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According to statistic guru, Statista, roughly 60 million people freelance in the U.S.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, 80.9 percent of Americans with work experience work full time (as of 2020) – i.e., follow the 9 to 5 train.
I wasn’t the best in math in school, but looking at these numbers, it’s clear that a large number of Americans are mixing freelancing with their full-time job roles.
How on earth are they managing that? I mean, you leave your home for work at 9 AM and then return by 6 PM (if traffic permits). You attend to a few chores at home, prepare for the next day, and then sleep for a few hours.
How on earth does anyone find the time to complete freelance projects in the middle of all that? Guess people are a lot stronger than they look.
Anyways, that tells us it is possible to freelance while holding down a full-time role. If you’re interested in learning how to manage both, stay on this post.
Nine secrets for balancing freelancing with your 9 to 5 job
1. Arrive early to work
Working a 9 to 5 job means you have to resume your job duties by 9 AM. The hours before then do not count. That means you can do with those as you like.
As a full-time worker who has freelance projects to complete, you should get to work earlier than the others. For instance, you can reschedule your morning routine to arrive at work by 7 AM. Then you can spend the next two hours working on your freelance projects. Two hours every morning for one week is 10 hours. That’s a lot of time to complete freelance work and even watch tutorial videos to sharpen your skills.
“But I can’t get to my workplace as early as 7AM. Even if I wanted to, traffic and my early morning chores won’t permit.”
Does this sound like you? No problem. You can always fix your house chores the night before. And regarding the early morning rush, try to leave home early. The earlier you set out, the less traffic and rush you face in your commute.
2. Work while you commute
How many hours do you spend commuting to work every day?
If you’re like most U.S. workers, you probably spend roughly 30 minutes commuting to work every day. The U.S. Census Bureau says the average one-way commute in the United States is approximately 27.6 minutes. For a to-and-fro journey, that’s approximately one hour per day. In a week, that’s roughly five hours. Add that to the 10 hours you get for early arrival to work, and you have plenty of time to listen to tutorial podcasts, watch course videos, or complete freelance projects.
3. Do more when you’re not in the office
9 to 5 workers often forget their job only takes eight hours of their day. The other hours are times you spend preparing and commuting (to-and-fro).
Technically speaking, your job only takes eight hours of your day. That means you have sixteen hours to yourself.
If you spend one hour commuting, you’re left with fifteen hours. Fifteen hours to eat, work out, attend to house chores, tend to the kids and pets, relax, and sleep.
You can simply hack certain activities from your daily routine or cut out time from your daily engagements whenever you have freelance tasks. For instance, if you normally spend eight hours sleeping, you can reduce that to four.
I know, I know, that’s way below the recommended number of sleep hours. But sleeping less is just a small price to pay to realize your financial dreams.
If you’re able to cut out four hours from your sleep and another one hour from other activities, that’s an extra five hours to throw into your freelancing commitments. Add that to the one hour you get from working while commuting. And you have a whopping six hours to do as you like with your freelancing projects.
“Struggles never end, but with smart planning it actually reduces with more efficiency.”
According to Emilia Flores, the co-founder of UkBadCreditLoans
Of course, we understand that life isn’t straightforward. And unforeseen situations might come up. But all things being equal, we believe you can have at least four extra hours from your regular hours away from the office.
4. Work during your lunching hours
Every 9 to 5 job gives you lunch breaks. Depending on your country, you can get up to one hour of lunch break.
As you can see, U.S. companies have the longest duration of lunch breaks. If you work in the U.S., you might even get up to one hour. With that, you can eat and relax for twenty and then tend to your freelancing gig for the remaining forty.
It bears mentioning that you may need to isolate yourself during your lunch breaks to avoid distractions. This is particularly important for people who have friends at work. You won’t be able to do much with your colleagues gossiping next to you.
This is why you need to grab your food and head to a place where there’s peace.
By and large, if you spend your lunch breaks judiciously, you should get at least another 30 minutes every day. For five working days, that’s an extra two hours thirty minutes. You could use that to watch tutorial videos, take client calls, practice and master your craft, send freelance job proposals, or even start/continue/finish pending projects.
5. Make the most of your weekends
Your weekend is all yours. So do with it as you see fit. You have 24 hours (twice). That’s a lot of time to achieve so much with your freelance business.
If you’ve been piling up tasks, this is the time to complete them. If you’ve been applying for gigs, this is the time to follow up on them and land those gigs.
