How do you manage your work-life balance?

[vibronx]

I have struggled a lot with my work-life balance in recent years, so I got curious about how people on the forum handle it.

I used to work from I woke up (6 am or 7 am, depending on how much work I needed to do that day) until I went to sleep at 11 pm or midnight. I did this every day of the week (with few exceptions), and I had not taken a weekend off since August 2017, when I started my own business. I was afraid of not working enough. I was afraid of not doing enough to reach my goals.

At the beginning of 2020, I got completely burned out by this schedule, so I raised my prices, which helped mitigate some of the pressure I felt. Fewer orders meant more time spent working on other, more exciting projects.

But, I still felt burned out. I felt like I had nothing to ever look forward to. I barely ever allowed myself to relax or to have fun. I wasn’t at my best when working. I couldn’t concentrate, so everything I did took longer than it should.

Then, I came to the realization a month or so ago (yes, I know it sounds stupid, but I really didn’t think of it before) that I should take weekends completely off. No work. I would just relax and be with those closest to me.

So far, this has helped me tremendously. I still work from 6 am until 11 pm most weekdays, but I can concentrate much better, and I feel like I am performing at my very best. I am getting much more done in 5 days than I did when I worked 7 days per week. Some days I even get to end my workday at 7 pm because I have finished everything I had to do!

I have realized the value of doing nothing. It is important to relax.

Sorry for the life story, but I just wanted to provide some background on my own struggles. I hope it can help someone.

What I really want to know, though, is how you, my fellow sellers and buyers, handle your work-life balance?

[antomtjvc]

I don´t know if it helps, but here is my life-story.

I started working when i was 20 years old. International Project Management and Accounting. There were months where i worked over 250 hours. The money was fine and everything - but I was the whole time away from my family.

Afterwards i switched to a small company. There i got a decent amount of money. It was nice there. But soooo boring.

Again: I switched. Upper Management. 14-16h/day was normal. And that´s was clearly too much. Why should i work so much for someone else?

So - yep: I quitted.

Now?

I work in a company 25 hours a week. So I have a regular daily routine.
I do Freelancing.
I got a second company for the international import business.
I built a house with my wife.
My son will be born in October.
I study part-time.
My wife is a student.

I have scaled back my hobbies and concentrate on the essential.

I love my life and don’t give it away anymore 😉
No more trace of burnout!

[vibronx]

I don´t know if it helps, but here is my life-story.

I started working when i was 20 years old. International Project Management and Accounting. There were months where i worked over 250 hours. The money was fine and everything - but I was the whole time away from my family.

Afterwards i switched to a small company. There i got a decent amount of money. It was nice there. But soooo boring.

Again: I switched. Upper Management. 14-16h/day was normal. And that´s was clearly too much. Why should i work so much for someone else?

So - yep: I quitted.

Now?

I work in a company 25 hours a week. So I have a regular daily routine.

I do Freelancing.

I got a second company for the international import business.

I built a house with my wife.

My son will be born in October.

I study part-time.

My wife is a student.

I have scaled back my hobbies and concentrate on the essential.

I love my life and don’t give it away anymore 😉

No more trace of burnout!

Thank you so much for your response. Seems like you made the right decision quitting. It is definitely easier to work harder and longer when you are working for yourself instead of someone else.

You seem to have found a way to be successful and enjoying your life at the same time.

I applaud you. 👏

[jeffry_designs]

Time management is crucial in this case. At the beginning I did not get much orders as usual, so I had time to balance both work and life. When I started getting more orders from Fiverr I left my job cause I cannot do both. Working on Fiverr actually granted me more time with my family cause I am at home all day. With the current workload I pull two 7 hour shifts per day. I take a nap in the middle, so that I am fresh for the next shift. Rest of the hours I spend time with my wife and have some alone time. It is a tough thing to do but worth it. Overall, this is way better than working for a job and killing yourself to get some cash and climb the cooperate ladder. This is my opinion though, I do not know how others would react to this. Hope this would help you in some way.

[miiila]

I tend to work too much, but my Sunday hikes are sacred, and I try to drop anything that’s not super urgent, when the opportunity to spend some time with family or friends arises, respectively to plan time in, when someone asks if I’m available some time down the line, and stick with it, even if it means to lose an order every once in a while.

It’s difficult to keep a perfect balance when you’re a freelancer/self-employed, because, usually, there are spikes and there are, or could be, quiet times, or you’ll get the flu, or break an arm, or worse, so you want to take all the orders you can get during spikes to counter the fear of lows, or because your current personal situation is so that you simply need to earn as much as you can, but health really is your most important resource, followed by time, and it’s good to keep that in mind.

