The Roots of Overbooking

SEASON 4, EPISODE 7:

Today we're talking about how to stop yourself from overbooking your freelance assignment roster. And we know, that description may raise a doubtful eyebrow or two – but we promise you, it’s possible!

In this episode, we dig into the myriad reasons why freelancers tend to overbook, like:

We’re in a scarcity mindset and think that more work will never come. Or we believe freelance work pays so little that we have to take on more work whenever it comes our way.

We don’t have a good accounting of how much we are making, or how much work we are doing, so we struggle to say yes or no based on capacity.

We don’t know how long things might take us.

Projects end up being delayed, and then everything compounds.

Our identities are tied to being busy, productive workers.

We'll discuss each of these issues, and also talk about how to combat them.

Full Transcript Below:

Wudan- Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Writers' Co-op.

Jenni- We are your co-hosts.

W- I'm Wudan

J- And I'm Jenni.

W- Hey Jenni, how are you doing?

J- Well, when everyone listens to this, it will be 2022. But we're recording this episode a little bit before the holiday break begins. So I'm just busy, you know, chasing a toddler. We are in the midst of buying a house, I'm finishing up my work, I've been sick. So honestly, it's been very hectic, we're right before those like two weeks at the end of the year. And I love those weeks because everyone disappears, and it just feels low pressure to me, the quiet is going to be really welcome, especially this year. I'm definitely just really tired after 2021. So I'll be working a few days in those final two weeks. But mostly I'm focusing on family time and taking time off. So what about you, Wudan?

W- I am so close to being done with everything. You just put a pin in when we're recording. And I'm like, I am so so close. I have a pretty bad habit of driving my car until my gas light comes on. And my car tells me please refuel. Range: 25 miles. And I'm like, this is actually a metaphor for my life. I'm always trying to squeeze every little bit of juice out of me before I rest. So yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm just wrapping up a few small things here and there. I am really looking for forward to my few days off. I'm going to the desert for some hiking and climbing and stargazing. And yeah, it's much needed. 

J- Sounds dreamy. Love the desert.

W- I'm excited.

J- Yeah, it sounds like a really good way to spend your time and celebrate the new year off grid life. It's good. 

W- It's so good. 

J- Okay, so before we dive in, as per usual this season, we have a sponsor for today's episode. And this sponsor is a company called Control. Control invites freelancers to smooth out your lumpy income, and take control of your finances with an exclusive membership. So here's how it works: you pay a monthly fee, and then you get access to a bunch of things. You can automatically smooth out your income from month to month, you can manage your income and expenses through a bank account that is managed by Control. And you also get a debit card to track your expenses. And then you also get a platform that gives you financial insights. So to me this is the benefit of doing something like this, just a really sleek dashboard gives you all sorts of analytics about how much you're spending how much you're earning. It's like a profit and loss statement, basically. And then they're also offering lots of perks, discounts things on tools that freelancers actually use. So this is a new service. You get all that stuff for $25 a month, which is quite good. No interest, no extra fees. And Control is actually free right now for beta users, which is cool. They want to invite Writers' Co-op members to become some of those beta users to give them information and help them polish up their service. So if this sounds interesting to you, we are going to drop our specific link to sign up in the show notes. And you can check it out it's for freelancers who are US residents and those making more than 50k a year. If that's you, go ahead and click on that link in our show notes. They offer peace of mind. And you can save time on your freelance finances, which as we know is a really good thing. You can join their waitlist. That's how you're going to get on that beta user list and be part of the future of freelance financial management by visiting their website. Again, we will link to that in the show notes. So on that note, Wudan, tell me: what are we talking about this week?

W- This week? We are tackling overbooking.

J- I need this episode so bad. As you know, this is my life. This is one of those where we're going to say things that are good ideas. And I'm probably not doing any of them.

W- Coaching. Yeah, mindset change. But honestly, we all need this episode. So that's what we're here for.

J- Yeah. So what are we going to talk about? I know this was your idea. So tell me what this episode includes.

W- Yeah, so overbooking is pervasive. We are going to talk about what overbooking is, why we do it, what mindset work we can use to help us understand and then dismantle the overbooking habit, and then take practical steps to actually stop ourselves from doing this.

J- I love it. Let's dig in.

W- Alright, Jenni, so first, you know the drill here it's storytime. Tell us about a time you overbooked yourself. What were the circumstances? Walk us through your mindset as you're going through all of this and just generally the arc of what happened?

J- This question is so funny to me, because I'm not even sure I remember the first time I overbooked because I am literally always constantly habitually overbooking myself. When I was thinking about this question, since we script these up front, we often spend some time thinking about the questions. And I think the first time I want to talk about overbooking was when I was in high school. And I know that's not part of our freelance business, but I'll get there. So I have a tendency to want to do all the things, every single thing that is interesting to me. So I did in high school. I was a cheerleader. I took AP classes. I was on the student council. I was applying for colleges. I was trying to date in that awkward teenage way. I was a really angsty emotional teenager, because my family was really heavily involved in the fundamentalist Christian church. And it wasn't working for me. It was a time of a lot. And I signed up for all of these activities in September. And by December, the sounds funny, but the toll was bad. I was so sick that I lost 15 pounds in three weeks. And I couldn't eat anything because I was so anxious. I remember the only thing I would eat was Satsuma oranges and goldfish. And my doctor couldn't figure out why. And then it eventually came to the fact that my anxiety was literally so so so bad that it was affecting my health. And it was because I was overbooked.