Of course, you want to rest more during your weekends, especially if you’ve worked yourself out during the week. For instance, if you take our advice of sleeping for just four hours every day during the week, you want to hit the eight-hour sleep mark during the weekend.
Generally speaking, the weekend is the best period to be a freelancer. So make the most of it.
6. Organize your freelance tasks
So far, you’ve seen how to make out time to work on your freelance projects. Now, the next thing is how to manage those tasks.
The way to go is to have a smart planner tool or a task management tool. It will be easier to plan your freelance tasks based on the available number of hours with such tools.
For instance, say you’re a freelance graphics designer. You can use a task management tool to assign certain minutes/hours to the tasks at hand. That way, you will know which ones to do while you’re commuting, which ones to do during your lunch breaks, which ones to do at home, and so on.
It is important to plan your tasks this way because often, you’ll need to put tasks on hold to attend to your 9 to 5 duties. Without a clear planning structure, you might mix things up or even forget to finish some tasks.
A hypothetical example showing the importance of planning
A freelance writer got four blog articles from separate clients. He has to finish it all in less than one week. But he also has to go to his 9 to 5 law firm work.
So, he used a task management tool to carefully plan his week.
“I will do project A while I’m on the train to work. If I don’t finish up on the first day, I’ll continue the next morning.” “My lunch breaks will be for researching all four topics.” “If I finish the first two articles in three days or less, I’ll pull a two-day all-nighter to finish up task 3.”
See how detailed everything looks? With such clarity, it’s almost impossible he will muddle things up.
7. Be realistic with your targets and planning
Look, as a 9 to 5 person doing freelance work, you’ll never have all the time in the world to complete your tasks. That is why you need to be really efficient with how you manage your time.
As it is, some tasks will require a small amount of time, while some will require plenty of time. You need to assign the largest fraction of your freelance hours to those tasks that need more time.
For example, say you have a freelance writing gig of 5000 words. You can’t expect to do that while commuting. Even if you start on the train, you’ll likely stop at some points and postpone till later. A better approach for large projects is to do them when you’re most chanced. E.g., at night before you go to sleep or in the early hours of the morning before you resume your 9 to 5 duties.
For smaller tasks like watching tutorial videos or researching topics, you can do those while commuting or during your lunch breaks.
8. Avoid time wastage
Social media is the biggest culprit of time wastage. Many people spend hours on these apps without even realizing it.
As a 9 to 5 worker taking up freelancing gigs, you really cannot afford to sit on Facebook as a regular person would. As much as you might be tempted to, you simply cannot do that.
This is a period to be serious-minded, dedicated, and focused at all times.
Netflix is another culprit we cannot ignore. I know it might be tempting to say, ‘an hour watching my favorite show wouldn’t hurt.’ But hey, who told you that?
That hour you would spend on your favorite show could be better used working on any freelance projects at hand.
What if I don’t have tasks at hand? Well, you could spend that time searching for freelance gigs on popular freelancing sites.
9. Partner with other freelancers (sometimes)
You must accept that sometimes it may be impossible to complete certain projects yourself. It could be because you need undivided attention at your 9 to 5 job, or maybe you simply don’t have the kind of time needed to do the freelance task perfectly.
In that case, outsourcing your gigs to another freelancer you trust can be the right way to go. Of course, you’ll need to pay this person. But that will be on your terms. Usually, you’ll only be paying the person a fraction of the amount your client paid you.
However, you can break the task into bits if you think outsourcing an entire project might affect your bottom line too much. You’ll handle apart, and the other freelancer will handle the other part.
For example, say you’re a freelance email marketer, you can outsource the content writing part of any job you get to a writer. And then handle the other parts yourself. This way, you’ll have taken the most tasking aspect of the job off the table while only losing a small fraction of your earnings.
Finally, if you don’t have freelancers you trust around you, you can go to popular freelancing sites to find some.
10. Work with clients in different time zones
This is a great tip, and it works well for freelancers who hold meetings with clients or who do same-day delivery.
By working with clients in different time zones, you’ll likely have scenarios where your day is your client’s night. In that case, you can comfortably hold meetings with your clients without it clashing with your 9 to 5 role.
Also, in the case of same-day deliveries, working with clients in different time zones allows you to complete tasks when it’s most comfortable for you.
For example, say you’re a freelancer in the U.S., and your client is in Australia. When he gives you a same-day delivery task around 8 AM (your time), you can wait till you get back from work in the evening to complete this task. As it is, your 8 AM is likely his 8 PM, which gives you so much allowance.