I’ll be the first to say that I have a system for everything, putting meet-ups into a Google Calendar, not eating until noon, and checking my website’s metrics. It does give me a slight sense of control, which as a new freelancer, is the ultimate life hack for not losing your head in the maelstrom of your first year.
I do however, build my systems with a bit of leeway for having a couple of glasses of wine. Because it’s hardly going to ruin three days of my life.
If you’ve been online at all over the last few days, you’ll hopefully get the reference. Steven Bartlett ruined his sleep, ate poorly, skipped the gym and “podcasted worse” after drinking a couple of glasses of wine (on a school night!). All recorded and informed by a wearable Whoop device. The backlash from this has been pretty entertaining. But it did bring a few thoughts from the back of mind to front and centre. Why are we all being told that we need to optimise more? Isn’t everyone burned out already?
Most people are stuck in some sort of grind, modern life is rigid and expensive. Fewer of us own our homes, we’re eating out less and don’t even get me started on the fertility crisis. We should be allowed to break the monotony every now and then, but that’s also being packaged and sold to us as a subscription or metric.
Take the running club boom for example. We should be overjoyed that so many people want to join a club and socialise whilst exercising. Yet there’s constant discourse that running clubs have become more about socialising and ‘doing a 5k jog’, and less about improving performance, measuring heart rate zones and clocking your best pace. I’ve been to both types of running clubs, and I’m giving the macro talk a wide berth on a Saturday morning.
There’s even a particularly-bitter Telegraph article (which is saying a lot for the Telegraph), attacking casual runner’s bodies and their “clueless commitment to exercise” and equating this to the Gen Z loneliness epidemic. Let’s also not forget Nike’s “Runners welcome. Walkers tolerated” campaign.
Even if you’re not a runner, the feeling of not doing enough, or not approaching everything with robotic precision is following you around in another aspect of life. The feeling that you’re just a casual, and not taking things seriously enough. I’m currently grappling this with freelancing by not hitting my £10k month already.
Let’s be realistic, the £10k months everybody else seems to be going on about aren’t likely to happen quickly. Yet we’re constantly shown by our algorithms those (actually quite expensive) courses or workshops that promise to help you ‘unlock your dream client’, or avoid cold-pitching altogether. You’re made to feel that you’re falling behind because you simply don’t want it (another subscription) enough. Freelancing has always been a patience game, but it feels like it’s become Pay to Play.
Even when you’ve avoided this altogether, and find yourself cold-pitching (it can work!), your Gmail will be giving you suggestions on how to optimise your message. I tried this as an experiment to see what a perfectly-optimised cold pitch would look like. It read as being pretty cold. Sure, it got to the point quicker without my usual preamble. But it left no space for the person behind the pitch.
I sent the human-written pitch and got ghosted, and I did wonder if that was because I hadn’t optimised that email, or unlocked the freelancer cheat sheet beforehand. No good posting about it, as Fridays are the worst days for engagement, and that’d tank too. But ghosting happens, even the more successful freelancers face it more times than they'll admit.
Companies selling you optimisation tend to do really well for themselves when you’re locked into their subscription fees and giving them your data. Whether it’s Strava, LinkedIn Premium, or whatever ‘pro’ version of a platform you’re using that used to be free. I’ve paid the subscription for better engagement, heart rate breakdowns and the optimised Hook. In exchange for metrics and negligible ROI, they removed my freedom to fail and learn from it.
And you will still fail, because you’re a human that can’t optimise your way out of rejection, the algorithm changing or wanting a glass of wine. Allow yourself to fail, you’ll save yourself the burnout, and have a bit more fun.
