Maintaining Life Balance

July 10, 2008 |

Being off on your own is a departure for many people that is radically different from the “9 to 5″ work life they are so accustomed to. As a result, once they start freelancing, they have trouble distinguishing between their work and personal lives and the two begin to collide and cause problems with family relationships. In addition, working solo often brings with it problems of its own.

In this section, we will explore the following issues and offer suggestions on how to address them:

Separating Your Work Life from Home Life
Take Time Out for Yourself
Hire Help if You Need it
Avoiding Loneliness

Separating Your Work Life from Home Life

woman in hammock Most of us started our careers working for someone else. Those jobs usually had a definite start and stop time and a prescribed location where work was to be conducted. Larger companies have employee manuals that describe the policies and procedures of the organization and govern how workers must conduct themselves while carrying out their duties.

Once you start freelancing, you have total freedom to decide how, when, and what you will work on and for whom. You also have the choice as to where you will work in most cases (unless you perform your work at the customer site). For many, this place will be their home.

Working from home brings with it two sets of issues that need to be addressed. Acknowledging that they exist is half the battle of resolving them, and discussing them openly with family members usually is all that is generally necessary to ensure they don’t cause problems.

Issue # 1 is your freelancing being taken seriously by family members, friends, neighbors, and anyone else in your home environment. You are not home on vacation, sick, or laid off. You are home conducting business for a client, marketing yourself and your services to secure more of the same, or performing the operational and administrative duties necessary to keep your freelance business running. You are not there to switch loads of laundry, do the dishes, mow the lawn, fix the light switch, or any number of other chores that might be asked of you because you are conveniently home. Likewise, you are not there to chat with neighbors or relatives who drop by, run errands, or help with homework. To be sure, if any of these things are important, and you feel they need to be done during your normal working hours, by all means, schedule them on your calendar and do them. After all, freelancing gives you that flexibility and it’s a major advantage of the work style. But the point is that you should not be interrupted to do these things, and the people around you need to know that.

The second issue lies within you and your ability to cut work off when appropriate and get on with your personal life. In the hourly 9 to 5 world, once you “punch out”, your time is yours. Salaried workers may be “on call” after hours, but generally this is the exception rather than the rule. When you own your own business, this becomes tougher because you are trying to build your customer base and when you work from home, it is especially tempting to work extra hours because it’s so convenient. Eventually this practice will conflict with your family life and cause you stress.

Here are some suggestions to help you “call it a day”:

Create a separate work space - Try to locate your studio, office, or work environment as far away from the rest of your living space as possible. An outbuilding, shed, or detached garage is ideal, but if that is not practical for your situation, try to at least make it a separate room with a door that can be closed at the end of work.
Set up an end of day ritual - When you’re done with work, change your clothes and reward yourself by taking a walk, watching the news, or enjoying a glass of wine or beer.
Get out of the house each day - Schedule an appointment each work day to run an errand, meet with a friend, or pick up the kids.
Set firm office hours and stick to them - This replicates your former 9 to 5 life, but if you’re used to it and it works for you, why not?
Place non-work events on your business calendar as well - This prepares you to take the time off you need for social and family events.
Set reasonable work hours - Set some time aside each day as “free time” where you have nothing specific planned. Be fairly rigid about not scheduling anything work related during that time. Also plan on having one or two full “free” days each week. If you must work weekends, schedule your free days during the week.

If you have a problem with customers calling or stopping by before or after hours, put policies in place of when you are best reached and use an answering machine or service to answer your phone when you are not available. Leave a secure box outside of your home or rent a private mailbox where customers may leave work and instructions for you if desired.

Take Time Out for Yourself

Home-based freelancers are particularly vulnerable to burnout because they never actually leave their workplace. Too many things in our environment beckon for attention, and many of us are so oriented toward taking care of everything else that we neglect to take care of ourselves. As a result, over time, our performance suffers and our health starts to take a hit.

Part of maintaining a healthy life balance means granting yourself permission during your workday to engage in an activity that benefits you. The benefits of exercise are well documented. If you have a hectic personal life, take an hour or two every other day to go to the gym, walk, run, or bike. You wouldn’t even necessarily need to leave home. Purchase a mat, buy or borrow an exercise tape at the library, and work out at home.

