Finding The Time For Freelance Work From Home
To many people, working from home sounds like it would be the perfect career, working as a freelancer giving you the freedom to stay at home and the opportunity to manage the family. Of course it can be a great solution to balance your career and your family but in order to do it you need to carefully plan how to get the most out of it. For example working as a freelance writer not only requires skills as a writer but you need to be disciplined and have good time management skills.
To be able to work as a freelancer you have to think about how you will work best and structure your working day to suit yours and your family’s needs. Think about how old your children are, if you need to be taking a lot of care of small babies or toddlers how much time can you actually put aside. Whereas teenagers can (in theory) look after themselves and so you might have more time free to work. The most important thing is to be realistic. There is no point in working when family might be coming home from school or work. Working as a freelancer might create deadlines which might be difficult to fit around your family but you have to try not to get frustrated when timings collide.
Working from home requires two different characters. One has to be the parent who needs to do the cleaning and cooking and the other needs to be the freelancer who happens to be working from home. Don’t start cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes when you are supposed to be working. You wouldn’t start cleaning the oven when you were working in an office job so why start doing it when working from home. Set aside time for each different aspect, and importantly set aside a separate office or work space that you can’t see the laundry room from with the dirty washing piling up in.
A supportive family is very important when working from home. They need to realise that you have working hours and know when those are so they do not disturb or distract you from your work. You have to be able to stick to the working hours you set for yourself, but still allow yourself some flexibility to allow you to do the things you became a freelancer for.
The beauty of being freelance is that you can work from anywhere at any time. With a laptop and a wireless connection you can essentially work from where you want so why not think about your working hours a little more creatively? Although you might be happy working 9 to 3 while the kids are at school what happens when they are on holidays? You may be able to get up early or work later into the night depending on when you work best. If you are disciplined enough then you can often be surprised by how much time you can free up during the whole day to get the work completed.
If the laundry pile is growing larger, your deadlines are getting nearer or your child’s school performance is on this afternoon, you have to make sure that you get the priorities right. You have to realise that as a freelancer you might not be a perfect parent but you can still make time for the most important things.
Use your friends and family to remind you why you quit the rat race to turn freelance, and keep you on the right track with your work commitments. The reason you stopped the nine to five routine was so you could enjoy all the other things in life so use them to keep you motivated to carry on with your work.
Want to find out more about freelancing, then visit People Per Hour for other freelance writer jobs and opportunities.