Trabalho Freelancer, TDAH e Dinheiro: Como Organizar Ganhos Irregulares

Introdução

so here's the thing people with ADHD are often known for not being able to focus for being disorganized for starting maybe 10 projects at the same time and not being able to finish anything but today I want to talk about freelancing the world of freelancing is very different there's the chaos the variety of projects you can do and also the independence but shockingly that really could be the place where people with ADHD can thrive and in today's video we're going to dive into the question of are people with ADHD built for freelancing spoiler alert the answer might surprise you i have many friends who are very talented as creators some of them are writers graphic designers what else directors and you know what a lot of them have ADHD and not just in a quirky label kind of way they're really diagnosed they they really have it they have the symptoms they suffer from the symptoms some take medication but some don't but yes they're diagnosed what blew my mind was a lot of them were honestly crushing it when it comes to their work well this is just from an outside perspective but when I look at them I see that they're able to crush it in their work they're able to deliver deadlines they're able to really hyperfocus and perform well in their creative fields so now I'm asking myself cuz I'm also a freelancer why why does it actually work for us freelancers if you know one thing about ADHD is that most people get diagnosed because they struggle in things like school and regular 9 toive jobs and that's why they get diagnosed so the question is why are people who struggle with traditional jobs like the 9 to fives and school like the structure of school why are they suddenly thriving when they go solo or when they freelance so let's start with the obvious one thing I learned about ADHD is that people with ADHD and even the other neurodedevelopmental conditions are not built for the traditional environments that's why you struggle in school where you're asked to sit still or even in work where you're just in your office desk sitting still doing repetitive tasks following instructions staying quiet in meetings or just sitting still in meetings and not doing anything those are hard nos for people with ADHD as in I remember myself one time when I was working full-time for a company remotely i would sit in a meeting i would have my camera on since we do that and I was really comfortable with the people I work with so I would fold my laundry while doing the meeting since I really couldn't sit still i wanted to do something while in the meeting so according to some research people with ADHD struggle with environments that have low stimulation environments that have a rigid structure or somewhat delayed rewards and honestly this sounds like all the jobs out there delayed rewards you say i think that's because we only get our salary once or twice a month that excitement of getting the money is very much delayed and also with the output of your work sometimes it's not really that exciting let's say if you're doing office work or let's say for me if I'm doing some full-time video editing it's sometimes slow to do the production so it's delayed gratification or low stimulation since you're not really doing something all the time and that thing you're doing is most likely not always going to be exciting so this is why in terms of the 9 to5 it's really hard for people with ADHD to stay in the 9 to5 since it's boring and for me I have my experiences with the 9 to5 it's really boring it's really it's really hard to stay with just one 9 to5 job and that's why right now I have two jobs so that's one of the reasons why we struggle with the traditional 9 to5 is because it has low stimulation it doesn't really excite us all the time and the rewards are somewhat delayed so now let's talk about freelancing where things are really really different in the comments let me know if you're also a freelancer and I want to hear from you if these are relatable so freelancing is very different it's really full of novelty freelancing is full of novelty since there is an endless number of ways you can do freelancing especially if you're a service- based business or if you're used to being a service-based business you can build different service- based businesses if you have the patience to do it you can do video editing you can do script writing you can do thumbnail designs this this mostly for YouTube since I'm mostly working as a freelancer for YouTube channels you can even do data entry creating notion templates notion systems there's an endless list of things you can do as a freelancer honestly so that's the first one there's the novelty there's always that excitement especially for me as a freelancer right now for YouTube channels i'm always excited when I encounter a new channel or a new business opportunity to work with so right now I'm actually applying for creative director roles for YouTube and I have like one client that I'm hoping to close so pray for me so there's that excitement and feeling of novelty whenever there's something new and something interesting that comes up the second thing about freelancing is there's autonomy especially if you don't have an employee to employer relationship with your client and I think that's something I really encourage with people when you work with someone really try to make sure that it's a businessto business sort of transaction not really them ordering you to do XYZ so I think if you have a sort of businessto business or freelancer to business type of setup with your client you will have a lot of autonomy so this is how it looks like for me when it comes to the deadlines I have I set the deadlines and I also talk with a client on what's realistic for us so let's say I have a client who's trying to grow their podcast on YouTube i would give them some insights on how often we should upload and then I would give them insights on the titles the topics and everything else and also help them with the workflow like creating the workflow so I created the notion system we use introduce them to different tools that we can use so there's a lot of autonomy i have the freedom to introduce them to new tools new project management systems and also the freedom of the deadlines i get to make suggestions on the deadlines and also not be pressured so much to to make it super tight for me like I can make a suggestion that hey I think it we will have trouble editing this video and launching it by Tuesday maybe we can move it to Thursday