hours deciding which shade of blue should be your website background color.

In the beginning, your taste will outweigh your ability, and your ambition will outweigh your talent. Don’t let that keep you stuck. Version 1 of something isn’t supposed to be anywhere close to your ideal version.

The first try is a necessary, oftentimes embarrassing, imperfect gateway to the excellence you want so badly.

🪤 Don’t fall for the traps

You don’t need another $777 course. You don’t need to use sales funnels. You don’t need 100k followers on Instagram. You don’t need a coach.

Good marketing can convince you that any of these things will provide a one-way ticket to success — don’t fall for it.

🍃 Don’t force it

Pivot as often as you need to. If you earnestly tried something, it’s not working out, and it feels like you’ve taken the idea as far as it can go right now, don’t be afraid to let it go. Ideas have a way of coming back around in time.

You can’t possibly know how it’ll turn out, or how good things can get, so stop trying to control the process.

Try, yes. Persevere, yes. But don’t force it.

💎 Don’t bail before you reach the diamonds

Cheesy? Yes. True? Also yes.

Imagine if the person who discovered caramelized onions took them off the stove early just because it was taking a while.

Good things take time. Don’t stop just because it’s slow.

🤺 Don’t let IRL people get in your head

When confidence is shaky at the beginning of your new path, armor up around friends, family, and anyone else who may ask about your work.

Rehearse your answer so you don’t talk down about yourself when put on the spot. Tell them as much or as little as you need to in order to protect yourself. Your confidence is more important than their understanding.

If your work comes up in conversation, do not take anything personally, and do not ask for opinions (unless you’re prepared to hear them).

Remember — don’t expect the people in your life to give you the validation you need to keep going.

⭐️ Fuck the rules, fuck the benchmarks

You don’t have to wake up at 6AM, work 8 hours in a day, or produce $10k months for you to be “doing it right”.

Forget all the shoulds you feel obligated to perform. You’re not in corporate anymore, and nobody is watching you.

The qualifiers you feel you have to reach to feel okay about yourself are not real, and you can choose to measure your success by any metrics you want.