Work Hours Are Arbitrary

This article was originally published on my company’s website at https://www.tosc.io/blog/work-hours-are-arbitrary, on September 22, 2020. If you’ve got any questions or comments, or just want to connect, shoot us an email at feedback@tosc.io!

Tips on How to Successfully Plan your Time as a Freelancer

I had an unorthodox alarm clock at my old company. Without fail, the coworker who sat kitty-corner behind me was out of his seat within a few minutes of our scheduled day end. He would canter down the aisle towards the exit of the building, nodding a smug goodbye if you happened to catch his eye.

As with most salaried desk jobs, we had an obligation to come in to work on time, sit at our desks for a certain number of prescribed hours, and eventually go home. Those eight-ish hours of clocked time were not evaluated for value of output or productivity. Yes, we had deadlines, meetings, daily tasks, and set goals, but the workload didn’t always correspond to a full day of work. I remember days when I would anxiously adjust a completed model on my computer just to look busy, while surreptitiously checking my phone under my desk. Other weeks, I’d be in early, stay late, and come in on a Saturday just to keep on top of all my assignments.

In a salaried position, your time is mandated, regardless of how it is used. But what does time mean for a freelancer? When you have control of your own schedule — when you get to decide when you are on the clock and off — how do you allocate it? How do you plan your time? How do you value your time? And how do you make the most of it?

The Value of Your Time

When I asked myself this question, I quickly realized I didn’t know how long a normal work task actually takes. I decided to set a timer, set a goal, and log how I was using my time. (I encourage you to do the same as an experiment.)

For my example, I sat at my desk on a Monday morning to write this blog post. I made a cup of tea (an integral part to any writing process) and gave myself two hours to do some research and write an opening paragraph on a topic that I had already picked.

In the three and a half hours that followed, I had:

• Scrolled through three different twitter pages looking for inspiration
• Read seventeen different articles, five of which were still open up on my computer
• Reheated my tea
• Drafted a rough structure for this blog post
• Scribbled down three new potential blog ideas
• Reheated that same cup of tea for the second time (this time I felt peckish when I got to the kitchen and also ate a chocolate biscuit)
• Spent twenty minutes researching British naval history after a quote in an article led me down a research rabbit hole
• Decided that an opening paragraph was too lofty of a goal when I couldn’t even commit to which idea I wanted to write about.

In operations evaluations in the manufacturing industry, we do exercises in productivity. We make the distinction between Value Added versus Non-Value Added (NVA) time, or sometimes simply, “wrench time”. How much time is a worker actually doing “the job” ie. turning the wrench (or screwing a bolt or welding a pipe…) and how much time is spent not doing “the job” ie. finding his tools, waiting for a part to arrive, walking to her locker, filling out an order completion form, etc.

So an hour of work doesn’t necessarily mean an hour of output. How do I translate this analogy to freelancing? As Michelle Lee-Ann mentions in an article advocating setting work hours as a freelancer: “The best part of freelancing is also the problem with freelancing: the flexibility.”

When time is not mandated, we need to make sure we are understanding how we spend our time.

What I’ve Learned About Successfully Planning My Time

Here are three things that I’ve learned about successfully planning my time:

1. Set distinct goals. Emma Moran suggests a useful acronym: SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Her article explains a great way to go take a goal like “Get more clients” to something quantitative and manageable.
2. Prioritize your work by importance and urgency. As Nicole Dieker puts it, create a schedule so you “know what you’re doing next.” Know your deadlines, plan your day out (including breaks!) and do your most important work when you are most likely to be focused and productive. Follow her tips here and with a bit of practice and trial and error you will find a way to create an “optimized routine”.
3. Most importantly, learn how YOU work best. Just because you can potentially work 24 hours a day, doesn’t mean you should. You might be a morning person, you might prefer a shorter work week, you might prefer to split your day into sections, do what works for you. For some interesting suggestions of different freelancing schedules, I recommend reading Ashley Brooks’s article here.