and adjust our schedules based on that so there's a lot of freedom that comes with freelancing and I think it depends on the client you work with that's why it's also important for you to really filter your clients and only work with people that you feel like are going to be a good fit for you because it fits a role where there's this hierarchy where they feel like oh I'm the boss i should be the one followed and it's less of an equal hierarchy it's going to be difficult to work with the person so I think if you're a freelancer I really recommend you work with someone that vibes well with you and respects you as a person so that's the second thing about freelancing that's really good you really have a lot of freedom and I think people with ADHD will like that since you'll get to also decide on the things that work for you all the things that work for your brain you can build the systems around it and yeah like it'll just be better for you in the long term a third thing about freelancing is the high stimulation tasks i think these are all really good for building up the dopamine in your system so tasks that really excite you if you're able to find a freelancing job that really excites you I think that's a huge win for me I haven't found that yet but I'm working towards doing that so when I started the year video editing was really a high stimulating task for me since I was really excited about learning different editing styles or trying to do my editing better for for for all the clients I work with but as I kept doing it it got boring a bit and I I don't like some of the clients I work with in terms of the like the type of output we have and I really just realized that the manual work of editing wasn't for me so now I'm trying to make a transition in terms of career to be more of a creative director where I help with strategy and and really just helping the channel grow as a manager so the creative director role for me right now is the high stimulating task or role for me i'm making this switch since I do know and understand that if I switch to this role I'm going to be more engaged in it i'm going to enjoy it more i'm going to be more obsessed with it and work might not feel like work anymore but that's just a theory since sometimes our interests change so we'll see so that's the third reason if you're a freelancer you get to have this freedom to choose the tasks that really stimulate you or excite you and that's really helpful for people with ADHD since you tend to focus on things that really interests you so whenever you have a task that is not really interesting to you it makes it harder for you to start doing the thing since it's not really interesting to you because the thing with ADHD is you focus on the thing that's interesting rather than the thing that's not so if you're a freelancer and you get to choose the tasks or the project or the role that's interesting to you then you'll have a higher chance of being focused or obsessed with that role so that's the third thing about freelancing that I feel like works well for people with ADHD the last thing about freelancing that I feel like is really attractive for people with ADHD is the immediate feeling of growth that you get from it cuz with freelancing you're not stuck with one client you're not stuck with just one job or one task if you get some stimulation or you get some dopamine hits from increasing your income let's say then you can get a second client or a third client or a fourth client or a fifth client and that's what I'm doing right now i have like two clients right now and I'm trying to build on my third and my fourth and my fifth and then figuring out how to scale that since money is a good dopamine hit so right now me having two clients and also an upcoming potential client which is a a creative director role that's really exciting for me and I think that's and that's helping me increase my income as well which is like an immediate gratification that I also like having and that's my ADHD I guess like me having this desire to grow financially whenever I close a sale or a deal it's really exciting for me i think that's really something I want to share so freelancing will work for me as someone with ADHD since it's exciting for me whenever I see a new potential client a new potential project and then just see how I can work on it so those are the things that I think are good if you're someone with ADHD and you want to try freelancing I think it's going to be helpful since there's a lot of freedom with freelancing and I think that's the best thing you can get out of it just the freedom i don't want to romanticize this though since freelancing can also be brutal or a struggle for people with ADHD so there are things that people with ADHD will really struggle with especially if you're freelancing and even when you're working in a 9 to-ive job one of the challenges of people with ADHD is time blindness so of course this means having trouble estimating time or let's say you're really hyperfocused in a in a certain task you don't realize that hours have passed already and that could be a problem especially if you want to be consistent for the day time blindness can also be you having trouble estimating how long it takes to finish a task so let's say you have three clients i need to work on three stuff for the day maybe for each of the three tasks you estimate that it will take around 1 hour to finish them but since you have time blindness it actually takes 2 hours or 3 hours or even more so that's a struggle like being able to manage your time which is a normal ADHD thing you have trouble managing your time and also being organized if you have ADHD so not just with time like I said we also have trouble with executive functioning so people with ADHD have trouble organizing things basic executive functioning like knowing what to prioritize when to do them when not to do them the order you should do them in like creating organized lists is something hard for people with ADHD it's also hard to prioritize so let's say you want to start work early for the day it's not going to be easy so it's also hard for your brain to condition itself to say that "Oh let's start let's start working let's start working on this task." Today for example for me I had trouble really listing down what I needed to do for the day i finished some tasks but I feel like I could have maximized it more and some of it I just moved to tomorrow since I really lost all the energy I needed so that's the problem with it it's really hard to start certain tasks it's hard to