One of the biggest benefits that goes along with being a freelancer is being able to work the hours you want — as many of them as you want to, in any particular order. If that means working at night or taking off time to take care of another priority, you have that prerogative.
But all of that flexibility comes with its own price. Because you are ultimately responsible for your commitments to clients, you have to balance your ability to push back from your desk whenever you want with actually making sure you’ve ironed out the time that you need to complete any projects that you’ve committed to. The alternative leads straight to a bad reputation as a freelancer and difficulties getting enough work to pay your bills.
Flexibility: The Biggest Benefit of Freelancing
You’ll find that a lot of freelancers got into the gig in order to have a flexible work schedule. Whether or not you’re included in that group, you do need to think about your priorities now, before they have a chance to get tangled up in your commitments to clients. How much time do you need to take care of obligations to your family? What about the other things that you consider crucial to your day? Maybe you just aren’t going to be happy if you don’t get a chance to surf every morning or perhaps you need to make sure that you fit in a work out at certain times to be healthy. Get those commitments down on paper so that you can figure out how much time you really are devoting to your freelance career and how many hours you can really get paid for. Most people are surprised when they actually run through their schedules.
You also should think about what you need to be flexible for and what constitutes the sort of emergency that you’ll stop working for. There are obvious situations at both end of the spectrum: most people will drop anything to pick up their sick child from school, but will agree to run by the dry cleaners for a friend only if it’s really convenient. As a freelancer, though, friends and family can easily come to the conclusion that you have all the free time in the world and they’ll come to you with help for problems that are relatively minor but need a little of that famous flexibility.
By deciding ahead of time what you’re willing to set aside your work for, you have a little more basis for telling a family member that you can’t come over to their house and wait for the cable man for a couple of hours next week.
Setting a Freelance Schedule Guarantees Flexibility
All that flexibility that freelancers have doesn’t mean that you don’t need to set a schedule. It’s tempting to tell yourself that you’ll just work on projects whenever you get the urge, but the urge doesn’t actually come as often as your bills do. Actually setting schedules will help you take your work seriously, making it easier to get done, especially if you’re working from home.
A schedule also helps your clients to take you seriously. If clients get emails from you at 3 AM, they may wonder about your planning that puts you in a position where you have to work that late consistently. If, as it happens, you do your best work late at night, you may schedule emails for a little closer to when your clients are generally awake. Many freelancers struggle with establishing boundaries with clients, though, and letting them know that you’re on the job at all hours doesn’t help your case either.
You’re the Boss of Your Schedule
No matter how you choose to set up your schedule, it’s important to remember that you are always the boss of your own schedule. You can make changes as you need (and want), but you’re also ultimately responsible for keeping to it. Making a schedule just to ignore it later in favor of doing something else won’t help you all that much.
In a way, you have to be the big bad boss yourself. You’re the one responsible for getting your done, so you’re the one who has to make sure that you get to your desk by the right time. It’s tough, but it’s part and parcel of being a freelancer.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
