Lessons in Essentialism for Freelance Business

Rejecting offers feels like missing opportunities when you are starting your freelance business. Saying “no” can be scary. Every so often, we accept projects we’re not particularly excited about. We do it due to financial reasons, to keep ourselves busy, gain experience, get online reviews etc. 

At the beginning of my freelance career, if I was qualified for a task and could fit it into my schedule, I would take it. At some point, the flow of offers from potential clients became steady and there was no need to cling to every single cooperation possibility any more. This approach of taking up projects without filtering, however, hadn’t changed. Here’s how it was impacting my life.

I would overwork myself regularly. Finish a project through the weekend? No problem. The amount of leisure time wasn’t always satisfactory. Schedule – unregulated, interfering with my lifestyle. I knew charging more was an option, but was stuck in business relationships which weren’t paid fairly. Occasionally, I would find myself cooperating with ~ahem~ not your dream clients. The kind who asks you to carry out extra tasks free of charge, sends urgent requests on Friday evenings or is late with payments.

That was the time to start being more conscious and selective with my business relationships and the work I would accept. A great book that came my way around that time helped me with that. It’s called Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, written by Greg McKeown.

It taught me practical ways of setting priorities and concentrating on them while reducing all the unnecessary stuff. Applicable to any aspect of life, I was quick to find application to it in my business.

Accept that we cannot do everything

To have time for things which are important, we need to make trade-offs and reject those which do not serve us. When we spend our time on things which don’t matter, we get distracted from what’s important. This way, we also prevent ourselves from getting the results we want.

                    When we are busy carrying out projects which do not align with our goals, we may miss out on truly great opportunities when they come along.

Be conscious about choices

When considering a cooperation, make conscious choices to achieve the outcomes we want. Learning to say “no” more often is a crucial step in implementing the essentialist approach to everything.

By being selective with the work we accept, we enable the following possible outcomes based on our priorities:

• avoiding bad clients
• landing fairly paid projects
• landing fulfilling projects we enjoy working on
• setting schedule which works for us
• having a happier professional life because of the four first points

Greg McKeown’s book contains several great approaches to making decisions wisely. Here’s the one I found the most useful when considering business offers. As the author puts it, it helps to «make decisions consciously, logically, and rationally, rather than impulsively or emotionally». Here are the instructions on how to do it:

«Write down the opportunity. Second, write down a list of three “minimum criteria” the options would need to “pass” to be considered. Third, write down a list of three ideal or “extreme criteria” the options would need to “pass” in order to be considered. By definition, if the opportunity doesn't pass the first set of criteria, the answer is obviously no. But if it also doesn't pass the two of your three extreme criteria, the answer is still a no.»

Here is my list of criteria based on this approach. It helps me decide which projects to accept. This is to provide an example of how it works in practice and includes the points which are important to me. Although most of them are quite basic, depending on your business priorities, your criteria might be different. Clicking on the image below will lead you to the Notion page, where you can make a copy of this list.

Applying these methods and approaches was incredibly effective for reaching my business goals and making work more sustainable. If you found the information in this post useful, please share your thoughts. Subscribe to receive notifications about similar posts. To the fellow book lovers over there, I highly recommend reading the full version of this book.