From the course: Freelance Work Strategies for Video and Motion Graphics Creators

Strategies for achieving work-life balance as a video freelancer

From the course: Freelance Work Strategies for Video and Motion Graphics Creators

Strategies for achieving work-life balance as a video freelancer

- Achieving work life balance. It's a challenge we all face. And I have to tell you, my philosophy about this is a little different than what you might hear from other people. I don't really believe in balance because to me, that means that two things are equal and I just don't find that that's the case and it's not really what I want. When I'm working on work, I really wanna be concentrating on work. When I'm with my family, I really wanna be concentrating on my family. So, I don't really see it as trying to make those things equal all the time, I just feel like I need to make the environment possible where I can concentrate as much as possible on work when I need to work and I can concentrate as much as possible on the rest of my life when I'm doing that part of my life. So to that end, let's talk a little bit about some of the things you can do to impact your outlook. Periodically you really need to review your work environment. We talked at the beginning about all the different set ups that people have for their work environment. Standing desks, sitting desks, a new kind of chair, taking walks during the day, the happy light, whatever it takes to make your world good when you're working. And sometimes that means you need to reassess. So try and take a look at that. Maybe once a year when you're doing your re-visioning project, when you're thinking about where you're gonna take your business and how you're gonna grow and what you're gonna do next. Take a look around you. Is this working? I have a problem in my office where I just don't have enough storage, right, because clients are always asking me for back up files, for projects that are long since gone and I try to keep records very neat and tidy because they suddenly want to come back to me for all kinds of information or transcripts of interviews that we've done years ago. So I have to think about, where am I gonna keep all these drives, where am I gonna keep all this paper. And I periodically have to asses that and revisit how my office is set up. Another thing that is important is assessing how you work and what I mean by that is what are your days looking like. And again, when you keep track of your time, this can really help you. So are you having productive days, are you really working eight hours a day, when you're out on a shoot, you pretty much know you're working all the time. But if you're working in an environment where you might be working on a desktop and working on motion graphics, or producing a video or editing or doing a number of different tasks in different spaces, you don't always know how productive you are, so it's important to sort of keep track of that and see what's interrupting your productivity, what's interrupting your happiness factor. I find that email is kind of a nightmare. Email is sort of eating me alive on some days. And so, I've had to limit my access to like five times a day on certain projects where I really gotta do a deep dive and I just can't let that little dingy thing keep popping up in the corner of my screen so I shut down all the notifications. Or days where I just get off all social media. Some of those things affect your outlook and how you're feeling about your work and that can really dribble into your personal life as well and effect the balance there. What about clients and customers? Are they invading your personal time, family time? Sometimes you need to send a little note to remind them you're not checking your email all weekend or all night everyday. I've had to send email responses, saying, you know, I'm offline Sundays to recharge. But I'll respond to you Monday morning. If this is an emergency, you can text me. So I try to do those kinds of things and that allows me to have a little bit of that personal space, make sure I'm getting, that so called balance. Another thing that's really helpful, I think, is setting goals. And I try to do daily goals, weekly goals, quarterly goals and yearly goals. And I put them up in places I can see them in my office. I actually have, kind of a little chart, that I keep on my desk and no matter what I'm putting down for the day, I get those longer, bigger picture goals and it's really helpful because you can really get swallowed up by a project and not really make those other goals if you're not kind of putting them in front of yourself everyday. And I don't just mean business goals, I also mean personal goals. You know, read a new novel, go for a run, I've been doing a lot of weight lifting lately so I'm making sure that that's in my weekly goals, how many times I'm gonna lift. So whatever it is that makes you happy, is gotta be on that goals sheet. And whatever kind of tool you're using whether its Trello or Basecamp, or whatever online tool you're using to track your time or track your projects, you can build those personal goals in there too. Some examples that you might do that are business goals might be better projects or higher fees, or new type of client, a new style of project, new content or working with a different type of team. So trying to pick and choose a couple of those goals and set them out there and trying to look for ways that you can incorporate them into what you're doing, people that you're meeting, places that you're networking. Those are ways you can kind of keep yourself happy, because you're really your own personal development coach when you're self employed so this is part of your work, is making sure that you're living a balanced, happy life and you have goals that make you feel successful all the way around. Cut yourself a break, you're self employed. That's my final tip. Because it is really hard when you're your own boss, your own accountant, your own lawyer to a certain extent, you're managing all these different processes, and you're doing the creative work and you've got a whole life outside of work. So it's a lot to juggle, so I think you need to cut yourself a break and realize that not everyday is going to be productive, not every day is going to be perfect. Try to have some fun because it is really great to have the flexibility and freedom to be a free lancer.

Contents