How do you balance a full-time job with freelance/side projects. I leave my house for work at 8:00 and get home at 6:30, I have a podcast that I have commitments to and I’m working as a freelance web designer. I do client work most nights in the evenings from roughIy 7:30- 10 or 11. I obviously have personal commitments as well that I have to find time for. I can feel myself starting to burn out and I’m not sure how to fit it all in.
How do you manage?
You can keep this up for a shorter period, but you really do need downtime to be able to lead a productive, healthy and sustainable life. Burn-out is real and SO inconvenient…
Short answer: do less and (if necessary learn to) enjoy doing less.
All commitments are choices and it’s important to learn which are essential and which aren’t. Will something you’re doing now really matter in ten years, or five? Will it help you? Is it essential to help another? Is it absolutely essential for you personally, or merely cool, or something you got roped into, or something you somehow feel obligated to do? Figure it out and concentrate on the biggest, most personally/professionally important items, and be strong enough to let the rest go. That’s not an easy suggestion, I know, and it’s pretty tempting to feel like you can ‘power through’ days/weeks/months of intense schedules, but for most things they’re just not that important in the long run, and other people can do it if you don’t, and you will burn out and have to look at that schedule at one point or another. Given your question here, maybe this is the time to do that?