If you’re a freelancer you know it can be hard to avoid distractions, not just the ones you create for yourself, but the ones that others create for you.

Apart from your own procrastination and frittering away time surfing, playing and having performance panic attacks, the categories and clients that most distractions and demands fall into are:

People Without Boundaries: These are clients, friends, family and people who don’t understand the word, “No,” or who take the word personally. They see your life as an extension of their lives. If they have time to piss away, you should too. They pout and protest and beg and plead, “Can’t you just do it this once?”

They don’t get the concept of time in general and they especially don’t get the concept your time is different than theirs. If they’re available to do “stuff,” they assume you are too. If you schedule a time to talk and they get busy, blow you off or forget about your appointment, they don’t understand later why you’re angry, offended or not available when THEY do decide to call a week later.

It’s almost like they think you’re a tool or appliance they take of the shelf when they need you, and put you back when they don’t. You have no life outside of them and their needs. They don’t understand you have work, family, other clients and a schedule. And when you do explain it, they don’t like it and think you’re deliberately using your work and other commitments to avoid them.

People With No Life, but Lots of Time: You know these folks. They’re unemployed, underemployed or have jobs they can actually leave at the end of the day. They assume you do too. They may be retired, or be stay at home parents, or in school, or living with mom and dad, in-between jobs….whatever. They don’t understand why you can’t just leave a project and go have a beer, join them for dinner or catch a movie or just talk for 45 minutes about their crappy job, their plans to dominate the world, or who they think the next American Idol or Dancing with the Stars winner will be. They’re not bad people. They are probably fun. They just don’t have the demands on their time that you do and they don’t understand (or like) the concept you do.

Emergencies: I love the sign over my computer. It reads, “The lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” What that means is, if you spent your summer and all your money on golf, fishing and vacationing across the southwest with your family instead of writing that ebook on “Christmas Decorating for Capitalists” that you planned to sell at Christmas, it’s really not my problem you don’t have the time or the money to produce it in time for the holidays. “Emergencies” are people with no boundaries, no money and no sense of time. They’re like teenagers — they feel entitled. They want what they want when they want it and they don’t want to have to pay for it or wait for it.

Emergencies are characterized by:

• Need things ASAP. Everything is rush, rush, rush! Stress, stress, stress!
• They say things that make you feel like their chaos is your fault
• They expect to be rescued
• They have no money or they don’t want to spend money to make things happen
• No matter what you do for them, it will never be good enough

I could go on, but the point is it doesn’t matter who or what the distraction is, you stop all these folks with one thing — boundaries.

Take for instance the client who wanted a brochure, no, NEEDED a brochure ASAP. We scheduled a day and time, then he went on vacation, met a new girlfriend and blew off the appointment. He emailed me two weeks later to say, Okay, NOW he had time to deal with the brochure and wanted to do the brochure TODAY. Well, gee…I’ve already booked other clients and made plans and filled my dance card. I don’t have time now. It will have to wait until next month.

His change in plans, his failure to reschedule as soon as he knew he had something he had to deal with instead of a brochure redesign, and his poor timing is not my responsibility or my problem. It’s his. His frustration, his anger — it’s all his. He chose his priorities and he has to deal with them. All I could say was, “Great for you on the girlfriend! I’m booked through the middle of next month, so “What’s a good time then?” I want to help, but my doctor, therapist, web guy don’t drop their lives if I have a problem. There are exceptions, but they generally involve TRUE life or death matters. Same with me.

Setting boundaries is what you do when you want to save your sanity, keep your stress levels low and get your work done. It’s not easy, not at first. You’ll want to rescue your clients and make the money. You might need the work. That’s your choice. The thing is, when you twist yourself into a pretzel to accommodate others at the expense of your own stuff, you’re training your clients how to treat you. When you jump to their rescue and put your life and other clients on hold when they come calling, that’s what they’ll learn to expect. When they learn they can do that, there is NO incentive to change, NO incentive to be responsible or to plan ahead. When they learn that if they want you that they’ll have to schedule time, keep appointments and deliver their end of the deal then they will.

So, today’s lesson? Say “No.” Say, “What’s a good time next week, next month etc” — a time that works for you first, clients second. If you’re not happy, ain’t no one gonna be happy!