3 Tips for Disconnecting When You’re Self Employed

One of the biggest challenges when you work for yourself, is creating a clear boundary between work and your personal life. When I first started freelancing, I kept making the mistake of counting any time I was socializing or resting as time I could have been making more money! Once you get an established rate, it’s easy to think that you should work every waking hour to maximize your income and to get yourself to a better place financially. However disconnecting, taking proper breaks for yourself and your family is critical to prevent burn out, to ensure you’re as successful as possible, and to give yourself the best shot at success with your mental health. If you’d like some help for disconnecting when you’re self-employed, keep reading to learn more.

1. Go On Vacation
Some people, myself included, find it too hard to disconnect when they’re home. Even if you’ve given yourself the time off, it can be tempting to sit down for ‘just a minute’ to tackle some work stuff. This is a mistake! You really need a clean break from work to properly rest and recharge and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. For this reason, if you can, going on vacation can be a great way to give yourself a proper break. You can rent orlando vacation rentals, plan a trip to the parks or beaches nearby, and enjoy a real break. Keep yourself busy, so that you’re not tempted to pull out your phone or laptop.

2. Get Sufficient Help
It will be impossible for you to truly disconnect if you’re trying to manage it all yourself. This is where you need to be realistic about how much you can handle and what is better outsourced. For example if you own your own restaurant, instead of trying to professionally clean your commercial kitchen, why not have some experts like Express Hoods come in to help you? That way you can focus on other aspects of your business and they can take care of the dirty work. When I began freelance writing, I decided to hire an assistant to help me with my job search because I found that part really time consuming and stressful. For a modest hourly rate she would find me a list of relevant positions I could apply for, it was great!

3. Use Technology to Help You
There are so many things you can slog away doing manually, that technology can simply do much better and faster. For one, if you’re regularly writing emails to a bunch of clients, you can use a software like Gmass that helps you send customized mass emails. If you’re in an industry where you’re dealing with customers, it might be worth investing in a CRM like finmo to help you organize everything and keep on top of it. There are lots of different types of technology that can help you take more space from your business, you can even reach out to others in the industry for their suggestions.

Taking time and space from your work is important for your mental health and so you can properly recharge. I hope these tips inspire you to disconnect more when you’re self employed.