How do you define ‘success’?
Working alone makes it harder to know what we're striving for
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Hello, Colleague!
Firstly, thank you so much for the outpouring of support I received after the previous newsletter, and about stepping back the frequency of the newsletter. It was a difficult decision to make, and your kind messages meant the world to me at a wobbly point.
This month’s issue is all about success: how we define it and measure it as freelancers.
One of the things that strikes me most frequently about being self-employed is how much of an ‘outsider’ I can feel. On days when I don’t have hard deadlines and can sack off work as I please, it’s a blessing, but it can feel a bit…weird. I sometimes feel like that thought experiment: if a tree falls in the wood but no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I think an alternative could be: ‘if a freelancer nails or fails a project, does anyone actually notice?’
This month I have been thinking about career FOMO, after some dispiriting Twitter time, and wondering about my own definitions of success. I had broad ideas of what success looked like when I was employed – or, at least, my employers’ ideas around that. There were specific targets to hit in terms of web traffic, deadlines to hit, or pay rises to push for. Even my more private goals, applying for jobs elsewhere or sending freelance pitches in the evenings, were quite simple yes/no barometers of how things were progressing.
Lately, I’ve felt a little aimless — should I be pushing for short-term work to get me more recognition, or more self-motivated slow-burning projects that require a lot of behind-the-scenes effort but might be more satisfying? Is it ‘enough’ for me to make a certain amount of money each month and then clock off to do more for my health and pleasure, or is that coasting? And why does it matter?
In other words: what does success look like, now that I’m free to define it myself?
To help me – and you – work this out, I spoke to cognitive behavioural therapist Hannah Paskin who has worked with MANY self-employed people struggling with this exact issue. To her mind, the main mistake most of us are making is thinking ‘success’ = something that exists within work only.
“The healthy definition of career success is that it’s about balance,” says Hannah. “You can’t isolate success within your career, it has to be part of your life as a whole. People look at success as a singular entity, but it doesn’t matter if everything else in your life falls down.” Hannah gives an example of a contemporary who has been doing amazing things professionally over the past couple of years, but recently admitted on social media it had come at too great a cost, and she now plans to strip back her work to rebalance other areas of her life.
The main issue for the self-employed, according to Hannah, is falling away from our original passions: “I see a lot of middle aged men in particular, and I ask them why they set up their business in the first place. For most people, it’s because they wanted more freedom, but if you look at the conditions they are working under – in terms of the hours they put in or the leave they take – it’s worse than they’d experience in employment. They might be succeeding financially but they’ve lost track of that original goal.”
How can you balance your success out across your life?
“In the therapy world we do an exercise where you compare how important something is to you, with how much time you spend on it,” says Hannah. As you might imagine, more often than not the things people feel are most important are rarely the elements of their life that get the most time. “It’s obviously fine if work is the most important area of your life, and does make you happy, but it’s when your family is more important to you, and your work takes up all your time that it’s a problem.”
It’s an exercise I’ve done myself, it actually played a key part in my decision to step down from a charity that I adored, but was absorbing lots of my time and creating a deficit in other areas that mattered to me. Often, I suspect, it’s a visual way to process something you already know.
Obviously ‘rebalancing’ your life is a privilege, and there are times when money has to be the priority over everything. If that’s you, then hang in there as best you can. But for the rest of us, another simple tool that Hannah recommends is considering the 8-8-8 model. That is, the concept that we should (roughly) spend eight hours sleeping, eight working, and everything else we care about or need to do needs to fit into the remaining eight. Although it’s basic, it can be useful to think about time as a commodity (if that’s a concept you’re into, I found this article fascinating) to help reprioritise your day. “If you work an extra hour, it has to either come from your sleep, or from something else you wanted to do,” says Hannah. “In general, the more you earn, the more sacrifices you’re making elsewhere.”
One of the challenges for me in making other areas of life a priority, is – as warped as I now realise this is – the fact that it’s harder to definite goals/successes outside of work. I mean, think about it. Scoring a great commission or completing a project is ‘tick-off-able’ in a way that ‘maintaining friendships/a romantic relationship/enjoying a hobby’ is a lot more nebulous. (Yes, even as I write that I realise how completely capitalism has fucked with my reward centres there… but you see what I’m driving at.) Hannah agrees: “It’s tough to change those behaviours, particularly if you grew up in a family of workaholics.” (Oh, thank god, I can blame my parents for this weirdness.)
“But you need to instead ask yourself: what is it that I need to be happy?” says Hannah. “Is it about being energised and connected? Do you need escapism or date nights? Do you need quiet time after socialising, or time in nature? Work it out and put them in the diary. People tend to put these things in when things have fallen apart, but you need to set it as standard.”
Now all of this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have goals that you’re striving towards within your work, but it’s about being realistic with your time and avoiding tunnel-vision (easier said than done, I know!) “Some goals are aspiration not reality, so you need to be clear on what they are, and good at breaking down goals and setting deadlines. Plus, altering and adapting deadlines if you’re not meeting them,” says Hannah. Also, remember to celebrate your wins whenever you can. (More on how and why to big yourself up here).
“I speak to so many people who others would define as successful, but who still feel like failures,” says Hannah. Which, when you think about it, is just incredibly sad. This month, if you’re feeling a bit insignificant or aimless, I encourage you to take a more holistic view of work, and how it fits within your life. Take advantage of at least one self-employment perk: a lie in, clocking off early, a mid-day exercise class, meeting up with another freelance friend, etc, and let me know what you get up to.
It’s easy to feel defined by our work (I know I’m guilty of this) but you are so much more.
Don’t forget, for just £1 a month you can come along to our accountability meetings (last Friday of the month, 11am British time) and meet the friendliest bunch of freelancers you’re ever likely to encounter. More info here.
Another way to connect is joining the OOO Facebook group, which is a safe and private space.
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