Many office-based people will think freelancers are having plenty free time? Or others might think they are working all the time – day and night, without knowing something called vacation or holiday? In fact, every kind of job has the same way: busy time, few work time, free time interchangeably… In this post, I will talk about freelancers’ ‘free time’ in the context of not having any new offers from client nor a deadline to run after. And like the subject reveals, there are things that freelancers will do during that period, some of which are similar to any people (working or non-working), and others can be very specific for the nature of freelance work.
We, freelancer, spend free time like any other ‘normal’ people.
- Read a book: This can be any entertainment, or very specialized topics to make the time be meaningful for enriching the knowledge and broaden the mindset. I personally have the reading habit of merely entertaining purpose, which let the mind be idle and free. This is specially presented as a freelancer always needs interaction with outside world and this is the best way to do for both the personal life and careers.
- Time for family: Choosing a freelance career lead to usually working at no-scheduled time, late at night, checking emails, texts everywhere, every time. Therefore, spouses, children sometimes have to patiently waiting for our ‘free’ time to enjoy together moments.
- Other normal hobbies such as listening to music, watching a movie, going to the cinema, chating with friends…: All of these can be done and have already been discussed a lot.
However, freelancers have some privileges (or motivation and responsibility!) over other office based people in doing those things:
- Time for family: Oh, repeated activity? Not at all, family time for freelancers is a very nice benefit of such kind of work as nature of work from home. You can spend time and take care of your baby while working at home. This is very nice motivation for new moms to start their freelance careers.
- Take a sleep: No one knows if this night or some hours after the ‘free’ time, there will have some urgent or rush offers from our clients and you have to work over- or late at night. Therefore, take the time to rest – being healthy is the first priority for freelancers. And this is a nice thing for the freelancer as you can decide to do this while let’s imagine how the normal office based can do? No way, right?
- Prepare and send invoice: Sounds strange? Yes, but only for office based people. As a freelancer, you have to play all roles of your ‘company’: marketing, contract negotiations, customer care, finance management… So there are clients to manage and money (from them) to manage to take. Nowadays, thanks to ICT advances and the online platform to manage your works with clients, the task is a little less, but who knows if there are some amount missing somewhere and you might lose money because of your careless mistakes.
- Search and apply for new jobs to look for new clients: As always, freelancing means running your own business; so you have to do sales and marketing activities for your jobs. Surfing the Internet to find potential clients, some postings to look for translators, designers, developers, writers and applying for those jobs…
- Write something: Exactly what I am doing now. Funny but really practical, right?
Looking at the list I have made, it turns out to be that there is no official free time for us. That is absolutely correct, as a freelancer is not a career for everyone – I can strongly admit that. Please do not think of being a freelancer, you are FREE to have much more free time than other office based workers.
In conclusion, the list will be ongoing, and I will regularly update this list. Also, I would like to know and discuss about you on how do you spend the free time that you having in your freelance life by giving comments and contact me to ask any questions or share your own thoughts and experience.
Lotus Bach
