Every freelancer hits a wall in his or her business at least once in their lifetime. The wall could be one of several: a financial wall; a loss of clients wall; or the worst wall of all – the loss of the initiative, drive or will to keep working.

I hit the initiative wall about a month ago. I had plenty of clients, but I was tired of working late nights and weekends. I couldn’t get up on time in the mornings and I couldn’t get focused enough to work on client work or spend the needed time to blog.

While fighting this wall will ultimately make you a better freelancer, it can also trip you up and cause you to fail if you’re not careful. So how did I find my drive again to keep going?

Look at what you’ve done

Sometimes it’s tough to see how far we’ve come when we’ve got clients who are late on payments and you’re dealing with 10 dumb quote requests that you had to turn down.

It’s important to sit back and look at what we’ve already accomplished this year. How many new clients do you now have? How much money have you made so far? Give yourself a well deserve pat on the pat and remember this attitude is only temporary.

It’s good to see how well we’ve done and can be a big motivator to keep working, especially once you realize you’re not doing half as bad as you thought you were.

Take some time off

Perhaps you just need a break. Show up for work, but take off early. Don’t work the weekends. Take a couple of days off during the week to do whatever – clean the house, read a book or do some shopping. Most people assume that because we’re freelancers and work at home alone, we can take any amount of time off whenever we want. Although this is technically possible, it isn’t true because the self-employed tend to work more hours than the full-timers.

Sometimes, we get so excited about our work that we’ll work forever until our families have to beg us to leave our computers. This might be ok every once in awhile, or if you mess up your schedule, however over time you run the risk of burnout.

Dealing with payment ups and downs

The biggest problem that stuck me in this funk was money. While I was still busy with client work, the majority of my clients for the past month were check clients – that is they preferred to pay by check instead of Paypal. Most of my clients pay immediately via Paypal, so the switch really messed up my finance schedule. While I haven’t missed any bills or gone broke, it was still frustrating and annoying.

The biggest reason this messed me up was my recent purchase of a new iMac, where I spent around $1600 for the computer and accessories. I anticipated that my clients this month would make up the difference for the money I spent – but I didn’t anticipate waiting extra weeks for mailing time and bank check cutting time.

If you want to make a large purchase for your business, do so, but be sure you have the money saved up. Don’t assume you’ll be able to pay it off quickly with the next few payments, or you’ll end up stressed out against that wall.

Stick to a schedule

After taking some time off, get back on a rigid schedule. Even if you still can’t get any work done, be in your office for your entire work hours. Try to have a couple of To-Do’s you’re able to get done, even if it’s just emptying your inbox and RSS feeds. Getting a couple of things done will prompt you to get even more done, which will then bring you back on track in now time.

Sometimes the best way to get moving is just to start moving. It’s always the hardest to take that first step out of bed, but after that it gets much easier.

Have you been in a freelance funk before?

How did you get out of your freelance funk? What tips can you share?

Image by Vinni123

Amber Weinberg

Amber is a freelance front-end developer specializing in semantic and accessible custom WordPress themes. She works with agencies and other freelancers to bring their designs to life using custom ACF flexible layout builds - making them more performant and less buggy while allowing the client easy customization without breaking the design system.