organize tasks and it's hard to finish tasks on time freelancing might also be challenging for people with ADHD since we do have trouble focusing so for example if you have like three tasks you need for the day and you need to focus on working on all of them like really hyperfocus and finish all of them sometimes if it's not your day and you're really having trouble with focusing it's really going to be hard so for me this happens most of the time especially if I'm not on medication since medication helps with my focus I would often task switch or find ways to distract myself or to escape from the actual task I need to do so let's say for my job now I'm supposed to be doing video editing for my clients but instead of doing that I'm filming a YouTube video for my personal channel about ADHD so that's the hard thing today I needed to focus on editing videos for my clients but instead I'm making my own videos and probably going to be editing them right after I film since that's where my interest is like I said earlier ADHD is an interestbased thing so you focus on what you're interested in so at this moment on this day I'm not interested in video editing for my clients i'm interested in making more ADHD videos and that's sort of my obsession i'm also obsessed with building my channel or growing my channel since I'm also trying to build my career as a YouTube creative director so I'm also obsessed with figuring out how to grow this channel so focus is a hard thing for people with ADHD and you can see it now as I work on this video instead of doing my actual job i think ADHD really does thrive in freelancing but you need to have good systems for you to be able to thrive cuz you may have medication medication really helps like for me concert really helps me manage my symptoms but it's not enough all the time i always need to have a to-do list a physical to-do list or a body double let's say this week I've been working with my partner she's here in the house with me we work together in the same room and that helps me be productive so you need to have these systems body doubling having a to-do list having a timer doing pomodoro I don't know like whatever system you can think of you need to have a system just so you can stay productive as a freelancer so freelancing with ADHD it can really be a superpower i'm really honest with this it can really be a superpower but you need the extra systems and extra support to be able to maintain it it's a superpower since if you're able to build the right systems or the right jobs or the right freelancing role for you you're going to be able to tap into the superpower of ADHD which is which is hyperfocusing which is basically you going in the zone when you work on something and you don't notice the time at all sometimes you realize that you finish a 5hour worth of project in just 1 hour or 2 hours just because you hyperfocused on it and that's a superpower of people with ADHD you can hyperfocus freelancing also gives you the creative freedom with anything so for me that's like the creativity of creating my own roles for companies let's say for one of the companies I'm working with now they're doing mental health content and I was editing their videos so after I edit their videos I'm going to propose becoming a creative director for their channel or helping them build their organization through YouTube since that's something I'm obsessing with right now or for this other client that I'm hoping to work with he's about to show me his channel his business and everything else and then I have the creative freedom of making a proposal on how we can work together how we can benefit from each other there's an endless possibility of things I can do for my clients as a freelancer freelancing also gives you the opportunity to start the business so let's say for me in the long term if I decide to build my own agency as a YouTube director or something I can start hiring people i can start scaling the business i can start working with people that I want to work with impactful brands and everything else i would have I would have that freedom to really build the business that I want there's a research that says that people with ADHD are 300% more likely or three times more likely to start a business so that's a superpower as well so those are things I can share about freelancing that I think I really like as well if you have ADHD and you're wondering if freelancing could be for you you can answer these questions and leave your answers in the comments the questions are do you crave variety do you enjoy the creative freedom to do the things you want do you want to really focus on a job that you enjoy and have the freedom to let go of clients if you don't want to work with them another thing is do you hate being micromanaged since that's also an issue with ADHD if you're a freelancer you don't have a boss technically unless your client is like really toxic and feel superior to you which I feel like you should avoid or do you crave this freedom to not work in a 9 to-5 to work during the times that you want to and not really be tied to a 9 to5 sorry there's a mosquito flying around that's my Yeah I really do have ADHD and lastly which I think is a really important thing before going to freelancing is are you willing to build systems so that you can keep yourself productive while you do freelancing since that's going to be a struggle so let me know in the comments and if you said yes to most of those I feel like freelancing could be good for you so probably just give it a shot so freelancing with ADHD I think it's it's not a shortcut it's it's not going to be easier i I could tell you that it's hard especially for me when I started i had anxiety about not having a job or feeling that my client might let go of me so there's that lack of security as well that I think people should know about freelancing but what I could really say is there really is that freedom that I benefit from when I do freelancing i get to choose if I want to do the task today or tomorrow of course based on the deadline if the video is due on Thursday like as long as I work on it on Tuesday or Wednesday I'm good so there's really that freedom that you get from freelancing and I feel like that's something that you could really enjoy if you're a freelancer so if you like this video feel free to like and subscribe and let me know in the comments what your insights are from the video i would love to know so thank you so much for watching i really appreciate you being here and sticking throughout and I'll see you on the next one peace