Overwhelmed

September 2, 2020 10:32 AM

I am a freelancer with a capricious work ethic and about 6 jobs on the go, and I find it really hard to manage them all. Advice?

My jobs are:

1. Long term big writing project that's slowly moving ahead. It has to be my ultimate #1 priority because it's a career-maker. I need a lot of inspiration to write about this AND it's about a topic I find intensely triggering, with recurrent triggers in every news cycle, so my brain will do almost anything to avoid it.

2. A shorter term writing project, with deadlines and reminders and urgent mini-deadlines popping up semi-regularly. It's reliant on others' input and their timeline tends to bottleneck and then rush, so often it will suddenly dump 6 hours of work into my lap with one day of warning and a one-day turnaround.

3. A SECOND shorter term writing project, with deadlines and reminders and urgent mini-deadlines popping up constantly. If I mess this one up it's not dire but it seriously stresses out my partner, a friend I really respect. This one uses Asana task management software.

4. A new career mentorship, so I'm being CC'd in on multiple emails a day relating to parts of the project that may or may not involve me, but it's important and I really don't want to mess up. They use Google Calenders. I don't.

5. A freelance arts job with Constant! Deadlines! Popping! Up! Urgent! Now! Be creative! Right this second! FEEL CONFIDENT AND BE CREATIVE, DAMMIT, NOW

6. Normal admin tasks from being a freelancer and human, like invoicing and random life admin tasks and household management

7. A toddler (luckily I have a great childcare setup right now)

8. Trying to get pregnant = fertility tracking which is kind of triggering in and of itself and requires consistency and I simply have none to spare

9. Frequent offers of other projects and jobs that I probably don't have time to do, but some of them are worth doing, so I have to constantly stop what I'm doing, research them, make a decision, then nicely maintain the relationship when turning them down, all in a timely manner. This process sometimes takes an hour at random.

10. Mentoring younger people in my field which I don't really have time for but I feel the need to pay it forward

11. Being mentored in my field which I don't really have time for but the payoff is so huge when I do make time for it, that I really should. I have some open tickets to talk to potential mentors and these opportunities are going stale and making me look flakey and I DO want to do them, but I don't have time / focus.

HOW DO I MANAGE ALL OF THIS OMG

I have just a constant barrage of emails and info and deadlines coming in from all of these projects. I feel like I'm just putting out fires and constantly falling behind.

I very likely have undiagnosed ADD. OBVIOUSLY
I prefer pen and paper to onscreen project management software.
I'm pretty good about using a paper planner.

All of these projects except the admin tasks require a certain amount of confidence, energy and creativity on the spot. The barrage is sapping me so much. Please. Help.

posted by nouvelle-personne to Work & Money (8 answers total)

As a person often in similar situations both professionally and neurologically, one thing that helped me a lot when things stacked up was practicing boundaries as visualizations.

That’s very vague. Here’s what it looked like. I visualized a mantelpiece or knickknack shelf. I came up with a representation of each project or major attention-needer, in the form of a small knick-knack object. Short film was a roll of 35mm film in a canister, family was a small photo in a frame, and so on. Then, I practiced moving them around — changing the order — as necessary. So when an incoming email or whatever came in, before I processed it, I took a moment to shuffle my “project icons” around to move the right one to the fore.

It wasn’t a fun time and I’ve put a lot of measures in place since to try and avoid overlapping projects. But having this visualization really helped me stay calm, avoid feeling as overwhelmed, & allowed my organizational strategies to work.
posted by sixswitch at 10:53 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Pomodoro/tomato timer. If you don't want a digital timer, use an old-school kitchen timer. Set it for 20 minutes and *only work on one thing.* Don't let yourself switch tasks. Then take a break if needed. Do this for email, do it for writing. If you are not doing this I guarantee you will find that it's possible to get more done.
posted by pinochiette at 11:03 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

One way that I've found helpful to juggle projects is to look at it holistically, and think about how I might try to fit in progress on each piece on a weekly basis. It's okay not to not make progress on each project each day, but how might you be planning to fit it in over the course of a week? Since you like paper planning, this section of this video by Yukiko Sakamura might be helpful for thinking about how you could structure such a chart.

You may have seen this before, but the the Eisenhower Matrix might be helpful in terms of categorizing the things that are urgent versus important, and trying to pull your priorities back from bouncing from urgent thing to urgent thing. If you are getting great offers for projects, but they are likely to cause an unmanageable uptick in urgent tasks, that's a good reason to turn them down. I also sometimes make alternative versions of such a chart, where I add in factors such as time to complete or energy level (though swapping between such factors is easier on a computer than on paper).

