How to Know When Your Freelance Day Is Over
If your workload is only limited by the number of hours you are willing to spend, how do you decide when you’ve worked “enough”?
Whether you are a full-time freelancer, a thrifty worker, or a regular part-time employee, at some point you will have to ask yourself how to organize a work day that does not fit into the standard 9 -to-5 (or 8-to -5, or 9-to-6).
There are three main ways to deal with this problem, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Hourly working day
If you give yourself a clock-based structure, you will say to yourself, “Today I will work from 9 am to 5 pm,” or “from 6 pm to midnight,” or whatever fits your schedule.
You start work at the scheduled time, finish at the scheduled time, and tell yourself that whatever you do during those set hours counts as enough .
Currently my freelance career is based on many hours of work; I start at 7:30 am, work until 4:00 pm, and take a 30 minute lunch break. Anything left unfinished at 4:00 pm should be postponed until the next working day – this means that I know very well how much work I can get done in a given hour, as I need to know how many projects I can schedule for a 40 hour week and still have time on time.
Project work day
At the beginning of my freelance career, I used a project structure. I worked on any assignments I received, and when I ran out of assignments, my work day (or, in some cases, work week) would end.
It was also part of my career where I tried to send out at least one new presentation a day, as I didn’t always have enough assignments to fill my eight hour workday. In addition, my assignments were not always paid as much as I wanted to earn, so I knew that I needed to find new clients and increase my income.
Since I completed assignments as they were received, this meant that on some days I had three hours of work and on other days I had 12 hours. Some freelancers love this schedule because free time balances out late nights, but it was my least favorite method of structuring my workload.
Income-based working day
When I started getting enough freelance assignments that I knew I would have to do every day, I switched to an income-based structure. I started asking myself, “How much money do I need to make this month and how many tasks do I need to complete, secure and complete to achieve this goal?”
At first, it took me about 50 hours a week to reach the $ 5,000 a month goal that I set for myself. Then, when I started building relationships with higher paying clients, it took me fewer hours to make the same amount of money. This meant that I had time for new assignments, so I increased my income.
The different types of freelance / gig economy / outsourcing careers naturally lend themselves to different types of work days. For example, if you walk dogs for a service like Rover , your work day ends when you walk all the dogs in your care (and have done the administrative work necessary to manage your career, such as checking your Rover mailbox and giving the news owners about their dog days).
If you are trying to start a photography business, you can start with a project-based work day: every day you reach three potential clients, share five photos on social media, etc. the business grows, you are likely to switch to work. income-based day – in other words, you’ll start asking yourself, “How much work do I need to do today to achieve my monthly income targets?”
If you’ve built your career to the point where you have more than enough work ahead of you, you may start asking yourself how many hours you would like to work each week (versus how many hours you have to work to make money you need) …
So, if you end each day wondering if you’ve worked hard enough, ask yourself what kind of work day you would like to have. Then set appropriate goals – and once you’ve achieved them, tell yourself it’s time to close your laptop, put away your equipment, and leave your home office / cafe / coworking space. Your work day is over and you can now enjoy the rest of your life.