So. I admit it. I\u2019ve done it. I\u2019ve overcommitted myself, and its uncomfortable. I now have almost exactly the number of hours contracted work as I have hours available to work. Perfect, right? Wrong! Work doesn\u2019t stay in neat little day boxes, tasks don\u2019t always finish on time and no breathing space means a whole lot extra stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My two previous contracts extended, and then the extra client I took on (because I was about to be contract-less) has solidly taken up another chunk of my week. Plus, because I\u2019m a glutton for punishment, when a repeat client messaged about me doing another event with them, I found myself saying yes without giving myself any time to process how on earth I\u2019d fit it all in. I knew the instant I agreed I\u2019d be walking a bit of a tightrope, balancing work with my sanity. Perhaps that should have been my first “no”. A very grateful and reluctant no, but no all the same. I already knew I had maxed out my capacity but I somehow ploughed on. In my defence it was a charity I really enjoyed working with, doing work I love. And event work is short and sharp, there\u2019s a short intensive prep, then delivery, a lull and then a report from feedback, with most of it (obviously bar the event itself) being flexible about when you do the work. I can\u2019t lie, I was also flattered to be asked back and I didn\u2019t want to lose that relationship. I did recognise I was putting myself under a lot of pressure, and that I\u2019d perhaps undercharged before, so my agreement was based on a price increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no two ways about it, it\u2019s hard. There is a relentlessness to the weeks which is taking it\u2019s toll. There\u2019s been some steep learning curves, and some near misses. Trying to keep in a positive frame of mind about it, I\u2019d say what I\u2019d learnt is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Slow start<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Try and start every day easing into work \u2013 open BBC news, check Twitter, catch up on the freelance networks I\u2019m part of. When I\u2019m stressed, the danger is I try and jump straight in and get tangled trying to simultaneously do 10 things. Ironically risking being incredibly efficient for the sake of efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Set priorities<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I now do a weekly to-do list, broken down across all clients plus a category for my own business to cover things like logging hours, invoicing or LinkedIn posts. There\u2019s probably a million more beautiful and effective ways of doing this digitally but with limited (or more accurately none!) spare brainspace at the moment, I\u2019m sticking with traditional pad and some fancy coloured pens<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. All inboxes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every day check every inbox. Before, I might have had a cursory scan but now even if a day is dedicated to one charity, I always check all inboxes and answer any urgent items. This one was a very near miss on leaving something until that charity\u2019s day in my week, and it turned out to be very nearly too late to complete something. Now I understand you have to flex a part of each day to keep on top of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4. Track<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I was able to keep days fairly locked to certain work but increasingly now I have to use any available space which means beg, borrow and stealing time constantly across the week. If it\u2019s a 4 person meeting and you only offer a Tuesday, you could hold up the entire team for a few weeks. So now I try and religiously keep a spreadsheet of hours to keep an eye on what hours I\u2019ve done, when, for who. It\u2019s a huge help to know that if you\u2019ve \u201cborrowed\u201d two hours from one day, you can see it and know you pay it back on another one. Admittedly, there\u2019s probably also better ways to do this digitally but I\u2019m back to my earlier point of no brain space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5. Boundaries<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Linked to the tracking, I\u2019ve got better at this. Prioritising the right things and calling time when the hours are up. It can be so hard to walk away when the to-do list is still long, but I\u2019m getting better at reminding myself if the charity is only paying for, say, one day a week, then both they and I recognise that there\u2019s a limit to what can be done. I was really lucky to have had a great client for one of my first contracts. When I flagged the to do list was huge and I was struggling to keep to the hours, her response was encouraging me to shorten the list. Something I need to keep reminding myself to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
6. Down time<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This one is a bit of a hard one. Some days I just acknowledge I need to get something done and\/or out of my brain, and I\u2019ll feel and sleep better if I work in the evening to do it. Other days, I recognise I just need to turn the laptop off because you need to recharge if you\u2019re going to have any chance of keeping on going. While I try not to work in the evenings, I haven\u2019t set any definitive rules on it. Sometimes I just need to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It looks like I\u2019m overcommitted now until April. That feels like a really long period of time. The stress is two-fold \u2013 some of this work is less of my area of expertise so it\u2019s taking longer and the imposter syndrome is strong and the lack of any time unaccounted by a paid contract each week means my business admin, my CPD, my networking, any business development is taking a huge hit. On the weeks I\u2019ve tried to prioritise this, I\u2019ve then suffered the knock-on effect of not doing enough contract work. It\u2019s a lose-lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also with two small kids, it\u2019s not a period of life with a lot of flex. Evenings are precious and often booked with sports, friend catch ups and important date-night box-set binges, and weekends are even less our own. Work has to stay firmly within a 9-5 for my sanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My two biggest learnings though are that I\u2019m at risk of overcommitting and under-delivering, the exact risk I was warned about from a colleague before I started this crazy adventure. If there\u2019s one thing that is sacred, it\u2019s your reputation, and for that reason alone, I definitely wouldn\u2019t repeat this level of work again in a hurry. The second one is that one of the primary reasons I went freelance was for a better work\/life balance, especially while the kids were small. But at the moment, the opposite is happening. I\u2019m eating into those down days with my daughter in order to keep up with the work, and this isn\u2019t the time. With just over a year left before she starts school, now is the time to do less, max out that time and bank the memories. Freelancing will still be there when both are at school and that\u2019s when I can work out realistically what the right amount of work is across the week. But right now, it\u2019s a bit too much. I guess I knew it was going to happen at some point, so now it\u2019s a case of knuckling down until I can ease myself out the other side of it with my sanity\/waistline\/relationships in tact. But first, more biscuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photo by Matthew Waring<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So. I admit it. I\u2019ve done it. I\u2019ve overcommitted myself, and its uncomfortable. I now have almost exactly the number of hours contracted work as I have hours available to work. Perfect, right? Wrong! Work doesn\u2019t stay in neat little day boxes, tasks don\u2019t always finish on time and no breathing space means…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33],"tags":[13,11,12,21,25,10],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-day-in-the-life-2","tag-charity","tag-consultant","tag-freelance","tag-non-profit","tag-self-employment","tag-start-up-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t