*This post was originally written in 2016
I have been freelancing since I came back from my big trip. When you are self-employed, staying busy doesn’t always mean that you are working on a gig. The line between work and life outside of it becomes blurry when you are doing it all by yourself. From figuring out your health insurance to browsing the web and reading about a new company looking to expand their brand, it’s all work.
Being self-employed is not a matter of working fewer hours. The appeal to me of freelancing and working for myself, is that I can be in control of my schedule and the types of projects I do. "Work smart and work less” doesn’t apply to me, not yet anyway. I am growing my name (and my business) and since I am one of those lucky/delusional people that believe that work is play, I’m not even sure that my goal is to scale down on working hours. When I’m not working on a large, all-consuming project, I spend around ten hours per week looking for and bidding on projects. My goal is to have twenty hours of billable work and then use the remaining ten hours that make for a full, forty hour week to work on creative content that I’m not yet being paid for.
The breakdown above is a simple formula that keeps me focused on a tangible goal. I walk around the lake to exercise anytime I feel like it and I am rarely not able to make time for a trip. I see live music or movies at the theater on a weekly basis because I know that exposure to the arts in any form, contribute towards my creative stamina.
There is always room for growth. I'd like to cut my bidding hours in half and flip those into billable hours. In that scenario, my ideal work week would look something like this:
5 hours of bidding + 25 hours of billable work + 10 hours of seed, creative work = 40 hours/week.
To me, the breakdown above shows a balanced independent work life. My secret is to be proactive and open to new opportunities. With that said, I’m off to take a call for a part-time gig as a transcriber. Wish me luck and tell me: what is your ideal work balance?
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