5 Ways to Be A Self-Motivated Intuitive Entrepreneur When You Can't Get Out of Bed
If you're a particular flavor of person (waves hand wildly), being your own boss is fantastic.
[It's not for everyone, and there's absolutely no shame in that. But if you're a rebel who doesn't like following other people's rules ... strongly recommend you join the clerb.]
For as many pros as there are to working for yourself, there is one major con, a "rule" that I hear lots of solopreneurs, freelancers, and practitioners say: "If I don't show up, I don't get paid."
Word, yes. *nods head* If you don't show up for your work, you will not make that dirty, dirty paper. Most days, though, it's easy to show up. After all, you love what you do. You wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you didn't.
But sometimes, it's actually impossible to show up with your entire brain and body and heart for your work. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't stroll up to your computer and fire off a witty email.
Maybe you experience depression. Or anxiety. Or physical pain.
Maybe you're living through a global pandemic, and you're staring down trauma every day, and that's a lot to hold.
On these days, it's challenging to take what you need (rest! a mental health day or week! therapy!) when you also know that you can't really just drop everything in your business because you're off.
But you don't have a boss or coworkers or anyone, really, to motivate you. So how do you stay on track when things get hard?
For me, there have been days during COVID-19 when I couldn't even sit down and focus for more than 5 minutes. It felt impossible to get anything done. And I knew that I needed to get things done, which made me even more anxious.
Thankfully, I have a backup plan. I've been my own boss for the last four years, and during that time experienced bouts of depression, grief, anxiety, and physical pain that made it impossible to work normal 9-5 hours.
This is what helped keep me on track to make six-figures in revenue last year while still taking what I needed for myself.
Create a container
If you don't create a container for yourself, your life becomes an unending to-do list that eventually takes on its own identity and rises up to TAKE OVER YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS! It is not that dope.
Think of it this way — all creatives need a container. It's easier to make art, or anything really when we give ourselves structure and constraints. When life is one big free for all, it requires a lot of energy from us to make decisions all day long.
If you can make it easier to make decisions, then you're saving yourself time and energy.
By making containers for yourself and your energy, you make it easier to decide what to focus on. When you know where to start, it reduces the friction of starting! Think about how easy it is to start working in the morning when you've got something due in a few hours — that's because you know what you have to do.
Containers also provide us much-needed support when we're feeling low. They're both the foundation we stand on and the rail above our heads that we can hold on to so we don't lose our footing when the subway train starts to pick up speed.
Quarterly Goals
It's so so so so SO unsexy but brah, you gotta have some quarterly goals. They don't need to be boring objectives and key results — infuse them with your own flavor, friend. But, it's key to make sure that these goals provide the structure that you need. Quarterly goals are the container for your business quarter.
I like to look at four key areas of my business to make my quarterly goals: Growth, Revenue, Retention, and Impact. You can read more about these areas here, but spending a few hours every quarter writing out what my goals for the next three months help focus my short term vision.
Monday Hour One
The brain dump to end all brain dumps, Monday Hour One is the container for my week.
I've taught this in detail in The North Node, but essentially, brain dump everything that you need to get done this week. Get specific. My list says stuff like, email so-and-so, write workshop slides, and update Q2 goals. It also includes general life tasks, like ordering groceries and exercising and downtime. Writing your list should take 15ish minutes.
Then schedule all of these things with SPECIFIC TIMES AND DATES in your G-cal. Make your best guess as to how long they will take. Then, notice how your week looks. Are you a looney tune who's trying to complete three zillion tasks a day? Is that sustainable or even practical? Adjust accordingly. Do your best to stick to the schedule you lovingly made for yourself.
Ask for help
When you look at your week and realize you'd be a mad lad to try and complete it on your own, ask for help.
Hiring a virtual assistant to take on 5 hours of work a week is relatively inexpensive and can change your life — truly.
Plan for down days
Here's the thing: We can't be 100 percent productive every day. We also can't predict when depression, anxiety, migraines, PMDD, physical pain, grief, or global pandemics will show up on our doorstep.
All we can do is know that eventually, we may face these situations. And we can prepare ourselves as best we can for those moments.
One of the best ways to plan for down days or weeks is to create content that you can monetize. Virtual classes, downloadable PDFs, membership groups, courses — all of these revenue streams require some heavy lifting upfront but are relatively easy to maintain over time with the right strategies.
If you can't work for weeks, it's nice to know that you have a product up your sleeve that you can easily sell without doing much extra work to make an extra $5k to $10k for the month.
Conclusion
We can't control everything. But we can prepare. Instead of beating yourself up when you're feeling unproductive or unmotivated, what if we just planned for it to happen and allowed for it? Would you feel more ease, calmer, and more safety in your life?