Working Hours

T

Tony Hardy

Guest
Who has set working hours for their business?

I think with the advent of iPhones, iPads and laptops, escaping from "that work situation" is becoming harder and harder to do. It's easy enough to be in the middle of a night out with friends, and "ding" there goes your microwave, I mean email.

How do you escape "the office" and do you have set working hours?

I try and get into my office 9am-6pm every day, but when you're working from home, things have a habit of not going that way. Does anyone manage it?
 
I don't sadly.
Even though I've taken an in-house role for the moment and I thought things would be 8.30-5.00 I'm still freelancing.
Maybe I can't say no or just don't like letting people down.
Last night I crashed after working 38 hours straight without sleep or a break.
 
I have my own schedule.. which isn't helped by working with someone in Australia...! I'm usually up between 10 - 12 and asleep at 2 - 4am. If I need to be up earlier, which I do some times, then I just force myself to get up earlier the day before so I can go to sleep a bit earlier!
 
bit different I suppose for me...
I have a 'client time' where I'm willing to speak to clients and then I have the 'work time' and 'render time'.
- client time is pretty much 9-5, with a lunch period obviously but depending on the client I'm usually willing to take a call, discuss a current project outside of these (think regular/good paying ones), it can go a long way to making work go smoother later :) Mornings usually deal with any emails/phone calls I need to make as I'm just no where near as creative at that time of the day.
- work time is a bit variable. Sometimes is 9-5, sometimes less, sometimes more, it all depends on when I want t get a render started. I'll often work that bit longer just to make sure I can start a render before going to bed say. Having said that I seem to work better later in the day/night than I do mornings so depending on the time required for a project I may end up working 2pm-10pm say and getting considerably more done.
- render times is again variable but seeing as this is at it's most basic me keeping an eye on my pc's so they keep doing what they're supposed to this doesn't really stop me from doing other things like say watching tv, having a meal or even sleeping in some cases.
I do have a room as my office which I can just shut the door too so that helps.
 
When I was in an agency, I started as 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. But over time ended up staying until 6 or 7 at night, occasionally later (like when I got thrown onto a project the day before the proposal was due and was there until 1am working on it). Now that I'm freelancing I try to be at my desk between 8:30am and 9am, with a half hour lunch break and work until 5:30-6. But I love having the flexibility to work later if need be (like 2am on a very in depth illustration I'm currently working on) but also to have the time to go run an errand if I need to before high traffic time.
But for the most part I'm trying to limit myself to 9-6.
 
I don't really have regular hours. I would if I have a steady enough stream of work coming in, but I don't.
Most days I do very little. I just sit at my computer mooching about on forums/twitter etc, usually from 9-5 (in case the phone rings or something equally exciting)
When I do have a nice project on then I generally go at it all guns blazing and work 18-20 hour days until it's complete.
 
I work all hours, as mentioned above with smartphones it is now possible to run your business out of hours. I don't neccesarily think it's a good thing as you can end up with no down time, however, in a very competitive market you need to stand out from your competition and responding to emails and sending quotes at 9pm/10pm at night is one of the ways we hope sets us apart from the rest.
 
I guess the only real "downtime" is when you turn the phones off and leave the country for a week or two haha!
 
I work from 8am till about 7pm Monday through to Friday and then probably another 4 or 5 hours over the weekend (if I have a big project on the go). Amazingly even after all these years i'm still regimented in getting up in time and going to my office to work LOL.
 
I find it impossible to regulate my hours. Some time I work zero hours a day, so far my record is 35 hours straight! Not being protected by a company work ethic means that you are purely at the mercy of the client - after all, they are paying for us to remain poor in this economic climate!
 
Yeah but for sometimes I work for my office from home. It is totally impossible to manage regularly. Also they are not interested that their workers should work from home.
 
Like others have said i also find it difficult to stick to regular working hours. Partly because i have an irregular workload and i don't have a separate room for work so its easy to get distracted. I'm slightly nocturnal and often find i'm more product in the evening/night than daytime, i've never been a morning person. It also depends what i'm working on and how motivated i feel, if i'm enjoying working on a project i will often be up 'til the early hours not wanting to stop!
 
I'm a night-owl, but a morning person. It's hard to get the balance when you're like that.
 
After a year of freelancing, I'm still trying to nail down a pattern for work. I used to just work all the time when I had work to do, which was rare. Now it's the other way around, I have a ton of work to do and no time to do it. I have life things to sort out and I try to work around my fiancée's shitty shifts (she's a nurse doing randomly allocated 12.5 hour shifts, day or night) so we can spend time together when she's off. It's really difficult to get any kind of routine going.
 
After a year of freelancing, I'm still trying to nail down a pattern for work. I used to just work all the time when I had work to do, which was rare. Now it's the other way around, I have a ton of work to do and no time to do it. I have life things to sort out and I try to work around my fiancée's shitty shifts (she's a nurse doing randomly allocated 12.5 hour shifts, day or night) so we can spend time together when she's off. It's really difficult to get any kind of routine going.

Totally understand how you feel with the fiancée and shitty shifts. My fiancée is a chef and her ours are annoying. I end up having to do a short day Monday and have Tuesday's off.

Which is ok sometimes but it's really annoying if I have to make an excuse to client as to why I can't meet those days :(
 
NeonThunder said:
Which is ok sometimes but it's really annoying if I have to make an excuse to client as to why I can't meet those days :(
That's daft, don't make an excuse just say you can't make it on that day due to prior arrangement, you don't have to tell them why. They should understand that as freelancers we have to go to other (potential) clients etc too.
 
Levi said:
That's daft, don't make an excuse just say you can't make it on that day due to prior arrangement, you don't have to tell them why. They should understand that as freelancers we have to go to other (potential) clients etc too.
Wouldn't it be marvellous if things really worked like that? As a freelancer, often, you are part of a pool. If you're not available to do the work, invariably someone else is. Also, client understanding is a difficult thing to come by - they want their work done. I'm currently sitting here glued to the phone, because the moment it rings, I have work to do as quickly as possible. And my clients are fussy - all of them. They prefer to use me as I have intimate knowledge of their accounts - if I'm not there, boy do I know it! But we all need the work and we have to make the sacrifices to procure it. No such thing as routine at this end - no word of a lie, but I have not had a single business day off for going on three years now! If I was rolling in riches, I wouldn't mind so much...
 
I say I can make it a day later.... they have the same scheduling issues as we do in business so if they don't understand then that's a bit daft
 
Ha coming back to this over a year after my initial post.

Nowadays, I'm at my desk anywhere between 8am and 10am, work until noon, go skate/workout until 2, come home and shower, back to desk at 3 and work until 10pm and later.

I'm working on getting on a better set schedule that ideally will be up at 6am to workout, at desk around 8, rink at noon, back to desk around 1:30-2 and then work until I'm done for the day.
 
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