In this series of blog posts at Chinwag Jobs, we present Secret Diary of a Freelancer, brought to you as part of Xchangeteam’s Freelancer of the Year 2008 awards.

Welcome to my secret diary. It’s secret because I want to be candid and give you the inside track on what my life is like as a freelance gun for hire. It’s warts an’ all but hopefully inspiring in the main, highlighting the highs and the lows of my profession. We freelancers are the future: hear it here first.

Work/life balance

Our digital marketing freelancer knows too much work doesn’t just make Jack a dull boy – it makes him (or her) a sick boy, too

As a freelance, when does your average working day end? If you’re like me, it’s hard to put a definite boundary on the clocking on and off stuff. Think about all the things you do – have to find the time to do – in a working day: find, keep, bill and keep happy your clients, sure, but then there’s updating your website and portfolio, cold-calling potential new clients, attending networking events, bookkeeping, admin, creating back-ups, research (reading books and blogs), fitting in some training to keep up with the kids, checking out the competition… and so on. And on.

To adapt good old Hunter S Thompson’s adage: When the going gets tough, you work harder, not always smarter!

So even in the best of times, a freelancer’s life is a pretty damn busy one. And thus it’s easy to fall into the trap of working 12 hour days – worse, working into the wee small hours…

Being ‘free’ to work ‘when I want’ is the point – working silly hours at silly times is habit forming. It’s a great habit to kick.

So in that burgeoning order and diary book – put in some You Time. It’s a matter of self-discipline at the end of the day; you have plenty of discipline when it comes to meeting those client deadlines, so set yourself your own targets – and stick to them.

Making sure you are always properly holidayed-up is central. I firmly appreciate all the work and admin needs to be done for sure but cracking up in three years time at er, 25, in my case (blush) is not sensible. Give your clients plenty of warning and scheduling some real time off for you to decompress is no problem.

I also – as far as possible – keep exercised and look after myself. Get some private health insurance, too, so that when you are ill avoid the temptation to ‘work through it’ – take the time off to recover.

Take time out by booking meetings in your diary – meetings for yourself – and treat them seriously!

Whatever system suits you – work it up and stick to it. You are your own biggest asset and you don’t want to wear out your own gearbox.

Work life balance means not just working hard – it means ‘looking after yourself hard’ too.