Burnout Made Me Lazy

Burnout made me lazy.  Here’s another admission; I suffered a bit of burnout at the end of 2014.  After things picked up and I started to make it out of the hard time I had been having with my business, I burned myself out.  I was juggling freelance work with an onsite contract assignment and when I ended that year on a bang, I was mentally and creatively pooped.

Financially, things were looking pretty good.  The contract assignment paid well and freelance work had picked up.  The two together were bringing in an income stream that I was pleased with.  Because I am pretty frugal and pretty particular on what I spend my money on, I was also able to save more money.  However, I had to be very rigid and disciplined with how I spent my time.  Time is something that we cannot make more of.  There are only 24 hours in a day and I had to maximize every waking hour in order to maintain both income streams.

As a creative, I need down moments to regenerate and dream new ideas.  It started to get a bit difficult to get inspired when inspiration time was scheduled and not something that happened organically.  Ready…set…go!  Brainstorm an awesome, creative idea now!  Yeah, no…not happening.

I thought I would be ready to return back to my blog by the end of that year, but no.  I was burned out and I decided to ease back on trying to get back to my writing and also to take on less freelance projects during the beginning of 2015.  January is usually pretty slow anyway so I figured it wouldn’t be a hard thing to do.  I once again stopped my marketing efforts and I allowed my burnout to make me super lazy.

Burnout made me lazy.  Because I had two income streams I severely slacked on one, my freelance design business, because I could fall back on the other.  I was still able to do the things I wanted, like travel, so I didn’t think it was too bad of a thing.  In fact I told myself that the rest and relaxation from going on vacation would rejuvenate me and I would return ready to dive in and jumpstart things.  Really, burnout made me lazy.  My return from each trip, never jumpstarted any serious motivation to “go hard” with my business.

Burnout made me lazy.  In previous years, I actively sought out freelance work.  I spent a considerable amount of time marketing myself, building connections and staying abreast on the latest marketing trends.  After the burnout, I stopped actively marketing, building and learning.  I still took on freelance work, but I didn’t actively seek it out.  Burnout made me too lazy to do so.

Now, I am trying to kick my laziness off of a cliff.  I have returned back to writing and actively marketing myself again.  I still do contract assignments, but I am only taking on short-term, part-time and remote work.  That’s giving me more time to focus on my freelance work and have those organic, inspiration periods of time.

Jumping back into things has shown me just how lazy I have become.  I am constantly trying to figure out how I was getting so much done/accomplished previously.  I didn’t even realize just how much I was doing until now.  I am not currently getting a quarter of the things I used to get done, done.  However, I know I will get there if I keep pushing and kicking lazy’s…fill in the blank.

Have you ever struggled with periods of laziness as an entrepreneur/business owner?  Has burnout ever made you lazy?