How to avoid burnout as a freelancer

To get our weekly posts directly in your inbox, sign up for the Training for Translators mailing list!

Burnout (feeling like you resent your job, you don’t want to do your job anymore, you’re too exhausted to do your job, etc.) can be a big issue for freelancers. While we don’t have bosses chaining us to our desks, we have the reality that, the more you work, the more you earn, and you don’t get paid if you don’t work. This can lead to phenomena such as:

• Constantly working excessively long hours, “perpetual overtime” mode where a 60-hour week, or working every weekend, starts to feel normal
• Never taking time off, because we fear that we can’t afford to, or we fear losing clients if we’re ever unavailable
• Turning down or cancelling plans with family and friends, because we’re always working
• Having no time for non-work interests, because we “don’t have time”

Let’s break this down a bit!

Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, or it’s the best of a few not-great options

I don’t meant this in a negative way, it’s just true. Generally, I love my job, and I really enjoy working. However, for a few years when my daughter was little (approximately ages two to six), I deemed it preferable to consistently work at night, rather than putting her in full-time child care. She would go to preschool or kindergarten in the morning, then I would spend the afternoons with her, have dinner with her and my husband, and then work from about 7:30-11 PM, often six nights a week. This was not fun. I’m not a night person. TBH I’m not really a morning person either, I just sleep a lot. During that phase of life, I also (TBH) cried a lot because I was so tired, and felt so torn between the stable life I wanted for my daughter, and the career that I wanted for myself. And by the way, my husband is fantastic; he’s a great dad and a very supportive partner. It’s just the reality that in the U.S., child care is incredibly expensive, we were living off pretty moderate incomes, and it felt like the better choice for me to inconvenience myself.

Looking back, I honestly wouldn’t do things differently. Now that my daughter is 22 (!!), I feel grateful to have had the time with her, while developing my business. I’m glad that I never stopped working completely, and I’m glad that I was there for all of the important moments of her childhood. Moral: sometimes overwork and burnout just is what it is, and the only way through it is through it.

Ten things that help me avoid burnout

1. Charging rates that allow me to bill (not work, bill: generate income) around 25 hours a week. This sounds like a weird tip for avoiding burnout, but I think it’s critical. If you have to generate income 40 or 50 hours a week in order to reach your target income, you’re going to be working a lot more hours than that, because clients don’t pay you to do administrative work, issue invoices, market, attend conferences, work on your website, maintain your computer, or anything else besides translation and interpreting. Personally, I think 25-30 hours of billable work is good. More than that, and you’re running two risks: either you’re not spending enough time on non-billable work to keep your business healthy, or you’re working too much. And if you’re, like, what is this whole billable hours thing, fill out my Deciding what to charge spreadsheet!
2. Compartmentalizing my work and non-work time. I find it hugely draining to have work bleeding into personal time, and personal time bleeding into work. I’m very bad at setting this boundary, so I’ve worked at an office outside my house (first, a series of co-working offices; now, my own office) for around 10 years.
3. Actively seeking out work that I enjoy and am good at. I think people burn out for two reasons: mostly because they just work too much, but also because they constantly do work that they don’t enjoy. This leads to my next point:
4. NOT working on “whatever lands in the inbox.” To me, one of the root causes of burnout is a lack of fulfillment, a feeling that what you’re doing doesn’t really matter, it’s tedious, it’s not meaningful, etc. If you’re feeling like this, go back to step three, actively seeking out work that you enjoy and are good at.
5. Spending less than I earn, and maintaining a business and personal savings cushion. Again, a perhaps seemingly unrelated tip, but I think it’s really important. Financial desperation isn’t a great catalyst for good business decisions; you really want to be working today to pay the bills that are due in three months or six months, not next week. The corollary to this is always spending less than you make (my first job out of college, I earned $700 a month plus free room and board, and I still saved money), something I wrote about in this post. 
6. Making strategic decisions about when to work overtime. Note here that I’m not saying, “Never working nights or weekends.” Sometimes, I do work nights or weekends, but I make a deliberate decision to do that, I don’t do it by default. For example, I have an interpreting client for whom I work ongoing sessions of online courses, which once in a while meet on weekends; I deem this worthwhile. Likewise, I have a law firm client who pays very well and sometimes needs rush work; also worthwhile.
7. Taking real vacations. As a freelancer, vacations can be kind of amorphous. I really love the ability to work from anywhere, and part of the point of a real vacation is to disconnect. I try to take one completely computer-free week twice a year: generally one week around Christmas and one week in August. This has actually gotten easier since I’ve been doing more interpreting, because conference interpreting really slows down at those times. Then, I typically take around four additional weeks of vacation, where I might work for an hour or two in the evening, work on the airplane, etc. Which leads me to my next point…
8. Maintaining a paid vacation fund. I think that a business savings account is really important, for a few reasons. Unexpected tax bill (this happened to me in 2023, when I “made too much money,” a concept I only think about when I talk to my accountant!), dead computer, can’t-miss conference…and paid vacation! Budgeting so that you can still pay yourself for a couple of weeks while you don’t work can really help push you out the door for some much-needed vacation.
9. Viewing myself as a non-renewable resource. Rebounding from burnout takes a long time, and burnout itself can have serious repercussions in your business. It’s better not to empty the tank completely; when you feel yourself on a quarter of a tank of energy, that’s the time to take some burnout-prevention actions. Which leads me to my next point…
10. Being a really great boss (of myself). My husband has a salaried job, and he has an excellent boss. When she sees that the team is really tired, she’ll cancel a meeting and tell everyone to log off a few hours early. She sends out Starbucks gift cards. She notices who deserves a raise or a promotion. And honestly, that’s the way I try to treat myself. I’ve been doing a lot of interpreting assignments on East Coast time, meaning that I have to get up around 5 AM, and yesterday I decided to leave work at 1 PM and go to yoga. The instructor said, “I never see you here at this time of day!” to which I responded, “My boss said I’ve been working too much and I should take the afternoon off.” Obviously, this involves various factors, such as those listed above, but I think it’s really important to be the best boss you’ve ever had, if you’re in this job for the long haul.

I hope these tips are helpful! If there’s anything you want to ask me or tell me, just reply leave a comment!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!