Finding the right balance
I recently asked my followers what they would like to see me blog about and I was pleasantly surprised to get a response. Well it would be rude of me not to respond so I thought I would talk about finding the right balance between work, life and pet projects.
https://twitter.com/scotthack/status/287970043025821696
I work full time, Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm and I love my job. I spend all day (well 90%) working with WordPress. I also have freelance clients, write for my own website, write for other websites, write open source plugins and have a life. Sometimes it can get all a bit much. The real trick behind it is to be happy. I’m lucky with my job that it is doing something I love doing.
With my freelance work I have a small group of clients who are genuinely a pleasure to work with and despite me working full time can always get hold of me, get speedy responses to emails and most importantly get their projects delivered on time. I couldn’t maintain my freelance work without a little help and my go to guy knows me, knows how I like to work and more importantly delivers on time. If I’m tied up at work and something needs doing that can’t wait I know a quick phone call and a few bucks later it’s done. I’m happy, he’s happy and my clients are happy. It’s not easy finding the perfect someone, but we all should have someone we can call when we have to much on. It works both ways as well, I know if a project comes up from his side and he needs help then I’m going to get a call. Working full time affords me some flexibility when choosing clients and projects as well. I enjoy every client project I work on because I don’t have to chase every shitty little job or do stuff I don’t want to. It’s a nice position to be in and whilst it would be nice to be my own boss full time there is a certain amount of freedom you get by being only part time. Sure I have to sacrifice some “Real Life” sometimes but when you know that this project will pay for this holiday or will take you and the girlfriend out for a nice meal you feel more inclined to nail it rather than this job paying for my electricity bill.
I have rules with my freelance work though to ensure that it doesn’t compromise my day job or my home life. During a working day I will answer the phone and reply to emails but I generally don’t code anything for clients. Any code during the day is work related or open source. After work I only ever work until 8pm. I find that those 3 hours from getting back from work allow me to get a lot done and anything that requires more time gets done on a Saturday. That’s my other rule, Sunday is life day. I will happily work from 8am to midnight on a Saturday, but Sunday is about spending time with my girlfriend, family, friends anything but code!
So what about writing? Well I usually do two types of writing. Paid writing gets done between 8pm and 10pm on week nights. A strange time slot but it works for me. My brain has often relaxed enough from the day by then to allow me to think about what I’m writing about. My own blog or other things I write I do during the day, when I’m at work. Conflict of interests? No and here’s why. The company I work for saves a shed load of money by using WordPress as it’s platform. In return the community gets me. I am always on IRC in the #WordPress channel, I skulk around support forums and WordPress Stack Exchange and I write articles/tutorials/random crap. Most of my writing is about WordPress or Open Source, I benefit from using Open Source software so it’s only fair I contribute back to the community in what ever way I can.
My pet projects? Usually my plugins come from something I have been doing during my day job and like my writing I give them back. I’ve only released a few plugins but to me they are super useful and I’m glad that I can share them with the community and hope they also get some value from them. Would I like to do more? Sure I would! This is the only area I lack balance I would really like to be able to contribute more of my time to writing plugins and themes that are useful to people. I have a go to list of plugins I always use and would really like to give back. Hopefully this year I can squeeze some more time in somewhere to working on my plugins. They could all do with some love!
Finally I do have a real life…honestly. Once 10pm comes, regardless of what I am working on, I switch off. It might seem late but just having a couple of dedicated hours to my own life is important. Sundays are also just as important as I have already mentioned. The real trick is to find the right balance for you. I do a lot and will be taking more on this year, however I know my limits and I know what I can and can’t handle. That’s why sometimes you might not see a blog post on here for a few weeks. I’m simply busy with other things. Be flexible and be fair to yourself! For the record yes this blog post did turn out much longer than I expected!
Filed under Geek. No comments, on purpose.