All that said, honestly, I still struggle frequently with balancing obligations for much the same reason as you. However, while I'm not always able to match what I plan for my time, when I'm having a hard time balancing things, I do find it helpful for me to be able to set aside something that is demanding to be "urgent but is not important" in favor of this thing I can see is "not urgent but is important" when I can see that I wanted to put some work toward progress on that item this week. Even just acknowledging that this thing that I value is "important" helps me to prioritize it over the things that other people think are important but that I'd categorize as "urgent" instead.
posted by past unusual at 11:17 AM on September 2, 2020

Best answer: HOW DO I MANAGE ALL OF THIS OMG

You don't. You stop doing so much stuff. That level of cognitive overload you are facing would stress out all sorts of people, including myself. You need to prioritize your projects.

1. Long term big writing project [...]
2. A shorter term writing project [...]
3. A SECOND shorter term writing project [...]

You describe these as projects, not jobs, implying you are not being paid for this work. If not, you have no obligation to any of them - especially not one day turnaround responses. Down-select to the one project you feel is best for your happiness and your career. Tell the others you aren't able to continue.

4. A new career mentorship, [...] but it's important and I really don't want to mess up.

What are you getting out of this? A bunch of emails that may or may not involve you is not a mentorship, it's a badly curated cc list. If they aren't paying you and the emails don't even involve you, this isn't a a job or a project - it's spam.

8. Trying to get pregnant = fertility tracking

This is the cost of your lack of prioritization right now. You have finite cognitive capacity and you are exceeding it. You are not able to do what you really want because you are overloaded with work that does not clearly benefit you. If all this work benefited you, you'd be saying something like, "I want to get pregnant, but my projects/work are more important to me". That's a fair choice. However, you're not saying that. You're not willing to make the choices you need to make to pursue what you want to do.

9. Frequent offers of other projects and jobs that I probably don't have time to do, but some of them are worth doing

There are many jobs worth doing that you don't have time to do. You are overloaded now. Stop overloading yourself more. Make a blanket policy of rejecting all of them, without any consideration to them. Here's a sample email for you to provide: "Thank you for the offer. At the moment, I'm not taking on new work. When I'm able to take on new work, I will let you know and see if there's a match at that time. Good luck, and thanks for sending this my way!".

10. Mentoring younger people in my field which I don't really have time for but I feel the need to pay it forward

Pick one person, at most. In most all fields, there are more older people than younger people, if only because there are a lot more older people in general (this may sound somewhat surprising, but the average age in the entire world is about 30). So, if every older/experienced person "pays it forwards" and mentors one single younger/newer person, not only will every younger/newer person be mentored, we'll actually run out of people to mentor!

11. Being mentored in my field which I don't really have time for but the payoff is so huge [...]. I have some open tickets to talk to potential mentors and these opportunities are going stale [...]

Not every opportunity needs to be pursued. Not every mentor needs to be responded to. Not every opportunity is actually advantageous to you. Not every mentor is doing so out of the goodness of their hearts. When I read this, I take it more as "a bunch of people are trying to take advantage of me and I don't have time for them to take advantage of me." Good. If the payoff is so high, do so by trading it with one of your current projects/jobs. If so, it should be easy for you to justify to yourself and others. If you can't say to yourself and your partners, "hey, this has been a fun project/job, but I have a great opportunity coming up that I can't ignore. I'm going to take care of things to ensure the project transitions nicely, but I really have to finish up here" - then maybe the opportunity isn't as big as you think it is.

Stale opportunities are not a bad thing. There are many, many opportunities in this world that aren't worth you taking. That doesn't mean they are bad opportunities - there can be other people for which they are the perfect fit! Success requires picking and choosing the opportunities that are best for you. The choosing is the hard part - you need to completely commit to what you want to do and completely decommit from what you don't want to do. Even "a couple hours a week" is 5% of your working capacity, assuming 40 hours/week of work. You can't do that very often before you are overwhelmed with work. The solution is to pick less opportunities, and achieve more successes. Successes are more important than opportunities, but you can't get to a success without sufficient cognitive capacity and attention.
posted by saeculorum at 11:18 AM on September 2, 2020 [11 favorites]

Phew, I hear you... I have a list like that, too. Its causes me great anxiety and if I ever feel like I am thinking about my life this way, I try to stop! Here's a list in response.

1. Don't list it out like eleven overwhelming challenges. There is no way for you to prioritize, really know how much time each takes, nor do you have any start/end dates on them. You have to look at each piece, project, and figure out how much of your time and energy they take AND you have to know when some of them start / end.

2. I'd say get a calendar, and then start breaking these down in the chunks of time you'll need to get them completed. See what your 6 months or a year looks like. Sometimes its easier if you know that "hey my October is going to be really busy" but September is a ramp up month and you'll be less busy by Halloween.

3. Things *always* take longer than you think. Be honest about the hours each piece is going to take, and remember you need breaks between projects to eat, shower be human - so don't put 2 hour chunks back to back four times. B/c you can't do that.