W-  

Yeah, I mean, what you're saying, even going back this far makes a lot of sense. Because in so many ways, we are conditioned in this culture from quite a young age that there is value in doing everything and having tons of activities going on. So I was the same, like very similar in college, especially for a first generation Chinese American kid who was gunning for the Ivy League, because immigrant parents, and we were taught that we had to do it all. Be multi dimensional. I was a three-season varsity athlete. I was in science research and orchestra and all this other stuff. And yeah, it was a lot.

J- For sure. I mean, I think this is what we were taught was required on a college application. So in my family, too, there is just a lot of value placed on accomplishments, and especially prestigious accomplishments, especially accomplishments that other people admire. So what happened in this situation is that ultimately, I had to quit things. And that was tough. I remember being like, but I want to do all of this stuff. And I think I did. But ultimately, there was not enough space or capacity in my life for me to excel and be healthy, and do all the things on my list. So I dropped out of cheerleading for a season. I remember I changed my class schedule. It did help overall. But that quitting was really tough for me, it felt very no-win when I think back on it.

W- Yeah. So what has happened to this overbooking habit since high school?

J- So it still happens constantly. I think I notice it a little bit in advance now, but definitely happened again in college in the same ways. And then I was a working person who was also working four people's jobs in one human body. Like that was my identity. It was wrapped up in, I want people to be impressed with how much I can juggle. I remember I got the superlative one year, my first job, the person you ask all the questions to. The person who has all the answers. I liked being that person. But also, I was working four people's jobs for $50,000 paycheck per year, I thought the quantity of work that I could juggle was what made me hireable. So I kept doing it. I thought that was where my value was. And again, I burned out that first media job I had. I had to walk out of the job with nothing in front of me. I remember I had a few months of just feeling this massive existential doubt, I was miserable. I couldn't sleep. Again, I had trouble eating because this is how it shows up. It's really bad nausea, and I had to walk out of the job. I just left. I give two weeks notice with nothing in front of me. So you know, I think I overbook myself because I think that productivity is my work. And I am definitely more aware of this habit now. But it really showed up at the beginning of my freelance business, too. And it'll show up like once or twice a year, especially when I have other stressful things going on in my life. And then I'm like, stuck in the middle of being overbooked. And I'm like, What did I get myself into? It happened again in October, pretty recently.

W- What is it that pushes you into the land of overbookedness?

J- So this is a question that is only possible for me to answer because a lot of therapy. I think that my biggest freelancing Gremlin is the idea that productivity and speed are my worth. And so it's really easy for me to jump over that line between having enough work and then like, Oh, my God, this is unsustainable. And I think it's the emotional experience that causes me to overbook. I'm going to put a pin in that and I think we can get into it later because it's going to track with some of our conversations about causes. So the simple explanation is really that working a lot is a stress management tool. And it helps me feel like the person that I want to be, which is complicated.

W- Yeah, it's a really fine line, I think, between having enough steady work for us and being overbooked. And same. It's scary to hop over in that territory. Again, I don't think really anyone is immune necessarily from overbooking. It's totally scary.

J- Right, it feels like a lack of control. So I've talked enough here though. Wudan, tell us an overbooking story. Tell me tell me the last time you ever booked or an important time that you remember overbooking.

W- Yeah, I'll dig into the early COVID days overbooking hole that I got myself in. Those of you who listened to this podcast know that when COVID hit, all my work got canceled because I was about to go overseas. And then I started taking on work tied to the news cycle. And that didn't go so well. So the assignments I worked on looked a bit like this: I took on work that at least allowed me to stay about a week ahead of what was happening. So that work also paid about $1 a word. I could finish them within a work week, more or less. And so I was budgeting like one story a week on average, with my deadlines all pretty tight, like spaced within one another. So ultimately, I wasn't overbooked in the terms of number of assignments I took, but I was really overbooked. In terms of my capacity, so my emotional capacity, it was a lot of work for me to task switch from one story to the next. It was really a churn and burn situation. So ultimately, I was overbooked with money too, which somehow I just ignored at the time being. I was just saying yes. And at that time, I was trying to hit around 6000 every month and I was way over. I didn't even recognize it. Like I didn't even have time to log my assignments.

J- Yeah, right. Like you're so lost in the trees you aren't even seeing the forest. I think oftentimes, it's like, all suddenly realized, I feel like crap. And then I'll be like, Oh, well, of course, I feel like crap. But I didn't see how much I was working on in the moment. So I think the striking thing to me about what you just said, Wudan, is how easy it is to overbook when you're a freelancer. When you're in a full time job, I don't want to say you have someone else managing your workload, but there is sort of an inherent pace that the company is operating at. And when you're a freelancer, it's all on you. And then all of a sudden you open your eyes and you're like "I have too many things going on." So I think it's key as well that you made that designation of it's not just overbooking in terms of the quantity of work, it's actually in terms of your emotional capacity as well.

