Note From Tongal: “How 60 Minutes Made Me a Better Freelancer" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
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60 Minutes is a great show.
There, I’ve said it. If you want to judge me, that’s fine. But 60 Minutes basically changed my life and made me a better and more self-aware person - and a better and more self-aware freelancer.
“But Justin?? How???” you ask.
Let me break it down for you.
So, it was a Sunday (I know that much because 60 Minutes airs on Sundays). The featured story was about people with perfect memory recall. Basically, these folks can remember any day of their life like you can remember your yesterday.
The trick was, basically, having an “anchor” memory to bring back their recall. The thing is … I realized that with every passing day, I was losing my “anchors” to the prior day - all these memories were being lost to time.
“THIS MUST HALT!” I screamed out into the vast void of swiftly dissipating time. If these people could remember their entire lives down to the day, I should at least be able to get somewhere close.
Thus started the “Captain’s Log” (way more friggin’ manly than a diary, OK??). Every day, I’d write down a little snippet listing a few anchors that would bring me back, and unwrap more events I might have lost otherwise.
Behold! The first page of the first Captain’s Log
As the Log evolved, I slowly began keeping more stats. Like the time I was writing it (before bed each night, essentially tracking how late I was staying up), how many drinks I had that day (cuz, I guess that might be fun to add up at the end of the year?), and eventually, a 1-10 scale of how good or sucky that particular day was (this day feels kinda like a 7 so far but we’ll see how this blog post goes). It helped me decompress a bit, as well as save my emotional state for posterity.
Since I’m a huge nerd, a few years later I thought, “Why, I should put this into a big spreadsheet! I can figure out my best and worst months by average, and give each year a numerical score!”
What did this help me do? I have no idea. It kinda seemed like everything washed into one generally OK day (I generally feel pretty good). This got me thinking one step further, though. What if I found the best days, and the worst days -- wrote them down in a COMPUTER, and then turned those computer words into a word cloud? “Justin, that seems smart!” I said to myself. By taking the best days I could develop some idea of the key things that made a great day actually great!
Now, I don’t have that word cloud. I wish I did, but a few things popped out to me.
Great days involved getting some exercise, even if limited
Great days usually had naps (as a freelancer, naps are friggin’ great)
Great days I got stuff DONE
Since it was 2016 and I was inspired by things like Cards Against Humanity, I thought, “Let’s take these concepts and put them on a CARD!” I whipped up a design and 100 of them came by way of Moo.com (#notsponsored #notanad). Now, if my day wasn’t going too hot, I could look at this simple checklist and realize immediately what aspects were missing. I’ve found if I accomplish everything on the list, the day is easily an 8 or above, hard to avoid it.
Why is this important? Well, as a freelancer, your days are pretty flexible. You’ve got to build in some structure in order to get anything done, especially during the lulls in between projects. I found that by balancing the work I needed to get done (“Work!”), as well as getting some kind of fitness in, seeing friends (Social = a coffee! A lunch!), spending a little bit of time on something that’s a passion project (Forward-Thinking), taking an afternoon nap (Nap!), and then chilling out and getting inspired with a movie or whatever (Entertainment!), I was able to give myself a somewhat stable but always Great Day.
The elements that go into your own Great Day may vary slightly, maybe you don’t require a nap to feel like a functioning person and that’s OK. I’d say try out my methods for discovering your own Great Day mix --- but I’m pretty weird, so you probably won’t. But maybe make yourself a little checklist and see if it helps you keep your sanity.
The end. Thanks, 60 Minutes.
