How do self-employed folks schedule work, rest, & everything else?
October 6, 2021 8:36 AM   Subscribe

I’ve been self-employed for about a month, and am… floundering.

I recently transitioned to being a full time artist. Yay! But also, help. Before the transition, I was optimistically set on creating daily working hours for myself, scheduling in lunch breaks, and generally being rigid in my day to day routines. Now that self-employment is here, I find myself a bit at loose ends. I tend to sleep in a bit, unless I need to wake up for an appointment or phone call or friend date. I tend to work in the evening after dinner. And even being at home, I forget to eat lunch sometimes.

My work is very much self-propelled; I generally don’t work with clients or do commissions, but I do have a Patreon page and am dedicated to providing content in that way, so that offers some structure. But generally, I am a printmaker and illustrator, and I create products which I launch in my shop, host online workshops, and post my work on Instagram. I’m struggling with how to prioritize all the tasks.

I would love to know how other self-employed folks work. Are you strict about stopping work every day at 5pm? Are you like me, working until 10 or 11 at night? Do you wake up at the same time everyday and get dressed and jump into a pre-planned routine? How do you also fit in cooking, cleaning, planning for the future, exercise, rest, etc etc etc?

Before this, I worked part time as a nanny for 6 years while growing my art career on the side, and sometimes I feel like I got MORE done then, just because there was a scarcity of time for art. So now I feel like I have “all this time”, but I also feel super busy. I know I need to be gentle with myself because it’s only been a month, but I think I had an unrealistic image in my head on how self-employment would feel, and now I need to settle into the reality of it and make it work for me. And also stop tying productivity to worth! (But that is another question altogether…)

Thanks for any help you can offer!
posted by sucre to Work & Money (6 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
You could try keeping track of what you do and when you do it for one to two weeks. You can then look at the schedule you actually follow and adjust your expectations to what your day will be. You do not have to work on a 9-5 schedule. It sounds like you're most productive in the evening hours so set that aside as your "working hours." If you work until 10/11 and go to bed at 12/1 am, then set your alarm for 10 am. Have brunch at 11, then work on getting your housework/appointments done between 12 and 5, have dinner at 6 or 7 and then start your work day.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 8:54 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


I’ve now been self-employed (as a consultant to the organisation that I used to be employed by) for just on a year. I cope with this by sticking pretty rigidly to the hours I used to work as an employee (though not on the same days of the week). I used to work 0800 to 1700 with an hour off in the middle, Sunday to Thursday; now I work the same hours, but on Saturday to Monday and then Wednesday and Thursday. The different days are to cope with the need to keep a much smaller fridge stocked.
posted by Logophiliac at 9:27 AM on October 6, 2021


Best answer: One thing that helped me when I was trying to get myself onto a regular schedule was being understanding about how hard it is. If I knew I had work but didn't get started drawing until 3pm and then beat myself up over it I just made things worse, and I felt guilty all the time no matter how much work I was doing. The thing that fixed it was thinking to myself things like,' Everything's ok, and tomorrow you can try to get started a little earlier, but you did really good and you did enough" It felt kind of ridiculous and childish but it actually worked.
I'm usually on a 10am- 7pmish schedule now but sometimes I get so slammed with stuff that I end up working super late hours anyway (I get extremely focused between 7pm-3am for whatever reason) but I know I can walk it back to more human hours when the project is over and not making myself feel bad about it is part of that.
I also try to remind myself that taking evenings off to spend with friends is normal and good even if I'm on a deadline, because if I don't do that I will inevitably waste an equal amount of time not working and not doing anything fun either.
I feel like scheduling in exercise and cleaning would be impossible for me, because at my best I can get into a good flow where I just work for hours and hours and get so much done, and it would be stupid to stop myself just to keep to a schedule. But I also try to notice when I'm flagging or distracted and that's when I'll take a break and read for a day or go to the laundromat.
But yeah, definitely be gentle with yourself! It will get easier over time.
posted by velebita at 10:38 AM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Not currently self-employed but have been for 10+ years, off and on. Plus a lot of remote work where my hours were super flexible.

