You commute to work in your slippers. You can take a nap whenever you like. You set your hours, your work schedule, everything.
You’ve done it– you’ve finally reached that nirvana called ‘self-employment.’
So why are you so often exhausted and uncreative?
You work too long and too hard. You don’t take those naps, except when you’re ready to collapse. Really important projects that you want (and need) to get to, sit and sit and sit…
What’s going on? Why is it so hard to work well when you have total control over your environment? (And how do you make it easier?)
Free will is a tiring thing.
Although our egos long to be in total control, the truth is that self-governance is exhausting. In your business you not only have to get everything done, but you also have to -decide- what are those things that need to get done. All that decision-making is exhausting.
So, you avoid it. Instead, you lapse into unconscious patterns. You check email 1000 times an hour. You avoid finishing your website, or calling that potential client. And it wears you out.
Here’s how it looks for me: Large chunks of time go by and I realize I did nothing but sit in front of the computer checking email, when what I really needed to do was write that sales page for a new class I’m offering.
There are at least two ways to break these patterns. One asks that you become enlightened, so that your consciousness is truly Present in every moment to make the wisest decisions.
Luckily, there is a short-cut to productive self-employment that doesn’t require enlightenment.
Consciously restricting your freedom.
Let me tell you about my good friend Georges Perec. Okay, so he’s not a good friend. He’s actually a French author who died in 1982.
Anyhoo, he wrote a famous French novel, La Disparition (The Disappearance). He wrote it entirely without any words that contain the letter ‘e.’
This was an amazing feat, because in French, as in English, ‘e’ is the most common letter. For instance, in this article, ‘e’ has appeared, up through this sentence, 80 times. That’s in only thirteen sentences.
Tortuous exercise, eh? What’s worse is he then wrote a second novel ‘Les revenentes’ where ‘e’ was the -only- vowel used. The lesson?
Conscious restrictions can trump unconscious patterns.
By refusing to use any words with the letter ‘e,’ Perec was breaking himself of unconcious writing patterns. It forced him to write in a very different way, and got him out of his ruts.
By creating conscious constrictions, you can break free of the unconscious patterns that run you.
What about healing, counseling, working through your issues?
All of that is great, and I recommend it highly. There is an amazing freedom of spirit that arrives whenever another layer of the onion covering your heart and soul is peeled back, and more of you is revealed.
The problem is that the healing journey IS the spiritual journey, and it’s something you’ll be involved with all your life.
And your business is happening right now. By giving yourself some external support with conscious constrictions, you can keep your work day productive, without first needing to be fully healed or enlightened.
Plus the side benefit: by interrupting unconscious patterns, it’s easier to heal them, because you aren’t caught inside them. 🙂
But I don’t want to write without ‘e’.
Of course you don’t. Perec was an avant-garde artist. You don’t have to be as extreme to reap the benefits.
Let me share with you some of my favorite ways to break unconscious self-employment patterns. If you bring these into your work life, I promise you’ll see BIG changes in your productivity.
Ready?
Keys to Productive Self Employment
• Work in two-hour chunks. Then stop.
Look at the clock. Set a timer. And, at the end of every two hours, take a 15 minute break.
Lay down on the couch. Walk around the block. Read a novel. Whatever you need to do, but get out of the office. You’ll actually get more done in less time. No joke.
• Take cafe days.
Similar to the two-hour breaks, schedule at least once or twice into your week a several-hour chunk of people-watching time at a cafe.
Bring a notebook, but leave your laptop at home. Sip a cappuccino. Watch people. Doodle. From time to time think about the ‘big picture’ of your business. You’ll notice a larger perspective of what you are doing coming in.
• Get a drinking buddy.
There are still going to be times when you feel tangled in unproductive patterns. Then, you don’t want to be doing it alone.
Find a friend, or three, and make an agreement with them. If you find yourself being really unproductive, spinning in whatever clogged way of working you get caught in, then you know what your next ‘to-do’ is.
Call one of your buddies for five minutes of connecting with your heart and what you are truly needing.
Make the agreement that even if you can’t reach them on the phone, you can leave a voice mail telling them that you are taking a ‘heart-drinking break.’ The fact that you told them, and that they will ask you about it later, means that the slippery ego can’t hide any more.
It will be easier to step out of your pattern, away from the computer, from your office, and actually reconnect with your heart.
