What I struggle with is knowing when to stop. When I worked for someone else I never worked past 6pm and now I don’t even notice that time arrive (except on yoga days when I’m gone by then). What I’m trying to remind myself is that I’m still working for someone else the client – and I’m sure they want me to have a life as much as my boss did (and I do!).

Now I should be telling you that time tracking helps. And it would, if I wasn’t being too hard on myself. Because I track ALL my time, even if I haven’t done any client billable hours (happens some days) I can still see if I’ve been productive (i.e. not on Twitter and reading blogs all day) so I should be able to clock off after a good 7/8 hours without guilt. But do I? No, I still think ‘oh but if I could just do a couple billable hours on top of all that’. Crazy. This has got to stop. Let it be a lesson to us both!

If you get the right balance between work and fun, you’ll never want to go back to 9-5 job.

BTW if you don’t know it, check out http://freelanceswitch.com/, their Freelance Freedom comic rocks and sometimes they post useful freelance advice.

I am definitely getting a lot done, so I’m not worried about THAT. For productivity, I’ve been using a combination of “The Hit List” and my apple calendar (I was only using the hit list before, but I was very occasionally missing overall deadlines and found it hard to track meetings, so I’m tracking deadlines for big items on the calendar now). Hopefully I can get onto these non-paid stuff and get some new dresses made!

You need a super playlist! Like ‘Eye of the tiger’ on repeat or something..(ok maybe not that song but you know what I mean).

I guess the whole planning thing is something you’ll learn along the way – you’ll find your balance Maybe it’s one of those things where you put a lot of energy into lift off.

Anyhow go kick some project ass xx

Have you ever tried a productivity system? We use parts of the GTD (Getting Things Done) approach, which aims to increase productivity and reduce stress. Is all about lists and prioritising. There are gmail plugins you can use to help with it. Might not work for you, but there are lots of potential methodologies you could investigate.

Good luck with your challenge! I can’t wait to berate you x