Hours Mean Nothing, Get Stuff Done

In the ever increasing landscape of the self-employed we're starting to see a time where 40+ hour work weeks are being challenged. The 40 hour work week was put into place in 1938 and has been the norm since. Most people will admit that they actually work more then 40 hours a week and do not collect overtime pay. The problem I see far too often is that people feel it's absolutely necessary to work more then 40 hours whether full-time or self-employed. Either you have to bill these hours to collect a paycheck from your boss, or you just feel that it's necessary to work yourself to death. In my opinion you shouldn't be worried about how many hours you put in, but rather making sure you just get stuff done.

Since I struck out on my own I've been guilty of putting in some very long hours and weeks. Not because I had to, but because I felt like I'd fail or wouldn't succeed working for myself. Often I found myself keeping track of every minute of my day to make sure I wasn't slacking off or working less then 40 hours a week. I quickly realized that it didn't matter how many exact hours a day I was working because at the end of it I just needed to get all my tasks done. Still I found myself sitting down at 9am with the goal of finishing at 5pm, but often working till 6pm. Quite frankly I was putting in too many hours in order to feel like I was accomplishing something I wasn't.

Six months later I'm finding that I don't exploit some of the numerous reasons I work for myself. Let's be honest here, I did this so I could have a more relaxed schedule and work when I wanted. Because I wasn't awarding myself the time to regenerate mentally, physically and creatively my work became redundant. I've since made a point to ignore the exact hours I'm working. Sure I have a rough timeframe I want to work (around 9-5) and often find myself still having to work longer days if needed, but if I can polish off everything for the day in two hours and go relax, why not? As long as I stay on top of my daily tasks, deadlines, and make sure I'm bringing in the bacon (well enough to feed myself) I think I've earned the right to ignore the need for 40+ hours.

The notion that if you freelance you HAVE to work more doesn't need to be true. Sure we have multiple hats we have to wear and lots to do, but long hours don't always have to be the case. Being organized and streamlined helps chop down time allotted to boring administrative tasks. Creating a to do list the night before helps you align the day before it starts. And of course charging proper rates in order to work on less projects helps a lot too. Granted some people want to make more, others aren't as fast as the next person, but we can all stop checking the clock can't we? Some people might call me stupid or idealistic, but I'm pretty sure you can work less hours and get the same amount of work done starting now.