Work-life balance is a problem for many people. Not just freelancers, either—anyone who works in a job that involves some kind of thinking is tempted to take work home with them. I suppose that maintaining a good balance is one of the benefits to menial shift work.
But freelancers have it worst. Without an employer, our income is more dependent on performance than any corporate employee’s income. And for the vast majority of us, there’s no real distinction between our home life and our work life, because our work life happens at home.
Here’s the thing that we lose sight of: becoming a workaholic does not improve your bottom-line or productivity.
When you work every day, all day, with no time set aside for living life, you just get more stressed. You lose sight of reality. You get out of touch with creativity, which is just as important for producing quality work as it is for innovating in business. You take much longer to do things and you get so exhausted that you sit there looking at the screen for hours.
There are no benefits to living a workaholic lifestyle. Let me emphasize that:
No benefits.
I have struggled with this problem for years. I’ve since solved it and struck a balance I’m happy with, but it plagued my family life and my stress levels for much longer than I’m proud to admit.
As you probably know from experience, it can be a hard problem to solve. You try and try, but keep falling back on old habits and working each day until 2am.
How do you solve it? it's all here!!
