Freelancing Balance
Ann Harth
Just to put you in the picture: I'm sitting beside a river, the sand is warm between my toes, my son is swimming, my husband is fishing. I am working between the occasional 'Yes, I'm watching, Sweetie', and 'Are you sure there's bait on that hook?' This is my office today. Is this
enough incentive to work toward a career from home?
This month I'd like to talk to you
about the importance of balance between building your
business and living your life. When starting out, a
freelancer often makes one of two mistakes: Burnout or
procrastination. Sometimes an interesting combination of
both can occur.
Burnout
Embarking on a freelancing career is
exciting. Your daily existence develops the glow of freedom
about it. You feel like a super hero and you dive into your
work and disappear. You don't sleep much and you eat less.
Every waking hour is spent planning, thinking or talking
about your work.
Beware the honeymoon period.
For the first few days, weeks or even
months, you're working on adrenalin. You get a lot done. You
see your business as having the potential to become a
burgeoning success. You replace family time with answering
emails and the only exercise you get is when you need a new
packet of copy paper from the cupboard on the other side of
the room. Organising your office takes precedence over sleep
and getting ahead on an editing project seems more important
than eating properly.
When you do leave your office, you
accost family, friends and sometimes strangers with speeches
extolling the virtues of your new office chair or the
trouble you're having with your website host. You mistake
polite nods for interest and glazed looks for fascination.
The honeymoon period can be
beneficial. The single-mindedness and long hours in the
early stages of a home business can help to kick-start your
career … unless you burn out.
Freelancing takes a clear and
organised mind. Though you feel virtuous for working until
the glow of the sun peers over the horizon, your lack of
sleep can make your mind fuzzy and your work sloppy or
sub-standard. You may find that super human hours are
actually wasting time, as you have to rewrite and resubmit
your work more then once.
Poor nutrition and lack of exercise
can have the same effect. A packet of two-minute noodles and
a chocolate bar may keep your stomach from rumbling, but it
will not keep hunger at bay for long and it is definitely
not conducive to clear thinking and good health.
The most important thing you can do
for your home business is to look after yourself. Eat well,
sleep well and stay fit with regular exercise. Spend time
with your family, friends and take time for yourself. If you
can achieve and maintain a balance between business and the
rest, you will use your working time more efficiently.
The other side of the coin is
procrastination.
This tends to be more common than
burnout, especially if providing finances for feeding the
family is not entirely up to you.
A chronic procrastinator can be busy
all day and into the night without accomplishing much at
all. Let's take a closer look.
Monday morning.
You leap out of bed and make
breakfast, pack lunches, braid hair and put the washing on.
You bundle everyone into the car and wave goodbye.
Instead of heading straight to your
workspace, you see the breakfast dishes. Better do those or
you'll get ants.
As you're wiping the dishes, you
glance out of the window. A huge weed is flowering in your
rose garden. If you don't rip it out now, seeds will
germinate and your weed problem will multiply.
While you're heading for the bin
dangling the offending weed, you notice that the bird
feeder's empty. Better fill that, or you'll lose the
resident finches that have recently discovered your garden.
You fill the feeder and stand back,
waiting for the finches to reappear. Is that the phone? Yes.
You race into the house. It's your neighbour. She knows
you're working and sorry to bother you, but how was your
weekend?
Half an hour later, you hang up and
head for your computer. Time to get to work. Log on and
check your emails. You have six spam messages, eight writing
newsletters, a question from someone in your critique group
and three personal emails wondering when you can get
together. You block the spam, glance through the
newsletters, answer the question and plan your weekend with
the three personals.
Time for lunch. Wander into the
kitchen and crunch over some scattered sugar from breakfast.
The vacuum comes out and, while you're at it, you may as
well do the whole house. Silly to waste the effort for just
a square metre.
You hear the washing machine marching
across the laundry floor on the spin cycle. Before you can
get stuck into work, you may as well hang out the laundry.
You're hanging up the last shirt and … is that the phone?
Yes. Darn! Don't they know you're working?