W- Yeah. And Jenni, you said this, too, like you're chasing a feeling. And I think when I took on that work, I was chasing a feeling too. And that's actually a little analogous to how addiction works in some way. So if we're really attached to how much we're working, or we take how much we're earning as a sign of how productive we are as workers, we're getting a small dopamine hit. Every time a story publishes, every time a check gets deposited, every time a pitch gets accepted. And again, and again and again. And then we begin to crave all these things, which just fuels the cycle.

J- I think this is what I was alluding to earlier about the cause of my overbooking. It's that being busy is deeply tied to my identity. And it's also really connected to my anxiety. I've had generalized anxiety disorder since I was a kid. And I think that overbooking is a quick hit for me if you will, because I like look at my full work schedule, and work offers, and if I'm stressed about things in the rest of my life, or I don't think I'm doing well in the rest of my life, or I'm being self critical, then I have started to notice that that self criticism leads to me loading up on work, which tells me it's a coping mechanism. It's like a controllable guarantee that I can prove that I have worth, even if I've been doubting it. And I have been in years of therapy to be able to say that loudly.

W- Yeah, that's spot on. And when I work with coaching clients, I want to know, what is that feeling that both of us are talking to that they're chasing, that you're craving? Because sometimes it's acceptance or approval, like you said, Jenni. And sometimes it's stability, and sometimes it's something else entirely. And the work after that is really about understanding how else you can find those elements in your daily life, or your business, honestly, that don't hinge on those dopamine hits that cause overwork.

J- Yeah, I was saying to someone the other day, it's about replacement, not elimination. Like I was working with someone who has a big value of collaboration and social time. And she was overworking and we realized it's because that was the only place in her life where she was getting that collaboration. So she's chasing collaboration. She's chasing tons of work, right? And so we had to figure out how to get her the thing she needed in different parts of her life. Like if work is giving you acceptance, if work is giving you what you need to control your anxiety, then you can't just be like, "Now I'm done with this. I will never overbook again," because then you're missing out on the acceptance you needed right or the identity that you needed. It's a habit for a reason. So you have to find a replacement source, I think is what I mean by this.

W- For sure. So Jenni, let's start by addressing why freelancers tend to find themselves overbooked. Because, like we said, it's a common problem.

J- Yeah. I think one big driver is the idea that freelancing is feast or famine. I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. So, work is gonna dry up or disappear. And then you will be a bad freelancer, you won't make any money, this won't work for you. So when things get quiet, we've called this the panic hustle, Wudan, right? Things get quiet, and you're like, Oh, my God, there's no work. And then suddenly, that two weeks of quiet moves you into a month and a half of like, severe overbusy, because you've just tried to pull in all this work. That happens to a lot of people.

W- Exactly. Because you've carried the scarcity mindset over that there isn't enough work out there.

J- I think we're talking about limiting beliefs again, which is gonna come up in like every episode of this season.

W- Are we? Are we again? Yeah. So I think it's time to interrogate them.

J- Yeah. So if you need a framework to do that, I'm gonna link to episode two in the show notes. I think we're gonna link to in every episode of the season, that's going to have some questions that you can ask yourself, every time you hear a limiting belief creeping in. In this case, it's that feast or famine is inevitable. When work is quiet, it means I'm failing.

W- Yeah, this one is worth further discussion now, I think. So how do you like to work through this, Jenni?

J- Yeah, the big question for me is, and I posted something about this on Twitter a few weeks ago, is feast or famine inevitable? Like, is that just the way freelancing works? With that question in mind, I guess I would interrogate the limiting belief that feast or famine is just a part of this by looking for evidence for and against it. Is it a requirement? Is there evidence to suggest that a quiet month actually isn't bad? That a quiet month is maybe part of this? Are there people who don't experience this? Are there people who do? So I'm just kind of using those investigative muscles to ask questions about this belief. And I think the process of even just asking those questions for me usually gives me more space between the belief and me. So I can say, do I want to take this with me? I just start to see that maybe slowness is not bad. It's not that simple. It just is. And in my life, when I think about it, there's actually a lot of evidence to support that a slower pace is actually really, really good for my business. Ironically, the more slow chunks I have, the more money I make overall, and the less stress I have. I think it's because it forces me to be more intentional. And that is interesting. If I'm being honest, my business this year, I've run it basically part time and I made six figures. I am a better person in the world, my business is much more functional when I'm not working at breakneck speed, which tells me that the slowness is not bad. It's actually good. It's an interesting flip. I didn't expect to find that in my revenue this year. So what do you think about this, Wudan? What do you have to add?

W- Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think people come to both of us, Jenni, as coaches, looking for us to coach them, because we are really into this slow freelancing. So that really tracks with what we're saying. So I'll say this, with regards to the scarcity mindset, if we don't have any of our own experiences to go off of, we're pretty likely to fall to the whims of limiting beliefs that others have created for us. And I think having and collecting our own stories and experiences around these things allows us to reframe limiting beliefs for ourselves. So a few weeks back, I asked around on the bird app to see why freelancers overbooked themselves, and so many people talked about that: even though they've been nervous that work would dry up, they don't actually remember a time that it happened. And I just wrapped up a coaching intensive with a client who was worried that her work was gonna dry up after projects ended in February. So I asked her Has that ever happened to you? And she said, No. So here's a fun exercise: create a note in your phone and ongoing email reply to yourself a page in your diary, or a post it note and put it on your work wall, whatever, of all the moments where you were nervous that work was going to dry up, and we will include a worksheet about this for our Patreon members. So a week later, I want you to come back to that list and write down what happened next. After you thought that work was gonna disappear. How did you respond? Maybe you went out and saw other opportunities and wrested control over things. Maybe you took time away from work to get clarity on what you wanted to do and sought out appropriate opportunities. Maybe the pause, that liminal space between assignments, some other work came your way without you searching for it. Write down what happened, because this list will eventually show you proof to you that there is always more work.