Freelancers who work in creative professions often get so wrapped up in their work that they lose all track of time, yet studies show that breaking their focus now and then helps the creative process. Schedule a mini-break of 10 - 20 minutes each day to focus on something completely different. Take a walk, read the newspaper, play with the dog — anything that doesn’t involve too much of a commitment and will allow you to easily return to work.

You also should set aside some time for self-improvement. Read up on a subject of interest. Take a community college course. Attend a seminar or conference being offered in your profession. If certifications are important in your line of work, consider a course of study designed to achieve them. Indulge yourself with a hobby. When working for an employer, you had to justify any education you wanted to take. Now, you just need to satisfy yourself that the instruction will benefit you and is worth your time.

The origin of the word “recreation” means the act of “re-creating” or rejuvenating ourselves. Make sure you schedule a major holiday or vacation each year so you can re-create yourself and strengthen the bonds that tie you with family and friends.

Hire Help if You Need it

One of the things you notice most when you go from employee to freelancer is that everything now falls on your shoulders. Not only are you the producer, but also the marketing, sales, accounting, collections, and administration departments. In short, you have to do it all.

Or do you? When you are first starting out, money may be tight. So you try to tackle everything. As time goes on, you find out that you may be missing opportunities because you are so caught up in the everyday operational aspects of your business that you don’t have the time to take on more billable work. It’s at that point — when you’re turning away work — that you should consider bringing in outside help.

Indicators that you need assistance are:

You find that you don’t have the skill or expertise to do the job yourself
Paying someone to do the work would be more cost effective than doing it yourself
You find that a job can’t be done by one person alone
You hate doing a job that needs to get done, and so you keep putting it off

This could be anything from hiring a high school kid to stuff envelopes for you to calling in a bookkeeper once a month to keep your accounting in order. You can also hire a virtual assistant — a fellow freelancer — to handle anything from scheduling appointments to putting together presentations. Everything is handled remotely via phone, fax, VPN, or email. There are also professional organizations, known as pass-through agencies, like MBO Partners and Solo W-2 to consider. A pass-through agency is a company that acts as your employer of record, handling billing and collection for you and issuing you a W-2 at the end of the year. But you remain in control of whom you work for, how much you charge, your work hours, and other project parameters. These organizations will also help market you and may have group benefit plans that you can take advantage of, so they are well worth looking into. Solo W-2 even has a Roth 401k plan for people who work independently.

The key is to not drive yourself crazy and increase your stress level trying to do everything yourself. You’re a freelancer, and so that gives you choices and the ability to leverage resources. Explore partnering with others locally to exchange services to help minimize your costs or possibly joining a barter exchange.

Avoiding Loneliness

Loneliness is a common “disease” among freelancers. Where you may have once enjoyed the buzz, socializing, and camaraderie with fellow employees in the workplace, you now are faced as a freelancer with working solo and maybe feeling a little isolated and “out of the loop”.

To be sure, not everyone feels this way. Most freelancers lose any sense of disconnection from their former employer once their business gets up and running. Their former contacts are replaced by a new set of clients, suppliers, neighbors, business associates, and colleagues. But if you start working from home and still have feelings of isolation, there are things you can do to combat them.

First of all, admit to yourself that you are missing something by working from home and try to determine what that something is. Is it the people? The hubbub? Not knowing what’s going on? The constant flow of email messages? For some, it may be the lack of someone who knows your business to bounce ideas off of.

The next step in curing the “disease” is to take action to get involved in activities that will supply what you are looking for. You will need to take this initiative on your own to become involved in the new world around you. Here are some suggestions:

Join trade organizations that represent your field of work, attend meetings, meet people, and get involved in activities within the organization.
Stay in touch with your old contacts and let them know what you’re up to. Ask their advice or get their opinion or reaction to something you’re involved with.
Attend workshops, seminars, and courses in your field and attend networking events that will provide you with the opportunity to meet people with similar interests.
Go online and blog or participate in forums that address issues in your line of work.
Schedule breakfast, lunch, or just coffee breaks with peers to share ideas and information you have come across that may be of interest to them.
Get involved in your community and volunteer your time and services to organizations that advocate causes you believe in.

The bottom line is that you need to create a new support system to replace your old one. Web sites like Meetup are available to help you to connect with people who share common interests with you.

This article was featured in the Working at Home Blog Carnival at Working at Home on the Internet and in the Modern Families Blog Carnival at Modern Families.