You race into the house. It's your
sister. Do you know that it's your mum's 70th birthday this
year? You need to plan a special party. Maybe a surprise.
Forty minutes later you hang up and head for your computer.
Log on, and check emails again. Three
more spam, two more newsletters and a query for a quote for
a manuscript assessment. Put an exclamation mark next to
that one and read the other personal emails. Answer two and
disconnect.
It's really time to get to work now.
Open the manuscript you're currently working on and settle
in. 35 minutes later, you glance at the clock. Time to pick
the kids up from school…
Sound familiar? Probably not to this
extreme, but you can see how easy it is to procrastinate
when you're working at home. If this sounds a little like
you, there are some basic things that you can do to change
the situation.
Never underestimate the power of
routine. Set yourself time limits. The family leaves the
house at 7:30. Give yourself one hour only to clean up,
tidy, weed and fulfil your domestic desires. When that hour
is up, you are at work. Check your emails when you first log
on, once. Take one hour to answer, write, plan, etc. Then
close your mailbox and open your work. If the phone rings,
let the machine get it. If it's an editor or prospective
client, answer of course, or ring back immediately. If it's
a social call, leave it until later.
Then…work.
Any domestic chores that aren't
finished can wait until the kids get home or until the
weekend. Social calls as well. Urgent emails have been dealt
with and you have made a note of future action to take on
the others.
Don't prepare for work by sharpening
pencils, refilling cartridges or starting another to-do
list. WORK. Write, edit, assess, submit. Uninterrupted. If
you were working for someone else, you would clock in and
out. Be firm with yourself, don't allow unfocused, wasted
hours to drag your business down.
Time saving tips:
Delegate -- Just because you
happen to be the one that is home all day, don't do it all.
You are on-site so it makes sense for a bit more of the
domestic duties to fall on your shoulders, but if you are
serious about running a business from home, you must make
sure the rest of your household is too. It's lovely to hear
them say, 'we support you, we think it's wonderful that
you're taking this on'. Get them to prove it. Enlist their
help. Make a list of the daily, weekly and monthly chores
and delegate. Hang up a calendar and include everyone.
Encourage the idea that we live in this house, we must all
work together to keep it up.
Inform your friends -- It may
take a few weeks, maybe even months, but if you allow your
friends to break into your working time, you're not taking
your freelancing business seriously. If you don't…they
won't. If someone rings or 'pops in' during your work time,
you can be kind, but firm. "I'm sorry, but I really have to
get back to work. Can I ring you later?" Simple,
straightforward and understandable. You wouldn't ring them
at work and chat for half an hour. Demand the same respect.
If they're your friends they'll understand.
Set goals -- If you have a lot
of trouble sticking to time limits, try using daily goals
instead.
- I will write one thousand
words today.
- I will submit two manuscripts
to three different publishers and write a query letter.
- I will finish my short story
and find a market for it.
Only when you have completed your
goal, may you fill the birdfeeder or make your pumpkin
soup.
Be firm with yourself -- Read
your long-term goals. Imagine them completed.
Taste the glow of success you will
feel. Then be firm. You will get there.
In essence: To become a
successful freelancer, maintain a comfortable balance and
maintain your health. When you work, work hard, when you
don't - enjoy. You will be well prepared for the long haul
and a successful business.
Next month -- time saving tips.
I'm off. Time for a swim…
© copyright Ann
Harth 2005. Comments and suggestions for specific topics pertaining
to writing, editing or working from home are welcome. Please
contact me at
annharth@writing4success.com
Ann Harth is a
freelance manuscript assessor, copyeditor, proofreader and
ghostwriter as well as a published author. She writes in all
genres of children's fiction from picture books to young
adult novels as well as adult fiction and non-fiction. She
has successfully completed several text-editing projects for
university students and authors, and is the assistant
fiction editor of www.moondance.com, a literary on-line magazine. She is
also on the creative writing staff of
www.storydog.com, a website for children.
More information on the freelance services that Ann Harth
offers can be found on her website at
www.annharth.com.
| 
Quick Bites Reports