J- Yeah, I think this exercise really helps to upend that limiting belief that work is scarce, because so much of what we do, Wudan, as coaches is about awareness. It's just about drawing awareness to the reality of the situation for you.

W- It's easy to get lost in the day today of capital D doing capital T, the capital W work, that we can see the forest through the trees. That's sure, right? Freelancing is cyclical. There's work and there's rest, and then there's always more work.

J- I really like that reframe. Maybe it's not feast or famine, maybe it should be reframed as feast and rest or something like that. Maybe it's actually a natural seasonal shift, because that is, by the way, the way nature works, right? It's how the seasons work, it's even how our bodies work. We move we rest, we move through rest. There are seasons for both. I'm thinking about that book Wintering that is all about this. It's a very innately human thing to function in a way where we need to slow down. Rather than just assuming that we would maintain this steady hustle pace for a long time. I also just read a book called Do Less that's about this idea that honoring your shifts in energy and matching projects to them is actually a more efficient way to work, and often for people much more sustainable. But you also then need to be a little bit introspective about like, what is this time for? It's also interesting to me, like the thing that people ask for most in coaching with me is they want more time off. And then when they get one slow period, they're like, Oh, my God, and I'm like, but isn't this exactly what you asked for? So it's for sure tricky, but I think actually a very natural thing that we need this slow time. It's important.

W- Yeah. Or if you eat a large meal over the holidays, you rest, you literally naturally go into a food coma. Rest is the way to just lean into times when work is slow. And like we've said so many times, Jenni, it recharges us to be better and more intentional workers.

J- Yeah, I love it. You know, I agree. What is another overbooking reason that you can think of Wudan?

W- Yeah, one idea is that if we tell client no to that particular opportunity they approached us with, that means disappointing the client, that client will never email us again. And we will never work with that client. Has that happened to you, Jenni, in real life?

J- Oh, my God. I mean, this is so real, right? Like, this is the only time that I will—This is the one moment that I will have this work offered to me. That's the thought that goes through your head. I'm such a people pleaser. So this one has taken a lot of work to dismantle. Over the years, though, I've really been able to gather evidence, I think, to support the idea that saying no doesn't mean I can't work with the people later. So I was really worried initially that people wouldn't want to book me again, if I said no, because it would inconvenience them. And they might be mad at me. And the result of that was overbooking. I would just say yes, too much. And it was not nice. I realized, sometimes it's actually good, because they might walk away from me. Sure. It's always a possibility that they won't want to work with you again, if they don't want to work with me again because I am busy during the one week they contacted me, they're probably not the right client, for me, honestly. I get what I need in that scenario with them walking away. But if I do want to work with them again, I'm also going to say that.  I just don't have space right now. And so I will usually try to be candid and be like, Hey, can you circle back in two months, because I think this is a good match. But at the moment, I just don't have space. I've also found that having a waitlist is a really positive thing for your business. It means you're in demand, it brings in some respect from clients. So all of that took three years of confirmation for me to get it through my brain for sure.

W- The waitlist and the I can't do work now is a really fascinating way to tap into scarcity mindset for the client and not us. So I agree with what you said, Jenni. And I do the same thing, like loop back with me later. I turned down work, tell client when I would be available for assignments again. That gives us both something concrete to work towards, because then I'll actually have time and space to complete a project rather than having to do in a hurry, which rarely leads to good outcomes. And then, you know, what that time and space, the client and I can collaborate in a way that we both wanted in the first place. And I always think that, you know, clients who want to work with us probably will want to work with us eventually. There are a few clients of mine that have started out with me saying no. And then I ultimately said yes. And that led to a very positive working relationship. 

J- Yeah I think because you're setting boundaries up front too, it sets the tone of the whole relationship. I really do believe that there's not just this one chance, like there's not just this one opportunity. It's really interesting. I'm buying a house right now. And I actually feel that way about the house. Maybe the house is the right house for us. If there are a lot of issues when I'm in escrow, it isn't the house for us. But there will be other houses. It's not your only shot right. And I also think that having a list of people that are excited to work with you can also stabilize your business in your mindset. So when you have some space you actually have people to call on. So it really serves the client because you're giving them your full bandwidth when you have it available. But it also really serves you because then you don't have to panic hustle you already know who to talk to if you have time.

