One of my dearest friends and confidant has been working back to back. The curse and the joy of being self employed.

Let’s say for the minute you are self-employed. You enjoy the freedom of going from one company and contract to another. This offers variety and an infinitive number of new challenges and networks. Oh the joy this brings. It reminds me of a child in a sweet shop, so many choices and options. If you sort by difference or prefer options over procedure, this life is the perfect alternative to being an employee on a salary with one boss and the same ‘ole’ faces each day.

The thing is… before one contract finishes you are eager to find the next one. You grasp the next contract as soon as it comes along. Which is usually before the current contract ends. There are several reasons for this behaviour.

1. Worry that the contracts will stop coming along
2. That there will not be enough money to pay the bills
3. If you turn down, just one contract, all contracts will be withheld from you by some external force of nature
4. Even though you have put money aside you need more because you do not know how much the rainy day will cost you
5. You do not want to inconvenience your agents
6. You do not want to upset companies where you have direct contracts

The list goes on and on.

So you find that in December you have run out of year before you have booked any holiday, so you postpone your holiday for the coming year. Each year you run out of year before you run out of contracts. You run out of year before you take that holiday.

Recognise this pattern?

Well, let’s return to my friend who had fallen into this trap. He had money put aside for the bills, the accountant, HMRC, the vat man, investments and rainy days. If he looked at the full picture (when you are the one who lives the contract dependant life, you rarely take time to look at the full picture) he would see that unless global warming brings him back-to-back rainy days, my friend has everything covered except holidays!

Then a funny thing happened. He was offered a large contract with a new company, which of course he signed. Once this new contract finished, he was now out of synchronisation with the other companies he had been working with. So he sat at home with no contracts coming in!!!!

The weeks rolled on by. He finally decided to take action. He booked a month’s holiday for him and his wife to visit their daughter abroad. They were all delighted and everything was organised. Then a funny thing happened…

A long term contract came in and the company were prepared to wait until my friend returned back off his holiday.

So the action of booking time for inaction (a holiday) started the energy of action which brought along a contract.