Had a talk with a graphic designer who made me rethink my freelance schedule

I was chatting with a freelancer I know at a coffee shop last Tuesday. She told me she only works 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and makes the same as when she was grinding 10 hour days. At first I thought she was crazy, but she showed me her time logs and she was right. She said the key was blocking off her mornings for deep work and ignoring emails until noon. That hit different because I've been averaging 50 hours a week and still feel behind. Has anyone else tried cutting their hours and actually seen their income stay the same or go up?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_hayden13d ago

...wait, hold on, 4 hours a day? That's wild to even think about. I've been grinding 8 or 9 hours easy and still feel like I'm drowning in my backlog. How does she even get her clients to stop calling before noon? Mine would lose their minds if I waited that long to answer an email. Makes me wonder if I'm just filling time with busy work instead of actual progress.

the_daniel13d ago

Yeah the "filling time with busy work" thing really hit home for me. I was in the same boat until I started blocking out two hour chunks for deep work in the morning and turning off all notifications. Clients actually got used to it after I set expectations upfront like "I check emails at 10am and 2pm, anything urgent call or text me." Maybe try doing a time audit for a week and see how much of that 8 or 9 hours is actually moving the needle vs just looking busy.

patel.morgan12d ago

Wait, seriously? For real? It's like a superpower once you actually try it.