W- Yeah, and again, louder for the people in the back: saying no to something right now is not equivalent to saying no forever. If you want to work with the client in the future, say that. Here's another traffic analogy or car analogy, whatever: The other day, I was in typical Seattle rush hour traffic, and I was trying to switch lanes, and again, very thick traffic, and I realized my blinker wasn't even on it was like, Oh my God, Wudan, what are you doing? You're such an idiot. But if you're thinking of doing something, but haven't communicated, nobody can read your mind. And if you don't communicate it, like you're in traffic, that might actually cause an accident. Maybe I should just like be in more traffic to come up with good car analogies.

J- Yeah, you're on a roll today with those metaphors. But I think it's true. With people pleasing, I think the best strategy I know is implementing a pause in your freelance business so you're not saying that habitual yes. When people offer you work, you get to offer a counter solution. But you're also not going to respond right away, so you can figure out what your answer is. So for some people that pause is an hour for some people, it's 24 hours, I usually take at least two hours. But I have a little checklist that I will compare the opportunity to. It's questions like do I have capacity for this? Does it pay? Well, things like that, that I'm sort of measuring the opportunity up against. And if that yes gets you into overbooked land, then you know, and it's intentional, because you've taken that pause, and you're looking at the opportunity. I think that's where the power is. You need time to think it over because they know is hard for most people, because you are turning down money now in favor of possibly a work opportunity later. So a lot of my clients, like I said, have checklists for this gap, ways to make the decision. That's definitely a good way to manage this if you find that even during that gap, you're having trouble rationalizing the no for yourself.

W- And Jenni, you were the one who introduced the idea of a decision matrix, a very fancy term. And I think you got that from Ann Freedman and Aminatou Sow of Call Your Girlfriend. So the idea is to create a spreadsheet of opportunities. And instead of responding immediately to that email, go into that spreadsheet and hash out why you should take this opportunity or not, or if there are conditions under which you would take it. So I did this for about a month this past year. And I really think it honed my no, and my gut instincts. So we'll include this too in resources for Patreon.

J- Yeah I almost forgot about that. That was a great exercise. And I did it for a few months as well. And I think it's like I would say it's like a yield sign. It's like, okay, let's take a minute. If you're entering into the spreadsheet, you really do have to take a minute. And you start to notice trends in what you've typed out about why you're taking projects or not. So back to that idea of capacity. Wudan, I think that's another challenge. And maybe a reason why people over book is they, and also me and you probably too, underestimate how long things will take. And then that gets them into the land of overbooking. What do you think about that? How do you handle that for yourself?

W- Yeah, this is a very, very, very, very real thing. And the most sobering conversation I have with myself and with my clients is, you don't have as much time as you think. We can always take on more work. But that doesn't mean that we can just get more time. Nobody can get more time, not even Beyonce. So when I'm looking at my work schedule for a month or week, I first try and get a sense of how many hours I have. So I don't really work more than 35 total work hours a week, at most 25 of them are billable. So in a month, I have 100 billable hours. Great little round number, I love her. So billable hours are when I'm actively working on commission for a client when I'm on the clock. It is not admin, pitching, or any other unpaid time.

J- Yeah, this feels key to me. You don't actually have 40 hours of open work time, billable work time as a freelancer I don't think anybody does. And this is something that comes up a lot when I'm working with clients who are clocking 60/70 hour work weeks. It's like they are relying on those 40 billable hours, which means then they're working 60 to do all the other stuff, right? There's the business admin, the marketing, the invoicing, all that stuff. There's stuff that you have to do in your business that you're not going to get directly paid for by the client. And so I think looking at your schedule, from the billable hours perspective, rather than total hours, is a huge game changer. There's a recent episode about productivity on Is This Working, a podcast that we love, and it's based on the idea that like, why are we trying to stuff it all in? What are we running towards? Like most people have like two to three hours of strong focus a day. It's really interesting, because I think we are like, yeah, have a 40 hour work week. And then that gets us into a lot of trouble. And then we're working weekends and nights and burning out.

W- Yeah, and even with meetings, I can't stack them back to back anymore, like I could probably do two 20 minute calls back to back, but then I need a break. Otherwise I go into my next meeting or interview tired, and I'm not fully present. So adding that buffer also shows me how much I need when, you know, I'm trying to stack my day full of interviews. So I mean, with this time-math calculation, I do a few things. When an assignment comes my way, I need to decide how much time it's going to take and what my hourly rate for that project will be. And the hourly rate will have to match my internal hourly rate. And that's for my business plan, which is what I need to be making in order to hit my business goals.

J- Yeah, this is super tactical, I do something similar. I do think that where a lot of people tend to get stuck is figuring out how much time a project will take in the first place, especially if it's a new project that you haven't done before.

W- Yeah, so let me give a few examples that pertain to work, specifically work that I do. So I have clients where I produce profiles for them. So that's one interview, and anywhere from 500 to 1000 words of copy. So one client asks for 1000-word stories, and I just get paid a flat fee of $1,500. So I spend up to half an hour prepping for the interview, the interview is no more than 45 minutes, somebody else handles the transcription or machine, I reread the interview, that's another 20 minutes. And then I will spend another two hours writing and editing my own work. Edits are typically pretty light. So I reserve another 45 minutes, max. So when I add all that up, that's between four to five hours of work. And so when this client comes to me, I asked myself, do I have that time in a month to spare? Do I need to make $1,500? If both answers point to yes, then I take it. So on the flip side, journalism assignments: say it's a feature, 2500 words, dollar a word, just to make the math easy. I figure I'll probably need to interview eight people. So that can be one hour interview and seven shorter ones, which are no more than half an hour each. That includes research time and identifying sources. So probably another hour. I might delegate some of this to my assistant. I need to do the interviews, reread them, write, address edits, the whole nine yards. So based on my calculations, will that take me 25 hours? If I want my hourly rate on the project to be $100 an hour? This is a work backwards example. So do I also have 25 hours on my schedule to complete the assignment? If all signs point to yes, then sure.

