The Productive Freelancer

A few months ago, I responded to call on Facebook to take to a survey about work/life balance. The gal conducting the survey, Amber Hinds, was preparing for a talk she was giving at WordCamp Denver and was gathering data from fellow WordPress business owners on the subject.

(Her talk turned out great — you can watch it on WordPress.tv. I mostly loved that she gave it while wearing her baby — and if that’s not work/life balance, I don’t know what is. If you’re interested in taking her survey, she still has it available here: https://www.amber-hinds.com/work-life-balance. I believe it’s somewhat of an ongoing project for her.)

Apparently, I was one of only a handful of people (3 or 4 out of 60+ participants at the time) who responded that I felt like I’ve more or less got my work/life balance under control, and so she asked if I would be interested in being interviewed about my responses.

So this totally freaked me out.

On one hand, yes — I love the subject. I’ve worked really hard over the years to try and achieve some semblance of work/life balance both when I held a full-time job as well as during my post-corporate years as I’ve been trying to build up my own business; and isn’t it kind of cool that she wanted to interview me?!

On the other hand, I only answered that I “somewhat” thought I had it under control which in my mind meant a lot of days I definitely don’t get it right. It’s a constant work in progress (with a wide spectrum of what could be considered the “work” part); and who on earth am I to proclaim myself an authority on work/life balance.

But after a lot of hemming and hawing, I did agree to speak to her and ultimately decided that I actually had something maybe kind of interesting to say on the subject.

After having to reschedule our interview several times (because, you know, the “life” side of the whole work/life balance equation kept getting in the way), and after having played out the entire conversation in my head multiple times over like you do in preparation for something like this, she and I finally had a chance to meet on Zoom.

Here are some things I shared with her and a few things I took away from our conversation:

✔ I absolutely did not want to be held up as a shining example, the “after” picture of someone who really has work/life balance all figured out because that is so not where I am.

(And this led me down a whole rabbit hole of irritation at the self-development industry in general because all you ever see or hear about are the worst before pictures and overly-glamorized after pictures. But I think so much of life happens in between those two and that there really isn’t all that much that actually constitutes the “after.” Most of it is in the middle and no one ever talks about that because the middle is not sexy or motivating or inspiring and doesn’t make for viral social media posts or best-selling books. But I think we all would be better served if we talked about the middle a little bit more often.)

✔ For me, work/life balance is defined as:

• having a business and clients I love and that provide enough income to support my family and work that is gratifying and satisfies my creative bent
• being there for my daughter — being able to have the time freedom to participate in her world whenever I want to — whether that’s volunteering to teach art at her school or driving the carpool for Girl Scouts or reading with her at night before she goes to bed. (Even though she’s in middle school now, we still do this and my husband and I alternate nights and it’s going to be a heartbreaking day for me when she doesn’t want to do it any longer, but I will soak it in for as long as I absolutely can.)
• having time with my husband, even if it’s just an hour at night, snuggling on the couch watching TV before bed
• having time with my parents and siblings — I sometimes feel like an oddball because so many people in my world are in constant contention with their immediate family, but mine is incredibly supportive, and it’s nourishing for me to be with them
• fixing meals at home instead of always running to the fast food joint down the street (which really a person can only take so much of)
• taking care of myself — walking, swimming, meditating, reading, taking long, hot baths, reading while taking long hot baths, getting good sleep
• having time to myself when I need it (and most importantly, paying attention to when I need it so that I’m not ready to implode by the time I actually getting around to taking it)

I can say that I have “somewhat good” work/life balance because even though on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis it may not look like it from the outside, on the whole, it is incredibly important to me. I prioritize these things, and I choose to have it.

✔ A big key to work/life balance for me is communication —

communicating with my husband and daughter about what I need from them (usually for them to leave me alone during certain blocks of time or needing someone else to take responsibility for fixing meals, etc.) as well as good communications with my clients.

✔ I’m far from perfect in my business.

I make mistakes, and while I try to create and meet meaningful deadlines, I am frequently overly ambitious with how much I think I can accomplish in a given period of time which often leads to a quick email that “I’m not quite finished with that just yet. I should have x, y, or z done for you in <insert new timeline here>.” For the most part, I’ve found that as long as my clients know what the heck is going on and aren’t kept in the dark about the status of their tasks and projects, they’re fairly understanding if I don’t hit the exact target every time.

(In my head, my clients are understanding but also still mildly irritated by this, and probably they’re that way in reality, too. <sigh>)

✔ I actually “owned” being the primary (very often sole) breadwinner in our family.

It’s something I’ve always secretly been proud of. I remember back to when I was like 12 years old and in church hearing a definite, clear-cut message that I was supposed to be a housewife and have babies and care for my family. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that choice, but I knew deep in my heart, even back then, that it wasn’t who I was going to be. I wanted to work, and I was OK if my husband was the one who took care of the kid. And that holds true for me still today, but I don’t find that it’s something I often admit publicly.

✔ I prefaced almost everything I shared with her during the interview with, “For me…”

because I have learned that what might work well for for one person may not work at all for the next. And I’ve spent a lot of time sussing out how I define “success” for myself over the years and having my definition be the yardstick I use to measure myself by — not someone else’s.

All of which leads me to my motivation behind writing this.

In a desire to be more transparent — for myself mostly but also for others in the WordPress (or any freelancer-type) community who struggle with these same issues — I decided I wanted to document my journey, the wins and losses, the things that worked (for me), the things that totally bombed, etc., etc.

I’m in the middle of it — have made great progress over the past 9 or 10 years (really, I’ve been working on it a lot longer than that), but I still feel like I’ve got so far to go.

And thus has been born “The Productive Freelancer” where I plan to share my adventures in productivity — my ideas, my resources, my experiments, and my lessons learned to maybe help the world of freelancing be a more productive place (but again, mostly just for myself).

More to come…