Deadlines and deadlifts: how freelancing mirrors fitness

Both fitness and freelancing require intentionality and a focus on the big picture of what we need and what we’re trying to achieve. Whatever fitness means to you, it offers lessons that can be applied to freelancing.

Over the past year, I’ve been getting back into fitness after a few years of health issues. And returning to fitness after an enforced break has given me a fresh appreciation of its power – and also how well the mindset of fitness translates to freelancing.

Forget about hitting the ground running or knocking it out of the park – there’ll be no hackneyed sports metaphors here. Just my ten realistic, grounded suggestions for how you can use a fitness mindset to boost your freelancing.

1. Be intentional

We all sometimes coast through our workouts. But the best exercise – just like the most fulfilling freelancing – is intentional.

For freelancers: Avoid autopilot. Think about how you do things, not just getting them done. Practise the basics so they become automatic, letting you add more complex skills on top.

2. Be disciplined

For elite athletes, being fit is their job. They have to turn up and be exceptional, regardless of how they feel. Us regular exercisers can skip the ‘exceptional’ part, but countless sources emphasize that just showing up regularly is the most important step in improving our fitness.

For freelancers: Nobody will build your business for you. Nobody will give you the ideas or follow-through for free. This is scary but it’s also immensely exciting, because it puts the power in our hands. If we have the discipline to show up in our businesses day in, day out, it won’t be long before small efforts add up to large – maybe exceptional – outcomes.

3. Be accountable (to yourself)

Unless you’re an elite athlete, nobody cares about the quality of your workouts except you. But that means you get to set your own standards.

For freelancers: You work for yourself – no one else. Which means that ultimately, the only person you’re accountable to is you. If you set your own high accountability standards, the odds are you’ll automatically match up to whatever your clients demand. Don’t wait for your clients to set the standard – set it for yourself.

4. Consider your whole self

It’s tempting to work out as if we have the biological makeup of a bouncy ball, but that will only get us so far. Stretching, joint mobility exercises, warm-ups, saunas, massage – all these things keep us supple and ward off injury.

For freelancers: Seek projects and clients you care about and that take your wellbeing into account. Look after your professional development. Set realistic boundaries and stick to them.

5. Invest in proper equipment

Yes, you can do a workout with tins of beans or an obliging pet as a weight, just as you can run a marathon in flip-flops. But you’ll progress more quickly – and likely get better results – with decent-quality specialist equipment.

For freelancers: Do the research and get the best-quality tech, software and office furniture you can justify. You’ll do a better job if you’re not constantly distracted finding workarounds or managing physical discomfort.

For freelance editors and proofreaders, some of our most important 'equipment' is our documentation. My courses and tools for editors can help you upgrade your kit and maximize those editing gains.

6. Work with yourself where you are

Everybody has good days and bad. Your health, sleep quality and hormones will fluctuate, rendering some workouts non-starters.

For freelancers: Mindfully observe your true emotional and physical state. If things don’t feel right, consider whether you might benefit from stepping away and coming back another day.

7. Build a support team

Just as the Andy Murrays of the world have come to be surrounded by entire teams of trainers, physios, nutritionists and others, we mere mortals get more out of getting sweaty when we involve a personal trainer or exercise with friends.

For freelancers: Your support team might be edibuddies on LinkedIn, a supportive partner or your particularly empathetic guinea pig. It might be people who understand exactly what your work entails or people whose ignorance of your day-to-day is a welcome refuge. Find people and communities that will hold you up in your inevitably varied hours of need.

8. Show off! (Or at least feel pride when it’s justified)

I’m not going to argue in favour of brazenly showing off your workout gains! But I do believe it’s good for us to recognize and feel pride when we make changes that improve our health, whatever that means to us.

For freelancers: Keep a win jar. Track your data so you know when you’ve hit a milestone (such as a certain number of projects completed or an X% increase in your average hourly rate). Post about your successes publicly (if you’re uncomfortable doing this, consider including a lesson that others can learn from). And especially: celebrate others and encourage them to feel pride in their achievements too.

9. Find your groove (or your hush)

When I’m working out, the right music helps me come alive. Eclectic is what works for me (in a recent workout, my playlist went from Judas Priest’s ‘Living After Midnight’ to Chicken Run’s ‘Flip, Flop and Fly’, Gladiator’s ‘Now We Are Free’, Slipknot’s ‘Spiders’, Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ and Taylor Swift’s ‘Out of the Woods’ – by this point I was practically juggling the weights).

For freelancers: My list for when I’m working would be very different. Some days I’m fine with Baroque music (Albinoni and Telemann are staples) or videogame music (the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations soundtrack is my secret weapon for when I’m flagging). Other days all I can cope with is a YouTube video of waves on a beach (and even then, I can be very picky about the waves – strictly no crashing!). Many freelance editors need complete silence. Find what works for you.

10. Find joy

Maybe the elites can slog it out with one thing indefinitely, but I certainly can’t. I vary my exercise between strength training, trail trotting (maybe one day I will be able to call it ‘trail running’, but not yet), swimming, yoga and (hopefully soon) horse riding. I feel like each complements the others, and I enjoy the feeling of being functionally fit in a rounded way.

For freelancers: Find the balance between variety and niching down that will give you the most joy. Too much variety and you may feel overwhelmed. Too much niching down and you may get bored. Everyone is different. Find some level of joy or satisfaction, or you’ll end up resenting your clients, and that’s a slippery slope to shedding mental responsibility and letting sloppiness take hold.

Bonus tip

In case you were wondering about the deadlifts in the title, I’m now doing them again after a year of building my abilities back up. I’ll never get back to my previous top weight, but that’s fine. We will inevitably have different eras of fitness over the course of our lives, just as our focus and goals will inevitably shift over the course of our freelance careers.

So, if you’ll allow me a bonus 11th tip, it would be not to let comparison be the thief of joy. As I’ve written in my 15 tips from 15 years of freelancing, other people’s businesses may not be as glamorous as they appear. And, similarly, each of your freelancing eras is likely to have both positives and negatives.

In both fitness and freelancing, look within and outside yourself, and find what works for you.