J- Yeah, so what you can hear, I think is Wudan doing all this back math before she even starts the negotiation process with the client. So there is some work to be done, I think, for all of us upfront, at least to estimate, okay, it usually takes me this long to interview a person, it usually takes me this long to write. A lot of times when people don't know where to start, we recommend they're tracking their time. So Wudan actually made a spreadsheet to help you track your assignments—I think last season, right?—based on time and money to look at both, and see it's even matches up. So we're gonna link to that in the show notes as well. And I think this way of tracking makes a lot of sense to me. And then like, I also know it's annoying to people to track in this way. But doing it on a couple assignments really helps in the long term so you do know how much something is going to cost you. Because sometimes you're looking at assignment and think it's gonna take five hours, and it takes 25. You need that information up front, right. And I think this is also the benefit of a trial project as well, so you can get a sense for how long something would take if it is new. So I know people who use Toggl for time tracking, I know people who do Google Calendar. It's kind of whatever works for you, but figure out some way to measure how long you're spending on a project.

W- Yeah, it's pretty important. So for a second in the early COVID mess, I was not tracking at all. I was just being, not even sloppy, just really in the trees. Work was coming so fast. I was doing so much that it was, frankly a chore to update my tracking spreadsheet. But here's an idea, right? If your assignments are living in your head, and it's making you feel overwhelmed, take that as a signal to try and start tracking and get organized on when things are due how much you're making, how much of your time is getting allotted to what.

J- Yeah, it's also we're saying here that it's okay to dial down your working hours if you're dealing with other stuff. So for me, I'm a parent, and I think I'm prone to go with what I think is my ideal number of available hours, and this gets me into trouble. So I think I have 30 hours a week, but if I'm honest about the time it takes to drop off my kid and pick up my kid and deal with him barfing all over me, which he did today, I don't have 30 hours. Realistically I probably have 20. And I've had a lot more success with using my minimum hours available as a starting point versus my ideal, because then I might find that I have more time than I expected, but I'm not going to get stuck with work that I have to do in the evening. I think the big thing I'm getting at here is—I was talking about this in our biz refresh workshop yesterday—what is your capacity? Answer that question for yourself. What is your actual capacity? And it's gonna require some tracking and some introspection about like, I think my capacity is actually four hours, because I find when I get to our four of intensive work, I'm pretty fried. Right? It's a really important question to ask yourself.

W- I think we want to appear more productive than we actually are. I think that's another issue. So you know, I said, I have 100 hours a month, if I'm working 35 hours a week. But the truth is, I'm rarely doing that. Usually, it's closer to 30, which makes my billable hours every month 80. And that feels a lot more limited in some ways than 100. So yeah, time is valuable. How do we decide to spend it is valuable?

J- Yep. And we have to account for the unbillable time, we just have to. And that is something that you don't usually account for when you start your business. But as you get going, you're going to learn is a part of the mix.

W- Yeah, I again, want to reiterate, it's really important to be honest about your nonbillables. It is still working, the task switching all that. I think the big thing with tracking is that you've got to be accountable to yourself. That looks different for everyone. I personally know how bad it feels in my body, and mind and soul to be overbooked completely, like filled to the brim of my cup and overflowing and constantly overflowing by adding more. It's irrational, it sucks. And I don't want to go there. So all of that made me realize how important it is to be checking in with myself.

J- Yep. It's why a lot of people will do like a monthly CEO check in with themselves, right? One day where you're not in the trees, you're looking at the forest, and you're like, oh, wow, I actually feel bad. Right? This is actually too much. So I think that's boundaries,  and holding yourself to your boundary. So, Wudan, I think we're gonna move on from this point soon. And I know this episode is long. So thanks for sticking with us, everybody. But I want to know how you hold yourself to your hourly estimate. You told us how you come up with it. But then I think like this happens, where people will be like, Yes, this is gonna take 10 hours. But then it like actually takes 20 when they get into it. So what do you do when the scope increases? Or more work needs to be done? How do you hold yourself to the estimate?

W- Yeah, I check in with myself. And once I hit my time bound, I, at that point, have a sense of how much more I need to do. And I can guess at how much time I'll need for my clients. So this is why I charge a lot of my projects based not on the can't-go-below-this hourly rate, but a secret rate, which is two to 3.5x my base rate. So I have a buffer. And sometimes it means telling my client, hey, this is exceeding the time I envision spending on this project because x reason that's out of my control. Can we revisit my fee?

