Use your flexibility

When I first started working as a solopreneur, my days looked remarkably similar to my days working in a company. At the time, we were in the middle of pandemic lockdowns so options were a bit more limited, but still from around 10am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, I was sitting in my chair at my computer hammering away on a fixed work schedule. This habit outlasted the pandemic and turned into the default way that I imagined my work day, even though my newfound work independence granted me much more flexibility.

It wasn't until several months ago that I realized the value of this flexibility and truly took advantage. The big change for me was becoming a father, where I really cut my work down to the absolute minimum to satisfy existing client commitments in order to maximize my time caring for my new son and helping with all of the work that comes with that. Despite knowing full well the obvious value of being able to spend my time freely on my new role as a parent, there was this nagging feeling that in these hours I should be at my desk hammering away to grow my business... and that by "slacking off" on that, I was in some way endangering the progress I had made.

Since then, I think I'm coming into a bit more of a balanced place, where I can still spend a good amount of time in the morning and evening as a parent, while making time to keep a daily exercise and writing habit. The secret is to keep a discipline around those activities, so that I know they will happen no matter what. Then I have a fixed block of 5-6 hours to make my work happen. This ends up being plenty of time to get my most important work done, and then anything that doesn't fit into that needs to be either optimized or dropped somehow.

I'm still working through my processes and how this all works, but I'm really happy with my progress so far. A big part of that is that I am now comfortable with using the flexibility I've created through my work. For anyone else who has earned similar work flexibility, don't be afraid to take advantage of it to improve your life as a whole.