10 Tips to Balance Freelance and Personal Lives

Karen Putz asks how I do it — balance full-time writing and being a parent to three kids. I should be asking her how she does it — she interviews Marlee Matlin!

As I mentioned in my how I became a writer story, the whole thing started as a part-time venture while managing a part-time corporate job (for most of it) and three kids. I believe writing on the side while holding down a corporate job is a better route than chucking it all for the freelance life.

Yes, life is about risks, but you’re more likely to succeed by building up instead of starting with zip. Had I chucked it all back in 2000, I would’ve had less than a part-time amount of work and no health benefits. My spouse got laid off in 2003, right before No. 3 came along. We would’ve been in deep trouble had I chucked, which would’ve been more of an upchuck (holds back from the woodchuck routine).

I also volunteer and sit on several PTA boards. My mom was a full-time volunteer for the second half of my childhood. I wanted to be like her. Living a balanced life is important to me. My kids will grow up, so I need to enjoy them NOW.

Prefer to be all about your career? If your career makes you happy, then go for it and ignore everything here.

So how do I manage all of this? Not without a little insanity and stress at times, but these tips help make it easier:

  1. Enroll younger kids in pre-school. Keeping them at home isn’t doable (unless you have a nanny). My youngest has learned amazing stuff he would never have learned had he stayed home. He enters kindergarten in the fall (sob).
  2. Rely on a personal information manager complete with contacts, calendar, and to-do lists. The Palm desktop has been my trusty sidekick since 1995. Use Outlook. Use any of the many online web-based applications.
  3. Balance your schedule for the week. Non-work appointments take too many of my slots this week. I’ve rescheduled two. I try to spread out appointments, but that doesn’t always work and find a week becomes overloaded. So when I realize it, I start moving things around where I can. I review the week ahead sometime between Friday and Monday to ensure balance or to do something about it.
  4. Accept working off-hours. While I work a standard workweek, appointments and kid events can cut into my work time. So I make it up in the evening or on weekends, but never at the sacrifice of sleep brings us to the next point …
  5. Get sleep. Everyone requires a different amount of sleep to function well. If I stay up late working on something, I’m hurting more than helping my clients and business. While I might get something done late at night, I’m useless the next day and lose an entire day. So better to sleep and finish in the morning.
  6. Avoid waiting until the last minute to do work to make the deadline. To avoid late nights, I make sure I have room to meet the deadline. This prevents racing the clock or sacrificing quality to make a deadline.
  7. Make “No” part of your vocabulary. Or else, get stuck with deadlines close to each other, overload your schedule, and turn yourself into a stress machine (which affects your health). I believe, “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” So, parents, it may feel selfish to say, “No,” but your family benefits.
  8. Drop stressful clients. I’ve dropped a client or two because I didn’t enjoy the work and dreaded working on their projects. Add these together spell energy drain. Worried about replacing them? Writers should always include marketing a part of their job.
  9. Balance your kids’ activities. Who says they need to take music lessons, play sports, dance, and do scouts all at once? Kids need a break, too. Try to limit younger ones’ — who are trying things to find what they like — current activities to one or two. When one ends, you can try something else. After all, fewer activities mean fewer chauffeuring jobs for parents.
  10. Use your “I can’t write now” time wisely. When we find ourselves unable to write or work, we can easily fall into the trap of needlessly surfing the Web or doing other wasteful activities. When I’m in a stupor, I fold laundry, exercise, play games (that I need to review) — Things that benefit me.

How do you balance your writing life with your personal life?

6 thoughts on “10 Tips to Balance Freelance and Personal Lives”

  1. Great advice – kudos for pushing smart and sane.

    So far I don’t have to manage the kids part of the balance, but I know way too many people whose lives are out of control, and they are the ones making it worse. Either they’re not even seeing how they let things get out of balance (and thus out of control), or they refuse to accept that humans don’t scale, and refuse to reschedule or drop anything.

    As a result, all parts and people suffer for it, which ain’t doin’ anybody any good.

    Re. writing advice, I would also add that, like different people needing different amounts of sleep, different people need different conditions for getting the juices flowing/writing.

    If you need to be left alone with quiet – make sure you can arrange that. If you need to be in public with background white noise (like a coffee shop) – make sure you can arrange that.

    Demanding that your brain get with the program when you KNOW you’re in the wrong circumstances is an exercise in nothing but frustration.

    Melle’s last blog post..Dear kid in line in front of me at Zellers?

  2. Melle, gotta work at keeping myself smart and sane (or close to it) way or else my house will come falling down 🙂

    It sounds like you have your life mostly in control. It’s almost impossible to have complete control when you have kids… always the unknown variable. But we can keep it manageable.

    I know some people who do better writing late at night, but they also sleep late to ensure they get their rest. It’s not about what time you go to bed, but how much sleep you get.

    Drives me nuts when the first kid comes home from school and turns the TV on. Has it loud. I turn it down, he turns it back up. Luckily, afternoon is reserved for other work. Plus, I can turn off my cochlear implant to get quiet, if needed… but I prefer room quiet to deaf quiet.

  3. Dang, you are much more organized than me– so that’s how you do it!

    Most of the time I find myself flying by the seat of my pants juggling three plates at once. 🙂 I need to learn #6 and #7…

  4. i am so happy about this. i have just one kid but i have realized why it is so hard for me. i have never learnt to say no. good advice.

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