J- I think for me, if I am seeing something expand beyond the point of no return, I will go to the client and ask for additional pay. And if they can't do it, then it's a choice, right? Either you eat it, and you do better next time. But often for me, it's also like talking to them a about what's going on, maybe actually cutting myself off so that the assignment is 80% of my overall effort instead of 100%. It feels important to me to really like hold myself to those standards, the more I rabbit hole on things that are not accounting for rabbit holes, the more it costs me and the more overbooked I am and the less I'm making. So it feels to me too like this is one of those things where you show up for yourself and take care of yourself by sticking to the numbers that you agreed upon at the outset.

W- For sure. So Jenni, I have a few other reasons I want to get into with our listeners. One thing that came up on why people overbooked is because they end up in situations where projects get delayed, pushed back, which makes other work overlap. So how do you deal with this?

J- Yeah, this is again, very real. And I think similar to the above, it's unfortunately, outside of our control as freelancers. You block out a chunk of work time, that client is like "I need your work time" and then they move at the speed of a snail. And they can't get their contracts together. And all of a sudden the project that was slated for November is happening in January. This happens a lot. I think for me, the best thing I know for this is to look big picture and say okay, I'm going to work a little less this month, but then I know probably that this is gonna still contribute to my quarterly overall income. And maybe I'm also adjusting some of my other client work. So what I mean by that is maybe a client is slated for a project that's in November. W have been fine for my November schedule. But now it's happening in December. So I didn't get paid for in November. And now my December is over busy because they pushed it. So typically, I will say, I guess I have to deal with the over busy, or I will say, I'm going to shuffle things around. So I might ask a different client to move a deadline back, I might gear up for a busy week, but then also take a few days off the following week to balance it out. Or sometimes I talk with the client directly. And I'm like, listen, I had time to do this in November, I don't have time to do it now. So we're gonna have to do it two or three months from now. And can we talk about this so it doesn't happen again? Because I can't save time for you if you then don't need it. There's a cost to that. So I think part of it is education, holding to your boundaries, and then deciding if you want to take the hit or not. So it is a big power move. You're saying to them, sorry, this doesn't work for me. To me, this is the idea of mutuality, Win Win, how can it be a win for you and a win for your client? Most of the time, we're trying to make wins for our clients, but not thinking about what a win would be for us. So I think also it helps to, like I said, to calm some anxiety, I look at my finances big picture quarterly, for example. So it doesn't really matter if the revenue falls now or in December or January, it's still going to contribute to my bottom line. The pace is just not going to be as even as I wanted it to be. So what do you think about this? Because this happens a lot.

W- It does. I mean, this is the unfortunate reality, right? We can make such grand organized plans and life does not go to plan. There may be ways to control this. So if it's a writing project that's getting pushed back and I know I want to reserve my creative energy for then I might take on more research and fact-checking work that month that the work got kicked back to to balance things out. What I personally want to avoid is a situation where I'm constantly doing creative work, then I'm going to feel overbalanced and overbooked on writing, so to speak. So I also think you can be overbooked for specific services and parts of your brain.

J- Totally. So I think like this is about staying balanced so you don't have a work week where you're just like writing four feature stories all in one week, which again, requires that introspection and looking ahead. I tend to put a hard cap on things like coaching for this reason, because I really can't do more than like six to eight sessions per week, or I'm just not serving the people who want my brain capacity. Even if someone is asking for a session during the week, I'm gonna say no, because they're not going to get what they need for me. They just can't move their sessions as well into a week where I'm overbooked. So boundaries are key. And I think that gets at that emotional bandwidth thing to have creative projects, and one on one conversations. Are they take a toll and need to be sort of put in a box.

W- Yeah. Yeah, speaking is hard. I learned over the last year when everyone wanted me to speak on virtual events that I could do, you know, at most one a week, and then with coaching, again, I don't take more than five clients a month just because I prioritize other work. And showing up on a screen just requires a lot of emotions and outward energy from me.

J- Yep, energy out now energy in. So I think the last thing I want to call out here with overbooking is that sometimes it actually isn't about logistics, missestimating time or trying to keep people happy with you or moving clients around, this gymnastics Tetris work. Sometimes we overbook habitually. Because, like I said at the beginning, it's a coping mechanism. And this to me is is like a big therapy thing.

W- Yeah. Just yes to therapy. Those are my only thoughts.

J- Yeah, yeah. So for a lot of people like me, being busy is a way to channel your anxiety. If you have a lot of anxiety, it's a lot of energy that's stored in your body and stored in your brain. And if you can put it into your work, you don't have to deal with it at the end of the day. And I say this super no judgement, because it has been true for me in the past that this is where the replacement behavior needs to come in. Because if you slow down and you stop overbooking, all of a sudden you're going to feel anxious as hell, like your anxiety is just going to come to the surface. And I think this is what happens to a lot of people where things slow down, and it's normal. But the level of anxiety is really, really high because there's nowhere to put it. So you have to find somewhere to put it or else you're going to overbook again and again and again and again.

W- Yeah, this is super real. Both of us have been in therapy are in therapy. So we can say that even a few sessions can help you develop a toolkit for dealing with anxiety for me burnout, a way to channel that energy somewhere else.

