The doldrums; we all get them.

Those days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed and doing anything.  All you want to do is lie in bed and doze.  The very last thing you want to do is get up and work; or worse yet get up and look for work.

So, what do you do when you do get them?

The first step is obvious:  you have to get out of bed.

But we’re going to assume that you’re already up and moving, it’s just work that you’re having trouble getting motivated for.

One thing I’ve noticed with this myself, is that it’s more common when I come off a big project.  If I’ve been spending several weeks focused on one major project there’s a sense of closure that comes when I finish it.  The problem with that is that unless I’ve got another equally important project on the way it’s all too easy for that feeling to spill over and affect all of my job hunting, and that’s not a good thing.

One of the best ways to avoid this is to find a new project just before the old one ends.  That way you can take a deep breath and then jump right back into the fight on your new job.  It works very well, but if you over-do it you can feel like you never have time for yourself because you’re always going from job to job.

That leads straight into another issue:  burnout.

If you do nothing but work all the time you tend to burn out.  It happens to the best and worst of us.  Not even the mediocre are immune.

So, what do you do about it?

Form good habits:

Habit is one of the biggest tools in your arsenal for managing both your time, and you motivation.  It’s amazing just how powerful it is.  Once you build good habits it’s much easier to keep them up than if you’re just drifting aimlessly through the day.

The way to start building them is to tset yourself a schedule.  Nothing too insane, after all many of us became freelancers because we wanted the flexibility.  However some kind of a schedule is always going to be helpful.

If at all possible, what you want to do is build your schedule around the start of your day, not the end of it.  One reason is simple, the earlier your schedule starts in your day, the less time you have for other things to derail you before you start working.

Another is simple human psychology; we work better if reward follows work than the other way round.  If you start by doing what you want, then you’re less likely to get caught in the trap of running out of time because you just didn’t get around to doing the work.

But what if you don’t have good habits?

That makes it harder; not impossible, but harder.

The big thing to remember here is that everything has to start somewhere.  For online freelancers that means you need to get your butt down in that chair and start either working or searching.  If you’re not in the chair, you can’t start.

So, at the beginning:  sit down and either open up your job, or open up your browser and go to your freelance sites.  Here’s the trick though:  don’t worry about how much time you have.  Just worry about making the most of the time you’re using.

Even if you only start with five or ten minutes work that’s a beginning.

That’s important because it’s always easier to take that second step than the first one.  When you take that first step you don’t have any momentum, with the second you can carry on with your momentum from the first.

It’s why the first piece of advice for would-be writers is to write every day.  It’s the foundation of good habits and it’s also why Alcoholics Anonymous uses one day at a time as a goal.

It’s all about making the job easier.

The easier you make things, the less trouble you have getting started and doing them.  Doing a huge project is hard.  Sitting down for five minutes to do something is easy.  Even an hour is easy for most people.

So if you find your motivation is missing, try to sit down for a little bit of time and do just a bit of work.  Once you’ve got your software open and you’ve started working you might find it that much easier to keep going.

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