One of the greatest advantages freelancing offers is the freedom of choice. You have the flexibility to choose your workdays and off days. You’re the one who sets the working hours and can take breaks whenever you feel like.
Since you’ve no boss—you don’t need to ask for any permissions. The business depends on you to run. However, this kind of freedom does not come without any caveats. And the biggest one is the work-life balance.
That’s right, on the surface, it feels like it’s easy to maintain a work-life balance as a freelancer. However, when talking about the glamorous life of freelancing, the challenges to maintaining work-life balance as a freelancer is often overlooked.
Most often than not, remote workers end up working for longer weekly hours and in most cases, they work on weekends. Although not all remote workers are freelancers, this still suggests something. When there is no schedule to follow, no quota to touch, and no clocking out or commuting to an office, the line between “work” and “life” can become hazy.
Freelancers also have to spend their time on maintaining, invoicing, business development, and finding new clients. Sometimes there’s simply more money coming in while other times, it’s hard to get even small gigs. If they want to take some vacation time, their time rather goes into maintaining the flow of their online business.
All these reasons are enough to prove that it’s not an easy job to maintain a work-life balance as a freelancer. But you can’t also simply let yourself burn out. You must maintain productivity while also keeping up with your personal life.
That is why we have gathered some tips that will help you strike a work-life balance as a freelancer. So that you can continue to run your freelancing businesses while still maintaining your health.
1. Make a schedule and stick to it
This is the hardest part while maintaining a work-life balance as a freelancer. it’s because of the reason that freelancers love to enjoy their freedom and so they find it hard to maintain a proper schedule that can be followed every single day.
However, not getting a set time for logging in and out causes a great deal of confusion. You’ll be more efficient at times, and at other times you’ll hardly get anything done. Often you’ll have the whole day to work and enjoy the process while many times you’d also have to take care of your domestic chores.
This not only makes your productivity fluctuates but you’re also not satisfied with your personal life. Since you’re not able to take care of yourself or your place—directly impacting your work-life balance.
Therefore, it’s a must to have things sorted. Find out the best time to work on your projects and when it’s time to leave the desk—simply leave it. Although you’re working from home, having a fixed working time will solve so many problems.
2. Don’t forget that you have a life
Many times, freelancers are so much focused on establishing their freelancing business that they forget to come back into their personal life. They forget to do the things they enjoy outside of their work. As a result, they burn out, and eventually, both work and life are falling apart. And It gets even harder to maintain a work-life balance as a freelancer.
In order to achieve work-life balance as a freelancer, you must prioritize non-work activities such as exercise, cooking, and spending time with family. It’s time to check in with yourself and recalibrate if the “life” aspect of your life begins to fall.
Another great way is to take the advantage of your regular breaks to do something you enjoy. Anything like sports, making art and so on. if you spend your time on social media, it won’t help. To completely refresh yourself, go outside and do something physical, meet some people, or do something else to make the most of your breaks.
This way, when you come back, and sit on your desk. You’ll find yourself willing to work. Not only you’ll enjoy working again, but you’ll be more productive than the last time.
3. It’s okay to say no
It’s a positive sign that you’re getting plenty of work to do. However, you can’t accept everything. It’s not going to sustain for a long time. And working more doesn’t necessarily make you more productive, however, it might make you go insane.
All freelancers worry about saying no to work or the unavoidable dry spells, but if you have much too much on your plate, you will be unhappy. Know how much you can take at any given time, and if you need to say no, say no. Clients will understand and may even take your high demand as an indication of how good you are. Tell them when you’ll be available or ask them to give you more notice for potential projects.
Sometimes saying no is the best you can do to maintain a work-life balance as a freelancer. Because the more you work, the lesser quality you deliver. And this is something every freelancer should understand. The quality and consistency will help you to build a good name in the industry, not by working on every single project you’re offered.
Hence, lean-to says no because you have plenty of reasons. Here are some of them: choosing quality over quantity, working more is not equal to productivity, there’s always a burnout risk.
Conclusion
The hustle culture is particularly appealing to freelancers, and while we are not suggesting that it is bad, it is also not sustainable in the long run.
As a freelancer, you also need to take care of your mental health, physical health, and overall personal life. You can’t ignore these things even in the early days of your career. Because it’s going to affect you eventually.
Therefore, learn to draw a clear line between work and life and you shall have the best of both worlds. Hope this article helped to maintain a work-life balance as a freelancer.