J- Yeah, like I said, I've had anxiety since I was a kid. And I've just learned that certain things work well for me like journaling and exercising. And so I live in a place where I can go outdoors. So if I channel my anxiety into those things, I'm usually pretty healthy. If I channel into work, it kind of becomes this like obsession, and a overbook. So I guess I want to say that overbooking can also just be a mask for really tough emotions, and especially this year, during this very hard here. And I think that's also part of why we do it when we're busy. We don't have to acknowledge the things that feel hard. And when we're not busy, we do have to acknowledge those things. So therapy, taking time to make a plan for how to take care of yourself, like if you're really going to step off the treadmill, how are you going to deal with those emotions? And on that note, I think there are like two final little things that are sort of connected to this one is identity. And Wudan, you literally just wrote about this. Your identity, and journalism. So can you maybe just briefly talk about why sometimes our professional identities get mixed up with our personal ones? And then what happens when that occurs?

W- Yeah, I just wrote an essay or commentary type of thing, not my usual wheelhouse either, four-pointer about the toxic ways that journalists are socialized to believe that work equal our identities. You know, the adage that you are only as good as your last story, or journalism is a calling. And I explained also how I broke out of that. So if you're constantly working, overbooking yourself, you're only reinforcing the idea that your worth is tied to what you produce. For me that led to burnout. For others, and this is specific to the journalism industry, depression, PTSD even

J- Yeah, we're gonna drop an article link for that in the show notes. But I think it's worth saying here that if being over busy as part of your identity, then again, therapy can be really useful to help you figure out how to separate  who you are from what you do, which I think was an important distinction in your piece, Wudan. I definitely had this earlier this year when I was working 10 hours a week and taking care of my kid. I was like, wait, I am no longer a busy, productive person. Then who am I? And it took a lot of conversations with my therapist, my friends, my partner, a lot of personal reflection to be like, this is the person I am and I am a person who sometimes does things like work. But I am also worth something in the world if I didn't work at all. That's a big change. That's a big deal. And there's less riding on your work when you start to separate those identities just a little bit.

W- Yeah, therapy and other things that I can't say because of legal reasons have helped me a lot. And you know, when I realized I started to fall in love with time away from work, that was a big aha moment for me. I don't have to work sometimes. I mean, I also have the privilege of not having to work all the time, because my business plan and the way that my life is set up accounts for that too.

J- Yeah, it's so real. So I think actually the final thing that I should say here, because Are we ever going to have an episode where we don't talk about money,m is that sometimes we overbook, like literally for the money. For the extra $1,000?

W- Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give me $1,000 more, just put it just put it in my investments. I mean, yeah, I fall into that trap. Sometimes I don't need to make more this month. I've hit my targets. But another $1,000 can't hurt.

J- Yeah, exactly. So we have all done this. Wudan, what's your tactic to stopping yourself from saying yes to things just based on the like, give me that money impulse?

W- I mean, it's hard because I love money. So for starters, that assignment tracker I mentioned, I look to see if I've hit my income goals. And if yes, then I assess without a spreadsheet, what my emotional bandwidth is like. So if I've done the bare minimum, I'm going to rest because it turns out again, I love not working. I hired a business coach earlier this year. And I came up with my own decision matrix of whether or not I'm going to take an assignment. So one of the most important things for me now is is it fun? Like there has to be something else in it for me other than the money.

J- Yeah, this resonates so much. So on this note, I think what we're saying, and thank you for sticking with us for this long episode, is that learning what drives you to overbook means experimenting a lot and paying attention. Doing some introspection. Taking a second to get out of the hustle and look at what's going on. The key thing is really what thought or feeling do you have that drives you to take on a project even when you're full? Even when your calendar is full to the max? What is it that drives you to say yes, because that is the reason why we overbook, and I think everybody has different reasons. So the first step here is really to identify what your crack is in the situation, right? Like what why are you doing it?

W- Work is crack. Just kidding. So whether the work we've taken on requires more time than we budgeted, or we're actually working more because we've exceeded how much work we need to take on in terms of revenue, or we're offering too much of a particular service in a given month, all that is good information to have as we go on and refine our businesses.

J- Yep. And if you know where the ledge is, you can also step back from it. So the key is seeing the warning signs I think, too, and getting awareness so that you feel like you have a choice. We're not just like robots. You know, we're not just little yes minions. We want choice. And so being pushed into an overbooking situation without knowing you did it can feel like you don't have a choice. Taking a pause and asking, Is this good for me? That gives you the choice back. And it is also worth saying that all of us are going to overbook at some point. I don't think I know anybody who has gotten to the point where they don't accidentally overbook or have that happen for reasons outside of their control. But it's not ever a wasted thing because every time you overbook, it teaches you so much all of a sudden you know the warning signs and you know, what you do not want in the future. And you can sort of excavate that and use it as information to figure out how to avoid it

W- I love the phrasing yes minion because now I want to be a no minion. I'm going to put that in my bio. 

J- Love it.

W- In any case, I hope everyone who's listened have come away from this episode with a few ideas on how to rein it all in.

J- Yes. And I think that is all for this week. We've said enough.

W- As always, please rate and review us on iTunes, if you enjoy the show. And I will talk to you soon, Jenni.

J- Bye, Wudan. 

W- Season Four of The Writers' Co-op is made possible by you, our listeners. The Writers' Co-op is co hosted and written by me, Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters. Our producer is Jen Monnier. And our editor is Susan Valot.