The blog for anyone that works from home

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About the Author

Who is Nexus Publishing? Originally from a small town called Darlaston – about ten miles north of Birmingham – I moved to West Sussex about ten years ago to help develop one of the first online retailers. Having recently moved to Shropshire I am now enjoying the working from home life in a semi rural location. I have been a freelance writer and journalist for about fifteen years. Eight of them were spent doing various other jobs such as bookshop assistant, print finisher and returns clerk for a large library supplier, with the writing taking up evenings and any of my spare time. As you can see, much of my life so far has been spent working with books and publishing of one kind or another. My time as an employee came to a conclusion some six years ago with redundancy, so I took the opportunity – and the money – to see if I could survive as a full-time freelance writer. That was five years ago. There have been some lean times – just ask my wife, Joanne. But after tasting the freelance life, there’s no going back.

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Put stress in a box

Sunday, June 8th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

All homeworkers stress about one thing or another. It’s a fact of life that we worry about a plethora of things that can cause us anxiety. The Freelance Switch blog has an interesting post that looks at how to manage the stress in your life.

Point 4 stands out for me:

4. Spend half an hour worrying. A certain level of worry helps you plan for the future. But worried thoughts that intrude and distract you will drain your productivity like nothing else. Set aside 30 minutes each day to worry. Get really worked up about everything you fear could go wrong. Write it all down. Then put it away and go back to work. If you find yourself worrying again, tell yourself to save it for next time. Don’t do this right before you go to bed. Plan to do something specific immediately afterwards, and don’t drag it out.

It’s an interesting thought to put aside some time to get all your worrying out of the way for the day. I guess it’s the ultimate in time management. But can you really be disciplined enough to stop worrying after the allotted 30 minutes? I find my mind wonders back to whatever is worrying me at the time if I don’t keep busy with work. What are your patented stress relieving regimes?

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