This article was written by TJ Bear a Visual Designer & Consultant at Mind Under Mohawk. TJ is also an independent hip hop artist and self-proclaimed "zombie killer" under the alias Saint Warhead. Follow TJ on Twitter: @mindundermohawk @saintwarhead
Avoiding procrastination when you’re a one-person business can be more difficult than you realize. When you work alone there is no boss, or even co-workers to give you an added layer of accountability. In the moment your mind can be insanely convincing to put something off that should be done now. Possibly justifying it by doing something less important (but still important) instead.
A lot of different things can affect our productivity levels and our ability to combat procrastination. Our environment, our personal lives, our eating habits, our sleeping habits, and our exercise habits all directly impact how well you can focus and how long you can be productive. Getting more done in a day is less about time and more about habits, I’ve learned.
Motivation is very difficult to control. Struggling with productivity and procrastination is a common plague for freelancers and solopreneurs. I’m not an expert on behavior or on productivity. I’m just a freelancer that has struggled with it myself, and became desperate to find a cure before it ruined my ability to survive (and forced me back into the slavery of a regular day job).
How A Drought of Productivity Crippled My Business
I recently suffered from a drought of productivity myself.
A little back story on me: I run a one-man business called Mind Under Mohawk where I am a designer, writer, and consultant with a primary focus on the music industry. I do some other things, too. I’m also an independent music artist and occasionally I dabble in talent buying and concert promotion.
I started Mind Under Mohawk around the beginning of the year and within a couple of months of launching it became my primary source of income.
Then the series of events came (granted, mostly self induced) that got me into a funk. I was in the middle of moving. There was turmoil in my personal life. I was juggling too many things at once, and the time I was spending working wasn’t being spent efficiently enough.
One day it just seemed like my ability to be productive disappeared and the excuses to procrastinate got louder and louder inside my head. Every day I kept telling myself I’d start getting things back on track tomorrow.
But the longer I waited the harder it got, and the further I sunk into a depression. I went from being a constant workaholic to avoiding anything that felt like work. However, reality couldn’t be avoided forever. I needed a source of income or life would get really bad. It was time to get back to work.
I knew that if I was going to recover from this before it was too late, I needed to act fast and I needed to tackle whatever was preventing me from being productive.
I’m going to share with you a two-step process that helped me get my business and my life back on track. If events in your life have lead to a drought in your productivity and your business is suffering as a result, my hope is that this process will help you push through it in the nick of time just as it did for me.
It’s essentially the root process every good designer goes through with their clients: identify the problems, and then create solutions. As a designer, I like to look at it as life design. The different areas of your life are the different “projects” you can apply the process to, just as designers apply the process to different design projects. The current project at hand was designing a solution to my issues with productivity. Here’s how the process worked:
1. Identify the problems that lead my productivity downhill
2. Create a list of solutions to fix the problems
Identify The Problems That Lead Your Productivity Downhill
Think back to when you were most productive in your business. Or at least think back to before the drought of productivity hit. What was different about your life? What was different about your day? Did you have any daily routines, habits, or actions that might have been helping to anchor your productivity that you just sort of, stopped doing? Did something drastic happen that threw a wrench in your personal or professional life?
(If you’re a designer, following the life design analogy mentioned earlier: think of this like you think about creating questionnaires for you clients to fill out in order to help you assess the problems in their business that you need to solve. Thinking like a designer is thinking like a problem solver. Creating a questionnaire form for yourself might actually help you pinpoint the problems.)
Self awareness here is key. I’m assuming things weren’t always this bad. There was probably a time in your business when you were better able to focus on being productive. Figure out what happened, what changed.
For me personally, I got too comfortable and stopped doing some of the habits that I had developed to battle my issues with productivity in the first place. Things like daily to-do lists, regularly reading about the topic, and using pomodoro timers really helped keep me more productive. Somehow, I must have convinced myself I didn’t need these habits any more. I was wrong.
I also have a recurring problem with putting too many things on my plate at once and spreading myself too thin as a result. Then I get down on myself when nothing gets the attention it deserves because I’m trying to balance too many endeavors at the same time.
On top of that, when things started getting extra rocky in my personal life, it combined with the pressure and stress from my professional life and hit a tipping point causing me to burn out. I was depressed, overwhelmed, insecure, and my unhappiness was clouding my ability to focus. Then even my personal habits started to slip like exercise and hygiene, which further contributed to my downward spiral in productivity.
