How can a freelancer not burn out at work?

Each of us remembers the beginning of our career as a freelancer: 20-hour days, sleepless nights and, as a result, the first successes and the first problems of burnout.

A few years ago, one of our programmers celebrated 10 years of freelancing. The second specialist is also approaching the 5 year date. But there is one who surpassed everyone in our company by celebrating his 20th anniversary in the freelance market. What do these dates mean?

First of all, the anniversary, even if it is 2+ years on freelance, shows that people not only get acquainted with new technologies (programming languages, frameworks). But even more than 700+ days of their lives face the daily question of their productivity. After all, every day — it is a comparison and analysis with the previous days. And the more experience and different technologies you know, the more doubts about productivity appear in your head. Why is this happening?

Problems of distribution of working and free time

The fact is that the basic principle of the development of – it is to do less in order to get more (or as it is also called the 80/20 principle). Recall the difference between procedural and object-oriented programming styles. After all, earlier, to write the logic of a set of objects, we had to describe it using a procedure. Procedure = action, and the more procedures, the more actions were described and the more time was spent.

Therefore, every time we open a new book or documentation of a new technology, language, framework. We are getting closer to the idea that so much time was previously spent on the same logic, which with the help of new technology is implemented in a couple of lines of code.

Comparing any language to Python would be a good example. After all, even a simple implementation of a block with a simple indentation already causes some people to start hysterical. Not to mention that now there is no need to end the line with a semicolon.

* Unfortunately, the example described above will only be understood by programmers. For a person not versed in information matters, you can compare the difference between mobile phones. Previously there was a shovel with an antenna. The function of which was only SMS and a call, and now we have the opportunity to take a phone the size of a card, and he will be able to get into the Internet and listen to music.

Freelancer burnout problem

It would seem that there is no problem as such. Technologies are simplified and developed, everyone is happy and full. A student, having studied the documentation, will easily master any programming language (exceptions, of course, assembler – it certainly has not been canceled yet). And in a couple of months he will be able to buy the above-described phone for the money he has earned. And that elderly bearded man who once studied strongly typed languages ​​and switched from a procedural style to OOP  student – «dinosaur».

But, our bearded man has a problem: the evil thought that he previously used his time in vain. He did a bad job getting paid for it.

Because of this problem, God forbid, you can reach the thought of your own uselessness. Loss of fire inside and motivation. In general, the face of the problem and the outcome are completely individually dependent on the personal qualities of a given person.

Basically, this is the wrong planning of personal time. Bearded men usually just forget about banal things: fatigue, processing and the need for rest for a person. All this is due to the desire and the need not to graze the rear in development. So we start again, like at the beginning of our career, to return to 20/7, books and documentation. Forgetting that in this way you can freely come to overwork and loss of strength.

The next scenario is complete apathy for development and complete laziness. Bearded men turn into gamers or just fans of TV shows, etc.

You will be interested in reading the article: "Burnout syndrome: how can a programmer avoid depression?"

How to deal with burnout as a freelancer

What do we do before starting any project, be it desktop or web? Always before the start of our work with you, there is an analytics. We decide on the features of our product, and then we start planning.

Why not apply this principle to our lives? Decide what we want, what functions we will perform, and so on. If you want to move from web to desktop or game development, then you need to move in this direction!

And then planning. We forget ambitions at this stage, because it is ambitions that make us spend 20 hours a day reading books and eventually overwork. That is why it is necessary to calm down our ardor and realistically assess our opportunities for learning and development. We'll have to face the truth. We really are a bit of "dinosaurs" old and decrepit (if you were still working in procedural style) and if we don't want to die with our technology, we need to evolve!

And probably the most important thing to say.

Don't stop developing! Do not become those people who use the same technology all their lives! Aren't they ashamed of themselves? All life on one DLE or Wordpress is impossible. You are programmers! Creative person! We must make life easier for ourselves and our users!