Challenges of Working Independently
By: Abhinav Shrivastava
Tags: Work, Freelancing, Motivation, Lifestyle, Productivity

I quit my job a year ago to get started on a journey of my own. What seemed initially like an exciting path soon exposed its own share of challenges.

One of the biggest challenges is accountability. Since our brains are hardwired to not let other people down, we end up working best when we are accountable to say our manager.

Working independently, you lose that critical aspect of being accountable to someone. You are working for yourself and procrastination becomes too real.

“man lying on grass” by Sander Smeekes on Unsplash

I often end up spending hours just lying on my bed not accomplishing anything. Thinking of how it would feel to have accomplished my goals. Deadlines become movable and goals are changeable. This creates a very dangerous cocktail of not getting anything done.

Finding a way out of this is really important for any independent professional. Here are a few things that work for me

The Five Second Rule

Mel Robins’ book, The Five Second Rule tells you to mentally countdown 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and move!

Physically move every time an idea or inspiration hits you. The simple act of counting down prevents our brain from rationalizing and shutting down the idea.

It takes a bit of effort to remember to do this every time, but whenever you do it, you realize the impact it has. Mel got the inspiration for this idea when she saw a rocket launch countdown on the television.

“photo of network satellite taking off” by SpaceX on Unsplash

Though effective, this only helps you get started. How do you make sure when you have started something you don’t abandon it midway and start something else? I found the following method useful for this.

The Five Minute Rule

Often when we want to do something, there is inertia within us that prevents us from committing to it.

This inertia is overcome to some extent by the five-second rule, but to really get the momentum started, you can tell yourself, “I will only work on this for five minutes”.

Now look at the clock and remind yourself it is only for five minutes. Working on a task for five minutes with undivided attention sets your momentum and the chances are you won’t realize when the five minutes have passed as you are engrossed in the task.

“person holding analog watch” by Jaelynn Castillo on Unsplash

Projects are often long and overwhelming and we tend to become demotivated in some time. In order to keep our motivation levels high, we need a constant reward, a feeling of achievement.

Small Wins

Dividing a big project into small, seemingly insignificant tasks and physically checking them off gives you that reward, that feel-good sensation, to motivate you in achieving the next task.

For example, for programming projects, the simplest tasks of initializing an empty repository, naming the project, cloning it into your local machine and writing your first commit can be as many checks to your task list to get your motivation levels high.

“person writing bucket list on book” by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

The five-second rule, five-minute rule and small wins can help you achieve more every day and really give you that satisfaction and joy of working independently and actually being productive!

[Update] Here’s a mindmap of the article