Not to sound macabre, but sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves that both our life and the lives of our loved ones could end sooner than thought, and who wants to only have worked for the last days, weeks, months, or years, when that happens.

[melanielm]

I’m awake and active from about 8am until about 1am. I have a variety of ‘jobs’ and projects going on all the time and split them up in chunks throughout the day and week. I also have a house, elderly parent, and disabled kid to take care of. Organization, pomodoro-esque time blocks, and goal-setting are essential. A lot of what I do to earn a living is not order- or task-based like on Fiverr, so I have to handle my own made-up deadlines. I’m not a social butterfly, which helps.

[vickiespencer]

I have struggled a lot with my work-life balance in recent years, so I got curious about how people on the forum handle it.

I used to work from I woke up (6 am or 7 am, depending on how much work I needed to do that day) until I went to sleep at 11 pm or midnight. I did this every day of the week (with few exceptions), and I had not taken a weekend off since August 2017, when I started my own business. I was afraid of not working enough. I was afraid of not doing enough to reach my goals.

At the beginning of 2020, I got completely burned out by this schedule, so I raised my prices, which helped mitigate some of the pressure I felt. Fewer orders meant more time spent working on other, more exciting projects.

But, I still felt burned out. I felt like I had nothing to ever look forward to. I barely ever allowed myself to relax or to have fun. I wasn’t at my best when working. I couldn’t concentrate, so everything I did took longer than it should.

Then, I came to the realization a month or so ago (yes, I know it sounds stupid, but I really didn’t think of it before) that I should take weekends completely off. No work. I would just relax and be with those closest to me.

So far, this has helped me tremendously. I still work from 6 am until 11 pm most weekdays, but I can concentrate much better, and I feel like I am performing at my very best. I am getting much more done in 5 days than I did when I worked 7 days per week. Some days I even get to end my workday at 7 pm because I have finished everything I had to do!

I have realized the value of doing nothing. It is important to relax.

Sorry for the life story, but I just wanted to provide some background on my own struggles. I hope it can help someone.

What I really want to know, though, is how you, my fellow sellers and buyers, handle your work-life balance?

This ⬇️ is what helped me a lot.

so I raised my prices, which helped mitigate some of the pressure I felt.

I also made my shortest delivery time 3 days even though I usually get them done in one or two days.

I got so busy I “hired” my hubby to help me. That has worked out well.

[mooninya]

welcome to my work life balance in summary 🙂

[optical_designs]

I’m 13 and work with a business who pays me 50-435 dollars a week to design logos. I have exams on October 13 so when I have online classes from 8:30-12:30 I study and try to do homwork then I have lunch then after 1:00 I study till 4:00 and then I take a break. At 5:00 I take a bath and complete my logo designs till 11 in the night but sometimes my shedule changes depending on the work so if there is a lot of work I study during classes and work from 1:00 to 5:00 then study till 7:00 then work from 9:00 to 11

[j6nyc6]

My days off from my full time job are Friday and Saturday. I take those days off from Fiverr as well. I try not to accept any new orders on Thursday cuz I hate having them sitting in the back of my brain.

[ignareint]

I work full-time from Monday to Friday and have day-offs on weekends - but my other, more flexible job is pretty much 24/7 if you have the energy to reply to people’s problem at any waking hour.

My day job itself has periods where you have to stay back for a couple of hours after end of official office hours because something decided to be urgent or someone decided not to reply to an urgent matter that needed for be resolved on the same day (and then we also have IT breakdowns - I do not wish to elaborate because they only bring bad memories and frustration).

I also have some kind of an online auction/store to sell off niche items for emergency funds/reserve, but lately things have been slow and I have been taking it rather casually.

I initially planned to work on Fiverr mainly because I got too tired with my current job(s) and wanted a little bit of a variety in my working life; but IRL job(s) got in the way, so I haven’t really focused on growing my career here on Fiverr (and still have pending gigs that I have not finalized and published).

There are also (unpaid) side projects for “fun” and plans to take various courses that end up taking the back seat because I couldn’t cope with the burnout.

TLDR: I do not have work-life balance. It’s either I work overtime for days or I lie on my bed to recharge the whole day on weekends.

[heyfellow1]

When I started out and had an influx of orders, I didn’t know how to manage my schooling-work-life balance. Due to me being in college, My sleep schedule was getting messed up and sometimes I would do orders at 2 am as I didn’t have enough time. But then I did the exact same thing as you did. I raised my prices and that was one of the best decisions I took on fiverr. I had better clients , not so many orders, and was making more money haha. So yeah.