Trick Your Brain Into Progress for Freelance Success
We talk a lot in my Flourishing Freelancer group about closing loops. It was my obsession for a bit because it seemed like momentum had slowed down. In the beginning of the year, everyone was gung-ho and ready to see big changes. But it’s been hard to keep up our consistency.
Those big goals now seem insurmountable.
Why? Because if we have a big goal in our business, our brain avoids it.
We would rather procrastinate even though we know hitting that goal is probably essential to moving the needle.
The reason?
Our brain sees this as an "open loop". There's no end that it knows of. As much as you try to convince your brain to work on goals and projects and how wonderful it will feel when it's done, our brain is like "Nah, friend, chill."
So we talked about now it's time to get sneaky and trick our brain to continue working
The way around this is twofold:
1️⃣ Closing loops
2️⃣ Consistency
What I talked about with my freelance students is to close the loop by putting a time limit on it.
For me, 20 minutes is key. I can work on something in 20 minutes. And once I get started, I usually go 30-45 minutes. This closes the loop for our brain. It's not a HUGE project anymore, but instead, a 20-minute project that I work on bit by bit.
Second, be consistent.
Every day, spend those 20 minutes in your most flow-like state. Is that 8am? 2pm? 7pm? When are you ready to hit the ground running?
What most of us do in that flow-like state is work on client work. BIG MISTAKE.
Instead, it should be focused on those goals that you need to get done to scale your freelance business...20 minutes at a time. We are more likely to be consistent when we are in our easy state, when our brain is ready to go, and when we feel like we can take on the world.
So if you’re brain has also checked out and you have stuff you need to get done, the hack is no secret:
1 - Close the loops.
2 - Stay consistent.
3 - Watch your freelance business succeed.
I’d love you to be part of these motivating conversations in our Flourishing Freelancer Family as well. Find out more about scaling and succeeding in your freelance business here.
