Less Is More: Learning To Embrace Addition By Subtraction
When I was just getting my freelancing career off the ground, I said yes to every single opportunity that came my way, and took every job I was offered. Many of them were a lot of work for very little pay. Some required me to use skills I didn’t actually have. There was a lot of “faking it till I made it.”
This is how a lot of freelancers start out, and back then, at that early stage of trying to make a living, it worked. If I worked long enough hours, and took on enough of those low-paying gigs, I could cobble together a decent living; enough to convince myself to keep plugging away. And that never ending to-do list was exhausting, but it insulated me against the inevitable ebbs and flows every freelancer faces when they’re just starting out.
But once you’re in the feast or famine mindset, it can be hard to shift gears. After a couple of years, my freelance business was humming along. I was working with bigger clients, and taking on better-paid projects. Still, stuck in the yes-to-everything mentality, I found myself struggling to turn down all those smaller jobs. I was piling them onto my already-full plate, and — no surprise here — all my work was suffering for it.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Virginia found that when we’re trying to improve on something — a new…
