One of the best ways to start taking care of yourself after you become a parent is to try and stabilize your work-life balance. This essentially means prioritizing your life so that you’re not taking on too much responsibility at work and to ensure you’re spending enough time with your children so that you can focus on their development and well-being.
Those with a poor work-life balance will often find themselves weighed down by long working hours, barely any time spent at home with their children, and a lack of sleep throughout the workweek. It’s extremely important to maintain a healthy work-life balance if you want the best for yourself and your family, but what solutions are there?
Some people believe that freelancing or working from home can be the best option to help them create a more stable work-life balance. But how true is this? Can freelancing really help you create the perfect work-life balance?
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Freelancing can mean more responsibilities than just working for an employer
One of the unique things about freelancing is that you’re able to take on as much or as little work as you want. As long as you can pay the bills at the end of the month, there’s nothing stopping you from drastically changing your hours from one month to the next.
However, there are many responsibilities that make this more difficult than it sounds. To create a strong work-life balance, you need to maintain some kind of order in your life and freelancing tends to be extremely chaotic. You might work extremely hard during some weeks and there might be days where you can’t find work at all.
This results in many unique responsibilities that might create more stress than you’d think. However, if you can stay on top of this stress, then it can reward you with a flexible work schedule that fits around your commitment to your children.
You get to spend more time at home, but only if your job involves that
Freelancing often means staying at home on a computer and getting work done with digital tools. However, freelancing can also mean taking on shipments with companies like Shiply or going out to a client’s location to consult them with design work. Freelancing doesn’t always mean staying at home and it really depends on the line of work that you’re in.
As such, we suggest that you really sit down and consider the benefits of freelancing and if it can really help you maintain a better work-life balance. Some people much prefer working fewer hours and being able to control how much they work. That’s perfectly understandable, but if you do prefer job security and being able to guarantee a set amount of income per month, then you may want to stick with your current employer.
Freelance can be a great way to free up your day and make more effective use of your time. However, it can easily backfire if you’re not prepared, so we suggest you do a bit of research and think carefully before you make the switch to full-time freelancing.