What worked best for me was to have a self-imposed structure and times to start and end by, otherwise work would consume all available hours. That didn't mean I was super-productive, but without strict deadlines and start/end times, I'd take way longer to do things than if I was constrained to 9-5 in an office or whatever.

What helped me most is deadlines, external ones. For me, self-imposed deadlines don't work because I'm not the boss of me and I refuse to acknowledge past me's commitments for current me. (I also curse past me's lack of productivity. It's a mess.)

When I was working a dayjob and writing on the side, like you, I was more productive because I had a very finite number of hours to hit deadlines. As a full time writer I often wound up crunching the day before or day of a deadline because it always seemed like so much time.

If it works for you, I highly recommend a set schedule of work time vs. personal care / errands, etc. If you're most productive between, say, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., it's OK to just do your other stuff during the day and then get to it with work in the evening.
posted by jzb at 11:00 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


I've been self-employed for going on two years now, as a software developer.

Once you become self-employed, you have a lot more latitude to figure out what hours and times work for you, and whether you benefit from a routine enough to force it on yourself.

Without reviewing a whole history of work & employment, it seems intuitive that the reasons for a "9 to 5" schedule are probably more to serve employers than employees, so blindly repeating that structure as a self-employed person is not the way to go. Repeating it because it's the right thing for you, sure, but think about it before reflexively doing it.

I find that the quality & quantity of my output fluctuate. If I get in front of a computer and working by 10AM, I'll probably have a good (productive) day. If it's 3PM before I do, I'll probably have a low productivity day. But my moods and expectations figure into it: If I anticipate I'll have a good day, I'm motivated to start early; and if I anticipate that whatever I do will be just like running into a brick wall, I put it off as long as possible. All that to say, it's not entirely clear to me which is cause and which is effect.

Finding a balance of amount of work is important. If you're in a situation where it's necessary to work long hours to bring in the income to live a moderate lifestyle, then do it. But if the long hours are to enable a more expensive lifestyle, or aren't really needed to live the lifestyle you want, then think about why you're doing that. If it's what you think others expect of you or the pursuit of money you don't need, maybe don't do the work. (If it means turning down work, find and recommend competent people who need the work more than you) If it's because the tasks are what you genuinely want to do, do 'em. I keep within relatively strict bounds of hours spent "programming", but time spent helping people use the software via DIscord is something I'll do whenever I'm at a computer and see something interesting go by.

I'm still working on finding the balance between working & the things I "want" to do like cook. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic did (and is still doing) a number on the travel & social goals I had, but "cooking more often and better food" isn't going as well now as it did in month 2.

This is a bit of a brain dump but that's what I feel in this whole area.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Best answer: As a self-employed person who focuses on helping myself and others with blocks around productivity, I use and encourage a system called Monday Hour One. In a nutshell, here's how it works:

➡️ At the start of your week, write the results that you want to create by the end of the week

➡️ Write down every task that you’ll need to do to create those results

➡️ Choose how much time to give each task

➡️ Put each task on your calendar

➡️ Follow through, and watch your thoughts

At the end of the week, I do a mini-review of how it all went, so that I can learn and make adjustments to improve the next week.

It really isn't about the process though. What happens is that this process surfaces all your feelings, angsts and issues around productivity, and forces you to deal with them.

What it sounds like is that you're currently having a disagreement with yourself about what you should be doing with your time at a given hour. It looks like that's coming out as procrastination for you (which is a fancy way of saying there's something you don't want to feel). This is resulting in you not showing up to your 'meetings' with yourself.

Until you address the core issue (the disagreement), this will keep resurfacing. A process will help, in that it will keep pointing you to this core issue.

I would suggest getting really curious (in lieu of perhaps being self-critical or judgemental) about what you're feeling and thinking. Write about it, or express yourself however you need. It takes time and practice, but you can work through it once you are able to start noticing what's going on for you.

Also, your thoughts and feelings around productivity and worth is the same question. It's very likely part of the disagreement and the feeling you don't want to feel.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:29 PM on October 6, 2021 [9 favorites]


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