“IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE BUSY, SO ARE THE ANTS.
THE QUESTION IS: WHAT ARE WE BUSY ABOUT?”
-Henry David Thoreau
On a scale of 1-10, how is the “freelance lifestyle” treating you so far?
Capacity and lifestyle planning is the top of the iceberg. The bottom of the iceberg is your mental and physical health. In a creativity-focused business, those things weigh heavily on your profitability.
Note: They don’t make it impossible (I’ve done this for 10 years with chronic illness, family emergencies, toddlers, etc.). It’s just a consideration to keep in mind. However, that’s the risk we’re taking on when we move into a creativity-focused field. There’s no “sick day policy” when you freelance, or paid disability, unless YOU make it.
Writing is the ultimate knowledge work. Knowledge work comes from the brain, your ability to focus, your ability to learn and grasp and push for new things. You can’t do any of that if you don’t feel alert and engaged. You also can’t get faster at it as you go if you aren’t healing and rejuvenating your memory.
And that’s my core idea for today that might seem random, but I want to save you years of strain:
- As much as we humans try to forget it, you have a body
- Fuel your body
- Move your body
- Listen to your body
- … And you will do the best work of your life
So when we start to talk about capacity planning. You have the capacity to deliver more if you’re at 100%. The further you fall from 100%, the more of a threat there is to your ability to schedule and deliver high-quality work.
But think about the upside…
You have the time, freedom, and resources to achieve your best health (mental and physical). And when you do that… YOU get to keep the rewards 😉
Define our terms
- Scheduling: How work falls on a calendar, when deadlines will fall, and when you will do different parts of a project
- Capacity: How much work you can do in a given time period, how many clients you can serve best at once
CAPACITY PLANNING:
How much work you can do in a given time period, how many clients you can serve best at once.
There’s another reason I started with your body and self-knowledge, because your capacity is entirely unique to you. There’s no normal “writer capacity.” One person can write a blog post in 2 hours… another person needs 5 hours. Faster writers are favored in freelance, but it’s not impossible to do well if you take your time. Normal writer capacity doesn’t exist, also:
- 1 hour per 150 finished words (Blog post might 5 hours)
- Overbudget the time you need and win
If you are a “slow writer” (which just means you write slower than YOU would like) there are things you can do to become faster. Practice the heck out of the writing you want to do. Work with a solid outline process. Decide when the work is done — perfectionism can really take a toll here.
The thing about capacity is that we are not airlines. Airlines sell 100 seats on an 80-person plane, knowing some won’t show up. But if we do that, all the work shows up! And if we overbook, we can’t push someone from a flight. We get worn down and burnt out trying to deliver on what we promise. The work suffers, we suffer, the client suffers
The goal: Have a steady amount of work, not too much, not too little. But guess what? The person that used to make sure your work was regulated was your boss. You’re the boss now. So this is a whole secret skillset you might need to practice before you get it right.
In reality, there will always be highs and lows and busy seasons. The trick is learning to stand up for what you need re: vacations, income, etc. The only way out of this is to turn down work — there is no way to set it up perfectly so no one asks for more than you can give — that’s not going to happen.
That’s why you need to charge 2-3X — so you have time to do what you need to do even if you don’t have a creative day. So you can leave blank spots on your calendar and still have a normal, regular income. This is where the conversation turns to hustle and drive verses planning and rest… we need both. Rest and action are synergists, not opposites (Jade Teta)
“I have a hard stop at 2:30PM.”
You also need to get started with a client as soon as possible so you can see that you won’t be writing the whole time. A blog post might take 4-5 hours to write, but there are two half-hour phone calls, note-taking and thinking from those phone calls and rounds of edits. When you see * how much work there really is * you start to understand that a $500 rate is actually a sweet deal.
4 options to getting familiar with your capacity
Choose a regular tracker to develop the habit of seeing how long things take you (Invoicing software, Toggle, RescueTime, Kitchen Timer, Pomodoro = Tomato. Writing frenzy.)
Record your knowledge of how long it takes you to do things like a blog post for a client, white paper, invoicing, etc.
Include daily buffer time so you can have steady profitability
- Schedule X-20% hours from what you plan to work
- Don’t plan for 8 hours of work
Work in “Pomodoro Power Sets”
- Original is (25-10-25)
- Power set is: 50 minutes concentrating, 20 minute break (off screens, no open loops), 50 minutes concentrating
NOW, LET’S PLAN! (15 minutes)
Map out next week in the capacity planner! We’re going to take 15 minutes to create our own capacity planner. For the sake of this exercise, please go ahead and try out this capacity planner. You may not keep it updated every day, or this may not be how your brain works long-term, but let’s map out your plan for next week so we can talk about it.
Capacity Planner (Google Docs)
CAPACITY PLANNING JOURNAL PROMPTS (10 minutes)
- What do you observe about how you’re spending your time most days?
- What feels like a treat about your days right now?
- What sucks the most about your days right now?
- What’s the most stressful thing about your work right now?
- What would make a workday UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME? What about your work week?
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
- Start/end work day time
- Start/end workday “opening and closing tasks”
- How many creative blocks
- How many admin/marketing blocks
- Emails: Block or spread
- Phone calls: Block or spread
- Deadlines: Block or spread
- Most comfortable day to take off?
- “Treat” work activity?
- “Task” work activity?
🏆MILESTONE: Send me your capacity planner to review.
Further Reading: Capacity planning with Marie Poulin (Blog Post)
LIFESTYLE PLANNING
Operating a business as a solopreneur, freelancer, owner, will have a lot of ups and downs. What I’ve learned is that you have to make it the best choice, even when the downsides are rearing up and making it seem like not the best choice.
When I question this career path, I look to see what I’m missing in three areas, and how I can reinforce them:
- Stability (Things start to feel all over the place and like I never know what to expect)
- What can you do to pump up your bank account?
- Keep marketing even when you’re busy
- Dial in your capacity planner and daily opening and closing tasks
- Community (I start to feel like I don’t have anyone I can talk to who really “gets it”)
- Join a group or a community and be active
- Reach out to people who share your niche
- Meet people for video chats (it makes a huge difference!)
- Challenge (The work starts to feel boring or predictable, like I’m not making my best contribution)
- Evaluate the work you’re doing – do you look forward to it?
- Can you fire a client?
- Can you fire a niche?
LIFESTYLE PLANNING JOURNAL PROMPTS (7 minutes)
- What do you consider your core motivating driver for building your own business? Describe it in as much detail as possible.
- What secret doubts do you have about your plan for your business? Describe them in as much detail as possible.
- What seems unreachable with a freelance writing business? Why do you think that is?
- How will you define success for your business?
CONCLUSION
If it suits you, consider keeping up with the capacity planner regularly. Or simply update it Friday end of day/Sunday nights to prepare for the week ahead.
Reflection is a very powerful tool that will save you a lot of anxiety and time. Slowing down long enough to think things through and separate truth from fear will eliminate 75% of the challenges ahead of you.
See you next week for the grand finale!