Create A List of Solutions To Fix The Problems
Now that I had spent some time on self reflection and identified the problems, I needed to list out some solutions to fix them.
(Continuing along with our life design analogy: this is when you create the deliverables. This is when you design a solution that improves your productivity by solving the problems that are holding you back from performing better. Just like your design should improve the business of a client in the same way.)
Put side projects on hold and make my business my sole priority
Side projects can be great. But when you’re insanely busy and strapped for cash isn’t the time to take on projects that cost or risk money and impose added deadlines to your schedule. Side projects should be relieving stress not compounding it. I’m always juggling five different things at once. It was clearly time to take a hiatus from the juggling and laser focus. Also, when I’m ready to revert some attention back to old side projects or onto new ones I need to make extra sure they aren’t going to impose deadlines or costs I can’t handle.
Get back my daily exercise, eating, sleeping, and hygiene routines
Feeling attractive, healthy, energized, and organized in your personal life can do wonders for your productivity in your professional life. I used to trick myself into thinking I was so busy I didn’t have the time to give these things more attention. But I’ve come to realize if I don’t spend time on these things and I neglect them, the time I spend “working” gets largely wasted because I can’t focus or get motivated.
Get back in the habit of writing daily to-do lists and prioritizing them
Any time I stop using using daily to-do lists my productivity plummets. I recommend writing a to-do list for the coming day every night or morning. I usually write mine for the next day at the end of my current work day. I’d also recommend capping your list out at 6-8 tasks each day, and prioritizing them. I use a “1, 2, 3” numbering system for prioritization. 1’s need to be done today, 2’s should be done today, and 3’s could be done today.
Use a Pomodoro timer for work activities
The internet is waiting to distract you and your brain has no shortage of good excuses to let it. The pomodoro technique helps me to focus solely on one task and reduces the frequency of distractions accidentally sucking up large chunks of time. Do you ever tell yourself you’re going to just check Facebook really quick, and then an hour later you realize you’re still on Facebook and you don’t know what happened? Yeah, me too. Pomodoro timers help. Check Facebook during your 5 minute breaks. Starting to drift into the social media zone where time fades away? That buzzer sounding off in 5 minutes should hopefully snap you out of it and remind you to get back to work.
Maintain a work schedule and work hours
It’s easy to overindulge in the luxury of creating your own schedule when you first start a freelancing or solopreneur business. The freedom to create your own schedule was part of the luster of this lifestyle and you need to take advantage of it, you tell yourself. Or at least, that’s what I had the habit of telling myself. The fact is, I work better when I treat my business like a 9-to-5 day job. It doesn’t have to start at 9 a.m. though. This is where part of the luxury comes in. I like to start at 10 a.m. and work until 6 p.m. so that’s what I do. The important thing is to work the same hours during the same days each week and to maintain a consistent schedule. Then, when something occasionally comes up and you need to adjust your schedule for the day, you can enjoy the flexibility you’re able to allow yourself.
Regularly read articles and books on productivity
When I keep the topic of productivity actively on my mind by regularly studying it I perform more productively in my work. I tricked myself into thinking that after I studied the subject and benefited from it, that those benefits were permanent and automatic now. Losing my productivity was a serious downfall for my business that I can’t let happen again. Now I treat studying productivity like AA meetings and I don’t stop showing up once it starts helping. Even if I’m just re-visiting information I’ve already learned, having it regularly presented in new lights by new people through new stories keeps me able to apply it to my own life.
Conclusion
Luckily, I was able to get things back on track before I suffered any major repercussions. If you’re enduring a similar struggle I hope you’re able to do the same. One thing that helped save me was my unwavering commitment to my clients. Even when my productivity was in a rut I made sure not to let it ruin any of my client relationships.
Granted, some problems you can’t just identify and brainstorm an obvious solution for. Some things that can affect your work performance can be less in your control, like problems in your personal relationships. I know it’s age old advice, but the best thing is to try your hardest to focus on the problems affecting your performance that you can fix. One last take away is to always learn from your mistakes so that you don’t repeat them, and to learn from the mistakes of others so that you never make them.
This article was written by TJ Bear a brand and web designer with a focus on the music industry at Mind Under Mohawk. Follow TJ on Twitter: @mindundermohawk
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