Why School Holidays And Freelance Work Schedules Don’t Work

It’s July and for many work at home freelance writers this means school holidays and work schedule disruptions.  Many freelance writers have a set work schedule that revolves around their children’s school times.  I myself do and my work day is from 9.30am to 12.30pm.  These three hours allow me to focus solely on client work and get as much as I need to get done completed. This schedule works perfect for me and allows me to stay at home with my children instead of having to slog away in a 9 to 5 job and employing child care for my children.  But what happens when my children are on school holidays?

When July hits it means school holidays and a full 8 weeks or more of having the kids at home all day everyday.  If this is happening to you then this article on re-organising your freelance work schedule for the school holidays should help.

Re-organising Your Freelance Work Schedule For The School Holidays

The school holidays last for just over 8 weeks for many people and for stay at home freelance writers this can mean a big disruption to their daily work schedule.  For these eight weeks you need to set a new work schedule that will allow you to continue to get your work done whilst still being the best parent you can be.  There are a number of ways that you can make a new schedule work for you but some of the most common things that freelance writers do is as follows:

Work While Your Children Sleep:

This is a great idea but it does mean choosing between two different things. Working while your children sleep will mean either getting up a couple of hours earlier or giving up your evenings.  Getting up earlier sounds easy, the house will be so much quieter, your mind will be fresh, and you will be able to concentrate a lot better.  Sounds promising doesn’t it?  Now the reality.  You get to bed at 11pm and then come 4am there is a deafening noise as your alarm clock sounds telling you that it is time to get up and start working.  You have convinced yourself that you will be able to get up three hours early but the reality is that when that alarm goes off the temptation to hit the off button is just too much and you end up getting up when your children jump on you looking for their breakfast.  So the idea of getting up early goes out the window.  What I suggest doing here is maybe trying to allocate 2 or 3 days a week to getting up early and see how it goes from there.  If like me you sometimes wake up early then rather than forcing yourself to go back to sleep because it’s only 5am I suggest that you get up and put your mind to use.  You’ll be surprised at just how much work you can get done first thing in the morning.

The other alternative for working when your children sleep is to work in the evenings.  I do this quite frequently but do sometimes find that by the time 8pm arrives and I have my children settled for the night I am exhausted and the idea of working for a couple of hours really doesn’t appeal to me.  I also found that when I do this I miss spending quality time with my husband and of course he does tend to complain if working in the evening becomes a regular occurance because this is the only quality time we get to spend together.  My solution here is to limit my evening time work to one hour if possible.

Divide Your Work Time Into Smaller Time Slots

This is something that really seems to work.  If you know that it will take you 3 hours to complete your daily work a good tip is to try and break this time down into smaller half hour slots throughout the day.  There are times in particular when you can get things done even if you have small children.  I usually get all my emails checked and replied to while my children are eating their breakfast.  If they are coloring or drawing I can usually get the research compiled for my next article.  There really are plenty of things that you can complete with kids around your feet and if you have a laptop it makes things so much easier because you can work wherever your children are.

If you combine working when your children are asleep and dividing your working into smaller time slots you should have no problem sticking to your work schedule during the school holidays.

My daily schedule has changed from three hours straight work to one hour early in the morning, one hour in the evening, and two half hour slots during the day.  What about you?  How has your freelance work schedule changed because of the school holidays?  Do you have some additional tips that you can share?

Until next time,

Keep writing.
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