4. Last, most specific thing: we don't know your field, but do you really need to spend so much time and emotional energy on mentoring/being mentored? The "mentors" I have had I meet with irregularly, when we are both able, and its usually a time to decompress and share, over a lunch or coffee.
posted by RajahKing at 12:24 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: It sounds like you have a lot of trouble prioritizing, possibly because everything seems of equal importance. I've heard *exactly* that complaint from friends of mine with ADD, and that diagnosis / medication helped them with this immensely. Sorry I know that's another project but something to keep in mind especially for the longer term.

Another part of this could be a sense of obligation towards others (the mentorship & responding in a timely manner in particular) which sort of goes along with the first point in that you're not prioritizing your own well being highly enough / above meeting these obligations towards others, which sound somewhat self-imposed.

9. Frequent offers of other projects and jobs that I probably don't have time to do, but some of them are worth doing, so I have to constantly stop what I'm doing, research them, make a decision, then nicely maintain the relationship when turning them down, all in a timely manner. This process sometimes takes an hour at random

There's some low hanging fruit here in terms of making this process painless - the goal is that making this decision and communicating it should add no stress to your day. As others have suggested you can turn down all requests or use a template. Don't do any research on the offers yourself (beyond maybe a quick google / sanity check if it's something entirely unfamiliar) - all the info you need should come in the work pitch itself, and if there's not enough information to make a decision either way, make a list of questions to send back that will get you *all* the information you need to make a call. You could even make a flow-chart of how you make these decisions, just for yourself. For example a rule be like, "I'm not going to work with any publication I haven't already heard of" (or whatever the analog is in your work), that way it's very obvious whether or not an inbound request meets that criterion, and if it does, you can work out the other details that will get you to a yes or no with complete certainty, within say 15 minutes of correspondence effort max and no stress / emotional overhead, because you know what is important to you.

Another thing that has helped me is realizing I really can only have one priority at a time in any area of my life -- and that if I consistently work on whatever is top priority that week and actually complete projects, the confidence and momentum follow in the next weeks. Likewise If I stay fragmented with my efforts and don't finish anything, the drain and stuckness is also likely to follow me too.
posted by internet of pillows at 3:33 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

You mention that you don't use google calendar, but don't say anything about what sort of calendaring system you do use.

If you don't use a calendar, you might give that a try. Sounds like you prefer pen and paper but I'm not sure how you manage to have space to write all these details in. You might benefit from being able to put more things on your calendar, instead of having to try and remember them. For instance, in your #9 if you have a good calendar system that works for you, instead of dropping everything and spending an hour on research right them you could reply that their project sounds intriguing and you want to spend some time researching before you make your decision and you will be back to them by -- but you need a system to remember to reply later.

On your #6, maybe you can hire someone to do invoicing or some of your household tasks.
posted by yohko at 6:14 PM on September 2, 2020

Best answer: I'm a freelancer with ADHD and I got so anxious just reading this that I just misspelled ADHD twice.

This probably isn't what you want to hear and may not be helpful for you right now, but the solution for me has been focusing my energies on one or two big clients at a time, and setting strong boundaries with the other clients. (I mean, it's good to set boundaries with all clients, but those small clients that don't really pay your bills are notorious for taking over your life.) This is the ONLY thing that works for me - I've had to accept that I am just not one of those freelancers who can effectively juggle 5 projects at once. I actually just ended things with a smaller client and I felt bad about it because I really love that client, but it's a tiny startup and they are really only able to work with someone who's able to be in the middle of their flow of constant communication. Which I just can't do.

Reading the book Book Yourself Solid was very helpful to me. I won't tell you to read it (who am I kidding, I only read the first two chapters) but the general idea is that you will be more effective as a freelancer if you focus on the projects that are the most valuable TO YOU. I take that to mean either the ones that you enjoy the most, or that bring in the most revenue, or that you will do the best work in.

I think it could be really helpful for you to sit down and think about what you get out of each of these projects vs. how much time, labor, and emotional energy you are putting into them. #2 seems like one where you might be putting up with more disruption and putting in more energy than you would if you weren't worried about stressing your partner out, just as a for instance.

Once you've started thinking about your priorities, think about boundaries. I sense some black and white thinking in your post, where you're worried that if you're not performing perfectly, exactly when and how your clients want you to, you'll be fucking up (and maybe get fired?). This is a normal freelancer fear in these precarious times, but given how much work you have, and how much you turn away, it seems like you probably have more leverage to set some boundaries than you think. Is there a way you can carve out space to be less reactive in projects #2 and #5? Most of the seasoned freelancers I know are good at setting boundaries, ie, "If you get something back to me in this time frame, I can get you the next version in this timeframe, but if it's later it may take more time because of other commitments." You have more power in these relationships than you think - you don't need to always be at your clients' mercy.

One other thing: for projects that are of long-term importance but not immediately urgent, like #1 - schedule time for those projects every month, literally block out time on your calendar. When you do this, also think about what specific tasks you will do during this time. Even if it's only, say, two 3-hour blocks a week, if you actually block out the time, with plans for how to use that time, and stick with it, you will make more progress than if you don't.
posted by lunasol at 11:48 AM on September 3, 2020 [2 favorites]